Affects and diversity in the classroom. Everyday experiences of Santiago de Chile’s schools.

• In Event: The inclusive work of schools and classrooms

Proposal

While the latest educational reforms in Chile are designed along the lines of inclusion models oriented to reach the best academic outcomes for every child in the classroom, we want to show classroom lessons as situated practices in which affects and emotions shape learning possibilities arrangements for students.

With reference to the affective turn (Clough and Jean, 2007; Gregg and Seigworth, 2010; Massumi, 2002) and contemporary pragmatism (Barthe et al., 2014; Boullier, 2010; Hennion, 2007; Queré, 2012; Thibaud and Thomas, 2004), our aim is to understand how the “work of the emotions” (Ahmed 2004, Queré, 2012) affects the way in which students with or without special educational needs and teachers build their relationship in the classroom. In this vein, we describe how emotions are not in or out students and teachers but their movement and their importance in the creation of borders and boundaries for the encounter of bodies and worlds.

Queré defines the “work of the emotions” as situated responses (unease, anger, nerves, joy, anxiety, stress, pleasure, displeasure, etc.) that drive or motivate individuals when they have to deal with situations. Unlike an order that is imposed, emotion appears with varying intensities of affectation and is often experienced as something strange, ambiguous and even excessive. In Massumi's words: “that is why all emotion is more or less disorienting, and why it is classically described as being outside of oneself” (Massumi, 2002: 35). This is especially important when the affectation occurs relationally, with specific spaces, objects and situations.

In this respect, the idea of affective atmospheres developed by Ben Anderson (2009) is particularly useful for understanding the way in which emotions are part of an individual's daily practices. The term atmosphere refers to the affects, sensations, tones and ambiances involved in any given situation. Atmospheres are not separate from people or things; they permeate us, transforming our perceptions in their presence. While affects are part of our power to affect our surroundings and shape the interactions we establish with others, they also play a part in the way we are affected by our close environment.

Drawing on eight months of participant observation of Math and Spanish lessons in four regular schools in Santiago de Chile, at different school levels, we analyse classroom practices from the perspective of affects and emotions and examine the way in which certain practices by students and teachers are temporally and empirically stabilized and constructed. We conducted our observations in two public schools, one semi-public and one private school, in order to look at lessons given in different kinds of administration and school integration programmes. All of them were regular schools, in which students with and without special educational needs attend. We conducted observations in first, fourth and ninth grade, in order to look at students of different ages. Observations were registered through field notes, no recordings were made so our presence in the classroom could be as less intrusive as possible.

We show that interactions between teachers and the group of students labelled as students with special educational needs (SENs) are intertwined with affects and emotions in very particular ways. They relate to the formation of SENs’ relationships with their peers, the construction of student’s identities, their learning possibilities and their teachers’ expectations of their capabilities. We argue that inclusion in the observed classrooms is often understood by students and teachers as normalisation and big efforts are made to minimise diversity and pursue academic success. As Sarah Ahmed (2004) argues, “emotions do things”, and in the classroom we may see how they stick some students together with reference to some deficit that must be reduced.

We paid special attention to place and materiality and the way in which they are part of classroom practices and the work of emotions. Following Nigel Thrift’s thoughts on “practices, understood as material bodies of work or styles that have gained enough stability over time” (2008), we look at how human and non-human bodies are in movement within forms and ways of doing that provide basic understandings, while they are open to new hybrid arrangements. Also, we emphasised the possibilities of place and materiality for building affective atmospheres for collaboration and difference as understandings of inclusion that stress students’ wellbeing and educational alternatives.

From this perspective, we hope to contribute to the examination of the issues surrounding the understanding of inclusion of SENs students in the classroom and in particular the role of affects and emotions in this respect. Secondly, we want to move beyond the dualism between the supposedly material and social dimension. By observing co-construction processes in which affective and material elements are intertwined, we show that emotions are not static, nor do they reside solely in the heads of individuals; they arise in a relational manner, in the interactions between the student, his/her peers and teachers and the materiality of the classroom. If we take affects to mean the “ability to affect or be affected” (Massumi, 2002) and as an event that is evenly distributed between the object and the subject (Barthe et al., 2014; Boullier, 2010; Hennion, 2007) then we cease to think of classrooms as a simple receptacles of lessons and are able to recognise the emotional and affective charge of the components within classroom practices. In that vein, in-between spaces (Deleuze and Guattari, 2008) appear in relation with possibilities for understanding inclusion in several new ways different from the idea of “education for all”.

Finally, by documenting the “work of emotions” we are able to embody the idea of the inclusive educator and the student with special educational needs. By considering how students and teachers feel or how atmospheres make them feel, we can examine the tactics that are deployed in practice (De Certeau, 1984) and the ways of doing and being that are exercised. In this research we show that each “set of understandings” is directly linked to the work of emotions, generating senses that pass through the body and have the capacity to affect or be affected.

Authors

• Rosario Palacios, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centro de Justicia Educacional

• Sofia Larrazabal, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centro de Justicia Educacional

• Rocio Berwart, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centro de Justicia Educacional