The George Washington University- GSEHD
Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) & Educational Technology Leadership (ETL)
Curriculum Theory - TRED 325
Instructor: Dr. Brian Casemore
Spring 2010

"Nada's Island"

"Emotions and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Curriculum Theory:
on Incorporating EQ Skills in Teacher Education"

Abstract

Emotions shape who we are and what we do (Nussbaum, 2003); there is no way for them to be separated from our thinking; from our successes or failures; from our happiness or misery. We need to start giving them the importance they deserve and learn how to deal with them properly. And where better to start than in the field that shapes humanity: education; and, more specifically, teacher education, where the field of emotions has, so far, as Boler (1999) argues, been underexplored. Teacher education curricula should stop neglecting emotions, take the role emotions play in the classroom into serious consideration, and act upon that.

According to Boler (1999), emotions affect our cognitive and moral perceptions, our ethical attention and vision, our inquiries and analyses, and our pedagogies. Nevertheless, we are trained to do our best to "leave emotions out of our scholarship" (p. xviii), out of our studies. This needs to be remedied. We need to "develop more creative alternatives for emotions' roles in educational practices" (p. xviii). We have been taught and we teach our students to fear and control emotions, to internalize feelings of guilt and shame in order to have an appropriate social conduct. This needs to change completely; we need to preach, instead, self-awareness and self-reflective understandings of emotions first, and this at the level of both, the educator and the student. We need to understand how much educators (in their pedagogies) and students (in their passive vs. passionate engagement and in their learning) are affected by emotions. We all need to make a giant effort to effectively deal with those emotions, namely by incorporating emotional intelligence skills in education, including an awareness of the concept of “affective filter” (Krashen, 1982) that can play a huge role in either preventing or enhancing thinking and learning.

In this paper, we first study the role emotions play in making education an impossible profession; second, review the way emotions are discussed in the curriculum theory literature; third, explain what emotional intelligence entails; fourth, portray some of the criticisms of emotional intelligence and refute them; and finally, provide a brief overview of how EQ skills can be incorporated in teacher education. Our main objective is to help people recognize how emotions shape our classroom interactions, and start brainstorming to come up with an excellent program that serves to incorporate EQ in teacher education, and that sets the basis for the development of effective pedagogies of emotions that benefit both teacher and student. Emotional intelligence “contributes to the emotional well-being of both the individual who possesses it, and those around him” (Mayer, n.d.), hereby uprooting the feelings of anxiety, fear, and frustration that make education an impossible profession.

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Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Technology:
On Incorporating EQ Skills in Teacher Education to Foster Teachers’ Meaningful
Use of Technology to Support Learning

Abstract

Emotions shape who we are and what we do; they cannot be separated from our thinking, successes, or failures. We need to start giving them the importance they deserve and learn how to deal with them properly, especially now, at a time when education is being reshaped by emerging information technologies. In this paper, I shall study the role emotions play in making education an impossible profession; review the way emotions are discussed in the literature; explore the role emotions play in teachers’ use of technology in their teaching; explain briefly what emotional intelligence entails; portray one major criticism of emotional intelligence and refute it; and finally, provide a brief overview of how EQ skills can be incorporated in teacher education. My main objective is to help people recognize how emotions shape our classroom interactions, and start brainstorming to come up with a program that serves to incorporate EQ in teacher education and sets the basis for the development of effective pedagogies of emotions that benefit both teacher and student.
 

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Any Suggestion or Recommendation?

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