Kirsty Dunnett on Galløe (2023)’s “emotions differentiate opportunities”
My most loyal guest poster strikes again! Welcome Kirsty Dunnett, today writing about Galløe (2023)’s chapter on how emotions differentiate opportunities.
In the chapter Emotions Differentiate Opportunities: Investigating Emotions as a Component in Social Sustainability in Primary School, Lotte Galløe argues that pupils’ emotional experiences are an important but currently under-appreciated factor that needs to be considered if social sustainability is to be achieved. In particular, the chapter draws attention to what may seem rather obvious: children’s emotional experiences in primary school can have important implications for their subsequent access to – and success in – education.
The chapter describes a test situation in a primary school where one pupil (Ben) opens the test paper and gives up. The field notes read: “I wonder if he understands the exercises at all. I feel sorry for him. The test must be too hard for him. Staring obliviously into the space in front of him he seems to not even try. […] Bended [sic] forward with his arms on the table his face is still covered. [One of the teachers] reappears, and I notice she caresses his head and this time he does not reject her caring touch. I feel terribly sorry for him.”
One might think that the teachers respond appropriately, trying to provide comfort, but “In the setting of academic performance, being met with tenderness and sympathy does not promote feelings of success or pride. In this perspective Ben becomes inadequate and incompetent in the test setting because of his and the teachers’ affective reactions.”
In the discussion, it is pointed out how ‘deviant affects’ – i.e. undesirable emotional reactions, here illustrated through giving up in a test situation – “become a marker of the individual pupil’s traits, social skills or academic potential.” This is important because evaluations of educational equality are often based around access to opportunities, but “emotions [can] become a subtle dividing practice in primary school, which means ’emotionally deviant’ pupils are not dealt the best hand. When different emotions are distributed to different pupils, they are not given an equal footing in the classroom. Potentially, it has consequences not only in the classroom but in pupils’ path through primary school and ultimately in terms of their ascension in the educational system.”
How often did I see something similar play out at the local state comprehensive schools I attended, but with rebellion and challenging teachers’ authority rather than withdrawal and defeat? Consider two classmates from my primary and junior school. After junior school I wasn’t in the same classes as them, but I heard enough to know that they were both labelled ‘troublemakers’ at secondary school. One went into the army because our form tutor believed in him and suggested it, though our head of house had pretty much told him to his face that he had no future; another, and a close friend to the first, lost control of his motorbike and died – at 17.
In reading the chapter, I have to wonder how their emotional experiences of the classroom compared to mine? I knew they were perfectly smart, could be ‘well-behaved’ and willing to learn, and there certainly was no malice in either. Yet they could be disruptive, and this – their emotional reactions in class – presumably labelled them as a certain ‘kind’ – to the extent of school leadership essentially writing them off as lost causes. My guess at their emotional experiences in the classroom at secondary school: rarely interested or engaged – because they were kept away from the interesting materials due to their ‘bad’ behaviour, and a sense of injustice and unfairness – leading to further ‘bad’ behaviour when they objected.
How many of my academic colleagues, especially in the UK, or who have relocated internationally, can tell comparable stories of their peers? What about the students and their teachers at universities marketed as ‘research intensive’, ‘highly selective’ or ‘world class’?
Although the only mention of motivation in the chapter is to label how competitive school environments are a ‘technology of motivation’ that produces ambivalence and unpredictability, the lack of discussion of motivation seems somewhat odd. But this may be because self-efficacy and self-determination theory are two theories of motivation that I draw upon regularly, and therefore are things I expect to turn up more often than they do. Both of these theories of motivation stress the importance of experiencing being competent and the availability of choice. But in discussing them, one considers what this means for emotional experience of the learning situation. The theories focus on the positive: the implications are that positive affect (emotional experience) should be experienced through enjoyment, feeling competent and adequate. What the work in these areas that I’ve encountered doesn’t often discuss is the negative emotional experiences: what can they teach us about feeling incompetent (“proof” of absent academic abilities) and having defeat in one’s eyes at the first reading of the task?
When teaching at a university, one probably rarely sees anyone who goes ‘I can’t’ as soon as they are faced with a task, though one’s teaching or supervision has the potential to inculcate this. Consider, for example, the impact of comparing oneself with experts on a whole host of factors at the start of a course of study and realising that one’s experience and actions are so far from an expert’s that an accurate summary would be ‘incompetent’. Or of repeatedly being faced with tasks that are presented as ‘easy’ or ‘simple’ but at both first glance and several careful inspections and attempts are incomprehensible. As one becomes accustomed to not being able to figure the task out, and perhaps being set different, ‘more manageable’ (but equally unexplained and incomprehensible) tasks, one might learn that if something is beyond one’s immediate ability, giving up sooner rather than later is likely to be the most efficient strategy, saving considerable time and stress: why agonise over something if one can take one look and know immediately that it is impossible instead? Experience this too often and one’s reactions might not be too far from the example of Ben taking a test in primary school. Comfort and reassurance that one is ‘doing fine’ in such situations are nothing more than empty platitudes, and simply confirms incompetence.
For me, Lotte Galløe’s chapter doesn’t only draw attention to the emotional experiences of students, it also emphasises how these can have long-term implications for progress and social sustainability. Although the context discussed is almost at the diametric opposite end of the education system to university studies, I think it makes an important point about the importance of how emotions are distributed between different students in any classroom, that can complement theories of motivation. At each level future possibilities are affected – consider the debts many university students accumulate even if they do not graduate – and social sustainability at risk.
Galløe, L. (2023). Emotions Differentiate Opportunities: Investigating Emotions as a Component in Social Sustainability in Primary School. In: Krøjer, J., Langergaard, L.L. (eds) Social Sustainability in Unsustainable Society. Ethical Economy, vol 67. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51366-4_3