ENGAGING, EMPOWERING AND ENABLING GIRLS LEARNING BY RESPECTING FEELING AS A FOUNDATION OF THE INTEGRATED LEARNING EQUATION
I WOULD LIKE TO EXPLORE THE LITERATURE AROUND THE COMMUNITY OF IDEAS INHERENT IN THE FIVE DIMENSIONS OF ST HILDA’S EDUCATION FRAMEWORK AND LINK THESE WITH RESOURCES WHICH STEM FROM THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONS AND COGNITION. SOME GUIDING PRINCIPLES WILL BE THE AVAILABLE RESEARCH AROUND GIRLS’ EDUCATION, AESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY, INTEGRATED LEARNING THEORY, EMPATHY & EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, ENGAGING FEELING IN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS, PHILOSOPHY & ETHICS IN STEWARDSHIP.
To begin, I would like to follow some of the issues and ideas below, reporting my findings in this blog under the appropriate headings at the right:
1. Girls education and the importance of emotions in integrating learning
2. Aesthetic intelligence – what is it? Those with higher aesthetic intelligence have a greater locus of control over their lives and a better understanding of their own view of the world. Aesthetic experience is about joy – how do we make all learning an aesthetic experience by engaging feeling? And how can this aid in the pursuit of rigor in the classroom. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8510%28199724%2931%3A4%3C113%3AE The visual cortex appears to be organized in fundamentally different ways in females and males. Christian Kaufmann,Gregor Elbel,and associates,“Frequency Dependence and Gender Effects in Visual Cortical Regions Involved in Temporal Frequency http://www.pilambda.org/horizons/v84-3/sax.pdf
3. Other Ways of Knowing ~ once cognition was the term used to designate propositional thinking with verbal and numerical symbols whereas the current sense of the term embraces all forms of thought including mental images obtained through perception. Girls 'feel their way into situations' - Girls report that they feel more comfortable…interact more with teachers…and develop more favorable attitudes towards subjects when they can do this Salomone (2006) Girls need to be given the time and space to respond Ensuring Quality Education for Girls Interview with Dr Mary Pigozzi http://www.unicef.org/teachers/forum/0202.htm
4. Single-sex classrooms allow girls to "hold onto their childhoods a little longer" and attain a level of confidence not commonly seen in girl graduates of coed programs. Whitney Ransome, co-executive director of the National Coalition of Girls' Schools. IlanaDeBare, cofounder of the private Julia Morgan School for Girls, in Oakland, California, and the author of Where Girls Come First: The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Revival of Girls' Schools, says that though girls can thrive in coed classrooms at younger ages, once puberty sets in they quickly begin to lose their confidence http://www.edutopia.org/single-sex-education
5. In girls, emotion is processed in the same area of the brain that processes language. Girls are hardwired to articulate emotion more easily stress impairs learning in females Leonard Sax http://www.whygendermatters.com/ I have become convinced that this is the most important benefit of single-sex education—not that single-sex education can improve grades and test scores,although it can do that,but rather that single-sex education can broaden educational prospects for both girls and boys. It is a great paradox:coed schools tend to reinforce gender stereotypes,while single-sex schools,properly led,can break down gender stereotypes Leonard Sax Six Degrees of Separation http://www.pilambda.org/horizons/v84-3/sax.pdf
6. In adolescence,a larger fraction of the brain activity associated with negative emotion moves up to the cerebral cortex.That’s the division of the brain associated with our higher cognitive functions,such as reflection,reasoning,and language. So a seventeen-year-old is able to explain why she is feeling sad,in great detail and without much difficulty (if she wants to). But that change occurs only in girls. In boys,the locus of brain activity associated with negative emotion remains stuck in the amygdala; there is no change associated with maturation.12 200 William Killgore,MikaOki,and Deborah Yurgelun-Todd,“Sex-Specific Developmental Changes in Amygdala Responses to Affective Faces,”Neuroreport12 (2001):427–433
9. How do we encourage girls to take risks in pursiut of inquiry learning rather an seek 'right answeres' for emotional reward? Gender and Psychological Stress (a neuroscience partnership) http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/2/3/227
10. How do we encourage our students to build up from their emotions, using them as a scaffold for self understanding, to empower them with the ability to feel and then objectify from a strong sense of self?
11. Girls in education: citizenship, agency and emotions Author: Tuula Gordon a Affiliation: a Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland DOI: 10.1080/09540250500194880 Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Published in: Gender and Education, Volume 18, Issue 1 January 2006 , pages 1 - 15 Subject: Gender in Education;
11. Aesthetic intelligence: optimizing user-centred design Author: Alastair S. MacDonald DOI: 10.1080/09544820010031562 Publication Frequency: 6 issues per year Published in: Journal of Engineering Design, Volume 12, Issue 1 March 2001 , pages 37 - 45 Subjects: Aerospace Engineering; Architectural Structure & Design; Artificial Intelligence; Automotive Design; CAD CAE CAM; CAD/CAE/CAM; Chemical Engineering; Civil & Structural Engineering; Collaboative Design; Computer Aided Design & Manufacturing; Computer Aided Design (CAD); Design History; Design Technology; Industrial Design; Life-Long Design; Machine Design; Manufacturing Engineering Design; Mechanical Engineering: Mechanical Engineering Design; Design: Mechanical Engineering Design; Operations Research; Plant Engineering; Design: Product Design; Ergonomics: Product Design; Design: Product Design; Production Systems; Production Systems & Automation; Project Management; Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing; Sustainable Engineering & Manufacturing; Universal Design; Number of References: 19 Formats available: PDF (English)
Abstract This paper discusses the concept of 'aesthetic intelligence', which acknowledges that we possess an innate, sometimes subconscious, ability to perceive a wide range of qualities in products that shape our responses to them. It argues that these qualities can be purposefully discussed and attempts to provide, for engineering designers, a way of structuring the complex field of aesthetic response. The author links sensorial qualities to cultural values and proposes a process of designing for the senses as a means to providing products with which customers can feel a greater degree of empathy.
12. http://www.schwablearning.org/articles.aspx?r=369 Faced with frustration, despair, worry, sadness, or shame, kids lose access to their own memory, reasoning, and the capacity to make connections.The emotional brain, the limbic system, has the power to open or close access to learning, memory, and the ability to make novel connections.
13. AESTHETICS OF DESIGN http://clive-shepherd.blogspot.com/2007/06/getting-in-touch-with-your-feelings.html Emotional Design - why we love (or hate) everyday things (Basic Books, 2005) is a book about design in general, but which has many implications for the design of e-learning materials. Donald proposes that when we design anything, we take into account that users will respond on three different levels: a. At the visceral level, users will respond instinctively and unconsciously to first impressions of the product. At this level issues such as appearance really matter. b. At the behavioural level, users will respond to the function, usability and performance of the product. Products that are easy and fun to use will generate a positive emotional response. c. At the reflective level, users will respond to what the product says about them, the satisfaction that they gain from their relationship with the product over time. Now Norman is a cognitive scientist by profession. He is a professor of computer science at Northwestern and has served as VP of Apple's Advanced Technology Group, so, killjoys cannot dismiss Norman's work as that of some new-age airhead. Take his advice on board and what do we have? E-learning that is great to look at, fun to use and a pleasure to work with; e-learning that hooks you in emotionally as well as intellectually. Donald has this thought for instructional designers everywhere: "Students learn best when they motivated, when they care. They need to be emotionally involved, to be drawn to the excitement of the topic ... Developing exciting, emotionally engaging and intellectually effective learning experiences is truly a design challenge worthy of the best talent in the world." Donald A. Norman EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE LECTURE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haW6E7qsW2c
"As early as 1917, William James spoke eloquently of the intimate connection between the emotional and cognitive, suggesting that they are inextricably related and perhaps never entirely separate, distinctive, nor pure."
Research suggests:
cognitive scaffolding of concepts and teaching strategies held together by "emotionality" (Hargreaves, 1998)
the "brain does not naturally separate emotions from cognition, either anatomically or perceptually" (Caine & Caine, 1998)
"Parker Palmer (1998) talks about the separation of the head from the heart as contributing to an educational system filled with broken paradoxes that result in 'minds that do not know how to feel and hearts that do not know how to think.'" http://www.cfkeep.org/html/snapshot.php?id=45306087
