Relationships between emotional climate and the fluency of classroom interactions
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Relationships between emotional climate and the fluency of classroom interactions Kenneth Tobin • Stephen M. Ritchie • Jennifer L. Oakley Victoria Mergard • Peter Hudson
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Received: 10 August 2010 / Accepted: 28 May 2011 / Published online: 14 February 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract This study examined emotional climate in relation to the teaching and learning of grade 7 science. A multi-method and multi-theoretic approach used sociocultural frameworks as a foundation for interpretive research, conversation analysis, prosody analysis, and studies of nonverbal conduct. Emotional climate varied continuously throughout a lesson. Dialogues occurred and afforded learning when interactions between the teacher and students were fluent and included humour and collective effervescence. Emotional climate was negatively valenced when the teacher and/or students endeavoured to establish and maintain power by restricting others’ participation to spectator roles. The teacher’s endeavours to maintain and establish control over students were potentially detrimental to teaching and learning, teachers and learners. This type of teaching gradually evolved into a form we referred to as cranky teaching, whereby the teacher and her students showed signs of frustration and the enacted teaching and learning roles lacked fluency. The methods we pioneered in the present study might be helpful for other teachers who wish to participate in research on their classes to ascertain what works and should be strengthened, and identify practices and rituals that are deleterious and in need of change. Keywords
Emotional climate Identity Learning Science education Teaching
Introduction Despite the centrality of emotions in education there has been a dearth of research connecting emotions to learning environments. One exception is a study published in Learning Environments Research in which Thomas (2003) created an instrument containing a scale that examined emotional support, as it relates to the incidence of metacognition. Thomas’s learning environment instrument included items that addressed whether students were K. Tobin City University of New York, New York, NY, USA S. M. Ritchie (&) J. L. Oakley V. Mergard P. Hudson Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected]
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Learning Environ Res (2013) 16:71–89
cared for emotionally and the extent to which their ideas were respected. Thomas considered emotions such as pride, sadness, and joy, noting that marked changes in social interactions during learning might be associated with situations students perceived as emotionally negative. Although the measures obtained using this instrument were associated with important aspects of learning environments, the scales and items did not measure enacted and perceived emotions, social constructs we consider central to learning environments. Thomas’s work on metacognition is cited 14 times in the SCOPUS database (http://info.scopus.com/about/); however, we found no follo
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