Exploring and Enhancing Emotions and Emotional Engagement in Mathematics Classrooms

• In Event: Instructional Practices in Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

When examining engagement, most teachers and researchers often focus on behavioral engagement and less on cognitive and emotional engagement. In this study, we explore students’ emotional engagement to potentially gain novel insight into the extent to which students’ emotions play a role in academic interactions in mathematics classes. We carefully identified moments in recorded math instructional videos in which students displayed signs of emotional engagement and in which these emotions appeared to be directly linked to the mathematical activity in which the students were engaged. We then outlined the teacher’s practices, dissected how the teacher's practices may have influenced students’ emotional engagement, and distinguished aspects of the interactions that were and were not attended to in the observation rubric.

Authors

• Destini N. Braxton, University of Virginia

• Jonee Wilson, University of Virginia