Emotional Responsiveness as a Key Component of Learning Ecologies: A View From Multiple Settings

• In Event: 43.019 - Socializing Epistemologies That Consolidate Complexity, Weighing Evidence, and Interrogating Emotional Responses: The Role of Ecologies

Abstract

Emotional responsiveness is a key component of human relations and learning ecologies. Humanizing approaches are critical for fostering and studying productive learning environments and can be characterized by building and maintaining relationships with human interactions that demonstrate dignity and care (Author; Espinoza & Vossoughi, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2013; Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2014). Racialization processes that occur in schooling can create learning environments that are dehumanizing and devoid of authentic human relations and emotional responsiveness (Author; Dumas & ross, 2016; James, 2012; Lopez, 2002). Proposed interventions for addressing growing concerns about a range of relational issues in dehumanizing learning environments are pervasive in educational research, and are often rooted in deficit-model thinking about youth’s abilities and success (Kendi, 2017; Valencia, 2010). More recently, researchers and educators have increasingly focused on socioemotional learning (SEL) as one such intervention (CASEL, No Date; see Hagen, 2013 or Lawson & Lawson, 2013 for a full review). SEL frameworks take up emotional awareness and management as competencies learners need to develop in order to decrease behavioral issues, “reduce risk factors,” and increase academic success (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011, p. 2; Jones, Greenberg, & Crowley, 2015; Weissberg, Kumpfer, & Seligman, 2003). Rather than viewing socioemotional awareness in this way, we argue for (re)designing classrooms to engage learners emotionally for the purpose of successful learning. Enacting emotional responsiveness, in ways that disrupt the types of racialization that often occur for marginalized students in classrooms, is essential for providing access to high-quality teaching and learning.

Drawing upon data from three different studies which each draw on classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with educators and students across grades 3-12, we provide examples to illustrate how emotional responsiveness takes shape in productive learning settings, and how it matters for learning. First, we will highlight two in-school learning settings from multi-year ethnographies of elementary, middle, and high schools in a large, urban school district in Northern California focused on initiatives to promote equitable learning outcomes for African American students, especially African American boys. We complement this data with examples from a case study of an out-of-school STEM learning setting in Northern California for students from minoritized communities designed with equity in mind. Based on our analysis of observations of classrooms in both in and out-of-school settings, we argue that there are three key aspects of enacting emotional responsiveness: conveying solidarity, listening with compassion to validate learners’ humanity, and drawing on shared cultural experiences. We will share examples of classroom interactions that demonstrate possibilities for how teachers can enact emotional responsiveness to engage learners in robust and meaningful learning processes. Our paper will highlight the critical role that emotional responsiveness, rooted in racial solidarity and shared cultural repertoires of practice, play in designing productive and robust learning ecologies.

Authors

• Tia C. Madkins, University of Texas at Austin

• Na'ilah Suad Nasir, Spencer Foundation