The George Washington University- GSEHD
Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (C&I) & Educational Technology Leadership (ETL)
Curriculum Theory - TRED 325
Instructor: Dr. Brian Casemore
Spring 2010
"Nada's Island"
Nada's ESL Island

Emotions in Curriculum Theory
by Nada Salem Abisamra


NEW...Final Paper:...NEW
"Emotions and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Curriculum Theory:
on Incorporating EQ Skills in Teacher Education"

Notes about Emotions
    • The Very Thought of Education - Britzman, D. (2009). (Limited Preview of the Book)
      • P. ix: “In any learning one feels pressure, without knowing from where it comes, to make knowledge certain and so to stabilize the object lest it escape one’s efforts.”
      • “However much we plan in advance… the pedagogical encounter and what becomes of it are radically unstable.” (preface p. ix)
      • P. 7: “… education begins with the anxiety of dependency, helplessness, and fears of separation… the anxieties of having to relive the profound helplessness of one’s infancy.”
      • P. 11: “In Bion’s view, thinking contains the emotional pain of thoughts, but also is the means for tolerating affect.”
      • P. 21: “Because we cannot give reasons for our reasons and because reasons are not what cause our dilemma, our best approach will be to read between the lines and even read what is not there at all.”
      • P. 127: The impossible professions > about the internal conflicts those professions would rather disclaim (deny)

      • "Can the impossible professions learn to tolerate their own internal conflicts--their love and hate--and analyze their education?"
      • The Impossible Professions exhibit an affective logic that proceeds from emotions. (p. 130)
      • Emotional contact is essential: trying to further it (p. 147)
      • P. 131: "If education is our transference playground of love and hate, learning one's emotional situation provides the means for tolerating the very means of this education."
      • Education is considered an impossible profession because it deals with internal conflicts of love and hate that it prefers to deny; it deals with emotions, with frustrations of never reaching an ideal outcome. Education is an impossible profession because it is subjective and cannot do without its subjectivity: it avoids critique and, according to Britzman, "there is no education without a critique of education" (p. 138)
      • Education reminds us of what is most incomplete, arbitrary, and archaic in us: it might remind us of our infancy or it might subject us to our own unanswered questions.
      • Education is depressive since it is highly affected by our personal quest for love and desire for knowledge,
      • it depends on enlivening emotional life, our susceptibility to the other, and our capacity to passionately attach our love to anything or anyone for no reason at all. Moreover, education exhibits an affective logic that proceeds from emotions.
      • Education asks us to reason about our thinking, trying to point out our inhibitions, our suppressed thoughts and our fears. It asks us to be aware of the possibility of wishful thinking being mistaken for real progress; to think about and beware of our egocentric reasoning that makes us only focus on our own needs and urges.
      • It is difficult for us to admit that there are things that we might not want to know about, but that we need to know. Moreover, our unconscious does not want to know what our ego does not want to know, including its mechanisms of defense against anxiety (reasoning, suppression, denial, and struggle).
      • We refuse to admit our human narcissism, to challenge our omnipotence and lack of altruism, and to question our ideals and everything we think we stand for.
      • The most important thing is to eliminate the factor of anxiety and keep our affective filter low in order for learning to take place. According to Krashen (1985), anxiety raises our affective filter which then forms a 'mental block' that prevents comprehensible input from being used for learning.
      • acceptance of our imperfection and a constant endeavor to learn more and do our best
      • constant need for self-analysis
      • accept the fact that “pedagogy is unpredictable, incomplete..." (Silin, 2003, p. 265)
      • feeling of guilt that we experience every time we are asked a question whose answer we do not know, every time we encounter a problem that we do not manage to solve on the spot.
    • Feeling Power: Emotions and Education - Megan Boler
      • Foreword by Maxine Green: p. ix & xi: In the foreword Maxine Greene wrote for the book, she talks about how, when we encounter other people, strangers, we are not really afraid to deal with them; what we are afraid of is to deal, through them, with the stranger in ourselves, with the profound emotions this encounter provokes, emotions that we do not want to acknowledge, that we prefer to deny. She says Boler pushes us to confront the stranger in us and to recognize the importance of the place emotion plays in education (p. ix). She also says Boler talks about violence and finding ways to control it, and about looking at things with more self-awareness (p. xi).
      • Preface: Boler quoting the students: "... there needs to be some kind of awareness program in schools... Kids need to be aware that overpowering emotions are a result of circumstance rather than character" (p. xiv). Before kids can be aware of that, they need to be aware that they have those emotions. It is not easy. In a world where we have been encouraged to hide our emotions, we get so used to doing so that, over time, we even forget we have them. Over time, we are no longer aware of having them. And this is where the danger lies. We do know that we are sad, we are angry, we are upset, but we do not know why. And here is where Emotional Intelligence training comes in handy. If teachers are, in preservice or in inservice, properly trained in self-awareness, they can spot the lack thereof in their students and help those students to acquire that.
      • Megan Boler is also talking about another student who left a note at her office saying, "... Your words have altered my outlook, after thought on how to deal with the emotion of anger" (p. xiv). Dealing with emotions is another component of EQ. And, once we know how to do so properly, this would be life-changing; it would "alter one's outlook" on life.
      • "... addressing emotions within our classrooms is a productive and necessary direction for the exploration of social justice and education" (p. xv) Boler adds that "The social control of emotions, and emotions as a site of resistance to oppression, are underexplored areas of study in most scholarly disciplines as well as within pedagogical practices" (p. xv). So, it is high time emotions were properly explored in pedagogy, in the different disciplines. What needs to be explored before the control of emotions, though, is the awareness of the existence of those emotions, and their interpretation. Boler goes on to say that, if we want to have a better world, we need "pedagogical recognition of how emotions shape our classroom interactions" (p. xv), and this can definitely not be done unless educators are helped to realize, first, how emotions shape them.
      • According to Boler (in her preface), theorists of knowledge need to explore "the role emotions play in shaping our perceptions, our selection of what we pay attention to, and our values that in turn determine what seems important to explore" (p. xv).
      • Boler: "The boundary--the division between "truth" and reason on the one side, and "subjective bias" and emotion on the other--was not a neutral division. The two sides of this binary pair were not equal: Emotion had been positioned on the "negative" side of the binary division. And emotion was not alone on the "bad" side of the fence-- women were there too" (p. xv).
        • According to Boler, emotion was, in the near past, considered a weakness; it was considered subjective, the opposite of logic, truth, and reason. Emotion was not considered a worthy topic and mentioning it was inappropriate. It was more related to women than to men and, and just like women, was purposefully excluded from philosophy and science.
        • Ironically, now in the discourse of emotional intelligence there is no mention of women at all (p. 62). It is as if EQ targeted now men only... maybe because they are the ones mainly supposed to reach success?
        • I do not believe that EQ targets mainly men. It was coined by men, but both men and women have it and might need to improve it. EQ is not really about being emotional--which, in general, women tend to be more than men, it is about understanding and controlling emotions; and this is hard for both men and women. Maybe women in general are better at putting themselves in other people's shoes (showing empathy), but this is only one component of EQ.
      • p. xviii-
        • "...our emotional experience... informs both our cognitive and moral perceptions"
        • "... educators and students require systematic accounts of how emotions shape the selectivity of our cognitive and ethical attention and vision"
        • The "underexplored terrain of emotion" (Boler, 1999, p. xviii) needs further inquiry.
        • "I hope scholars will examine how emotions shape our inquiries and analyses, how and why we are taught to strive to leave emotions out of our scholarship, and why emotions so so rarely are the subject of our studies."
        • "I hope that educators can consider how their pedagogies are informed by their own emotions, moods, and values; how the inexplicit subtexts of emotion impact students; how curricula that neglect emotion ... deny students possibilities of passionate engagement."
        • "I hope students can recognize how, for example, the competitive individualism that so often defines education fosters fear and isolation, and that these traumas are not a necessary part of education."
        • "I am arguing that we consider the reasons emotions have been systematically discounted, and develop more creative alternatives for emotions' roles in educational practices."
          • According to Boler, emotions affect our cognitive and moral perceptions, our ethical attention and vision, our inquiries and analyses, and our pedagogies. Nevertheless, the terrain of emotion is underexplored in education. We are trained to do our best to "leave emotions out of our scholarship" (Boler, 1999, p. xviii), out of our studies. This needs to be remedied. We need to "develop more creative alternatives for emotions' roles in educational practices" (Boler, 1999, p. xviii). We need to understand how much educators (in their pedagogies) and students (in their passive vs. passionate engagement) are affected by emotions. Curricula should not neglect emotion; students should be taught to stay away from competitive individualism which is what "so often defines education"(Boler, 1999, p. xviii) nowadays. This would only cause them fear and isolation, and this can be avoided when we do not ignore the role of emotions; namely, when we incorporate EQ both in teacher education and in student education.
      • Boler views emotions and cognition as "inextricably linked" (Boler, 1999, p. xix)
      • Criticism:
        • Chap 1: "Emotions are inseparable from actions and relations, from lived experience" (p. 2) But I would add here that there should also be inseparable from thinking and cognition so that they lead to positive outcomes.
          • The emotional terrain in education is complicated. We all, teachers and students, have a different "emotional baggage" (p. 3) that we carry with us into the classroom; this "emotional baggage" stems from our backgrouds, from our culture, gender, race, social class, and from all the events that characterize our lives. In order for teachers to be able to understand their students' emotional baggages, they need, first, to be aware of their own and to understand it. They also need to be empathetic so that they can put themselves in their students' shoes and be able to effectively deal with their different emotional baggages. Boler also agrues that emotions are "slippery and unpredictable" (p. 3), and this is one of the reasons why education often avoids tackling them. However, it's time a theory of emotions were set forth in education, Boler continues, a theory which would set the basis for the development of effective pedagogies of emotions.
          • We have been taught and we teach our students to fear and control emotions, to internalize feelings of guilt and shame in order to have an appropriate social conduct. This needs to change completely; we need to preach, instead, self-awareness and self-reflective understandings of emotions first, and this at the level of both, the educator and the student (p. 4).
          • We need to study how affect occurs in the classroom. (p. 5)
          • "To theorize emotions is a slippery business, which does not lend to quick prescriptions and generalized rules applicable to all educational instances and all students and teachers" (p. 8). This is definitely true. Emotional intelligence, with all its components, does not provide prescriptions and general rules. On the contrary, it highly respects the individuality and the uniqueness of each person. It is aware of the plethora of emotions that can envelop human beings; I would even say it is based on them. It is based on each person's awareness of the particular emotions that they experience at particular times, of their understanding and acceptance of those emotions. After this is done, then maybe prescriptions for empathy and people skills can be kind of generalized.
        • Boler states that emotions are always present in teachers' and students' daily lives, yet they only seem to be mentioned within educational practices as something to be controlled (p. xxii). I do agree with her; however, the way they would be controlled according to EQ is totally different from the way they were supposed to be contolled, restrained, or even hidden in the past. According to EQ, we should first develop awareness of our true emotions and of the reason why we are having them. Only then, can we really control them in a healthy way that would not affect us negatively. (chapter 2)
          • pp. 48-49: Boler mentions two movements in education that "sought to control emotions" (p. 48): the character education movement and the "mental-hygiene" movement. Both movements aimed at improving society, solving social conflicts, by controlling emotions: the character education movement aimed at shaping children's conduct by teaching morality in the classroom; but it later proved to have had "little effect on some of the virtues cherished by its advocates" (p. 48): the lessons were not applied in real life which proved to be much more complex and sometimes contradicted the essence of the moral lessons being taught. As for the "mental-hygiene" movement, (whose followers Boler compares to the advocates of emotional intelligence), it considers emotions and personality flexible and reshapable, thus their enhancement would solve "society's ills" (p. 49): delinquency, crime, and deviant behavior, among others. Mental hygenists focused on child-centered pedagogies whose objective is to relieve stress in children. But what mental hygiene really served as was a veiled response to the real conflicts that caused educators anxiety: the political issues of increases in immigrant populations of which resulted social conflicts which could not just be dealt with through individualized mental hygiene discourse. Hence, Boler accuses this movement of having pastoral power as real objective (p. 49).
            • pastoral power: theological grounds of modern state power, based on capitalism
            • Power and Resistance in the Later Foucault- Presented by John Hartmann
              • "Foucault’s deepening analyses lead him to trace the roots of pastoral power and the Christian confessional back towards Greek and Roman technologies of the self.
                One of the first milestones in the transition towards an analysis of governmentality occurs in the 1978 “Sexuality and Power,” given in Tokyo. In this lecture, Foucault’s analysis locates the roots of ‘pastoral power’ to consist in a set of ‘new techniques’ or “new mechanisms of power that Christianity introduced into the Roman world."
                Foucault comes to see that what is fundamental to the transition from the Roman to the Christian is the set of mechanisms and exercises which deal with a recalcitrant flesh resistant to the word of God. We find in this lecture one of the first formulations of the transition from Volume I to Volumes II and III: as Foucault says, “it is by the constitution of a subjectivity, of a self-consciousness perpetually alert to its own weaknesses, to its own temptations, to its own flesh; it is by the constitution of a subjectivity that Christianity came to make this basically average, ordinary, relatively uninteresting morality function between asceticism and civil society.” With the advent of the ‘interiorization’ so central to Christian subjectivity, we can see here one of the first renderings of the revised notion of power: power is not always exercised in the kind of agonistic force relation described in Volume I, but can also function through the structuration of subjectivity through various non-dominating techniques and apparatuses.
                we should note that Foucault locates the roots of the Christian confessional in the 1st or 2nd Century, and not in the 13th, as he had previously.
                His continued genealogical inquiry into the emergence of confession as a technology of the self exposes both the continuity and the novelty of Christianity in comparison with, say, Plato’s sparse writings on the shepherd. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Foucault introduces the idea of Christian mortification of the flesh in terms of a relation to oneself. What emerges in this lecture is an understanding of the particularly insidious alliance between the emergence of governmentality and the Christian pastoral which results in the police becoming the specific technology of the State. In policing all aspects of life, the police, as instrument of the State, comes to take over the role of pastoring to a population or flock.
                The last lecture under consideration here is the 1980 “About the beginning of the
                hermeneutics of the self.” It is in this lecture that Foucault offers perhaps the first clear
                articulation of the central issues of his final work. As he says,
                  "I think that if one wants to analyze the genealogy of the subject in Western
                  civilization, one has to take into account not only techniques of
                  domination but techniques of the self. Let’s say: one has to take into account the interaction between these two types of techniques – techniques of domination and techniques of the self. One has to take into account the
                  points where the technologies of domination of individuals over one
                  another have recourse to processes by which the individual acts upon
                  himself. And conversely, one has to take into account the points where
                  the techniques of the self are integrated into structures of coercion or
                  domination. The contact point, where the individuals are driven [and
                  known] by others is tied to the way they conduct themselves [and know
                  themselves], in what we can call, I think, government. Governing people,
                  in the broad meaning of the word, governing people is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed and modified by oneself. What Christianity introduces is not a radically new type of subjectivity; rather, Christianity introduces a new set of techniques and mechanisms which utilize and recast Greek and Roman techniques. Foucault’s genealogical inquiry into the emergence of biopower and state racism led him to an encounter with the fundamental Greek and Roman technologies of self through which subjects came to conduct their own conduct, or engage in a relation to themselves which did not devolve to a state of domination. Through techniques like self-writing, subjectivities were forged in a positive manner.
                  > According to Foucault, the roots of pastoral power reside in new techniques (based on Greek and Roman technologies of self) that Christianity introduced into the Roman world to deal with those who obstinately refused the word of God. Those domination techniques of the self consisted in creating a subjectivity, a self-consciousness that is always alert to its weaknesses. It is a revised notion of power--rather soft power that steers away from force--which consists of interiorization, of self-consciousness, of processes by which we act upon ourselves. Christian confession emerged in the 1st or 2nd century, according to Foucault, as a technology of the self. Governing people, Foucault says, "is not a way to force people to do what the governor wants; it is always a versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed and modified by oneself" (Foucault, 1999, p. 162).
                     
            • The kind of power that is exercised by the Church. It rests on the church's power to assure individual salvation in the next world. It is linked with the notion of individualism (as in individual salvation). In modern times, the salvation in the next life has been commuted to a salvation in this life (health, wellbeing, security, etc.) (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1982, 213-215)
            • Foucault and the Genealogy of Pastoral Power- Ben Golder- Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales

            • Foucault surmises that the historical foundations of present practices of statebased
              governmentality (the idea of the “government of men” as opposed to the
              Machiavellian retention of territorial sovereignty) [Machiavelli's surname yielded the modern political word Machiavellianism—the use of cunning and deceitful tactics in politics] are partly to be found in the pre-Christian East, and then later in the Christian East, in the model and organization of a pastoral type of power. Pastoral power was, Foucault tells us, characterized in the following way: first, it was exercised over a flock of people on the move rather than over a static territory; secondly, it was a fundamentally beneficent power
              according to which the duty of the pastor (to the point of self-sacrifice) was the
              salvation of the flock; and finally, it was an individualizing power, in that the pastor
              must care for each and every member of the flock singly (see pp. 125–30). This
              last characteristic, Foucault observes, gives rise to what he calls the “paradox of
              the shepherd,” namely that because the pastor must care for the multiplicity as a
              whole while at the same time providing for the particular salvation of each (omnes
              et singulatim), there must necessarily be both a “sacrifice of one for all, and the
              sacrifice of all for one, which will be at the absolute heart of the Christian problematic
              of the pastorate” (p. 129).
              > Pastoral power: The pastor, according to Foucault, exercised power over a flock of people on the move; his duty was the salvation of the flock to the point of the pastor's self-sacrifice; and the pastor also had to take care of each member of the flock.
          • p. 51: In his book "Emotions and the Educative Process" first published in 1938, Daniel Prescott stated that "disciplining" emotion has as main objective balancing between the optimistic desires that capitalism inherently promises to fulfill, and the ugly reality of unsatisfied needs that breed frustration, and anxiety. Prescott also directs our attention to the shocking fact that a high proportion of US teachers "are either mentally ill or suffer from serious mental and emotional maladjustments" (Boler, p. 52)
          • Bosshart (1939, p. 453) writes: (Boler, p. 52)
            • emotions may lower or raise the efficiency of the pupil
            • surveys in industry show that a large part of the failures of youth are caused by personality defects
            • the improvement of the Three R's depends much upon healthy emotional conditions
            • the criminals in our state prisons usually know right from wrong but are governed by undesirable attitudes
          • p. 53: Emotional intelligence is a new mode of social control of emotions, one that embodies a revival of the mental hygiene movement rooted in pastoral power.
          • "Though it is largely women who have developed contemporary curricula of emotional literacy... the popular embrace of emotional intelligence functions largely as blueprint for male CEO success, and it is men who govern the public debates on emotional intelligence" (p. 53).
            •  
        • In chapter 3 (mentioned in preface p. xxii), Boler does cover emotional intelligence and states that we are hereby witnessing "a new conception of the moral individual: a self-premised as biologically predisposed to make the 'right' moral choices if properly educated" and argues that "'emotional intelligence' reflects a contemporary example of pastoral power: the individual seduced to police his or her emotions in the interest of neoliberal, globalized capitalism" (p. xxii). Let us assume that Boler here is right, and that this is the purpose behind the introduction of the concept of emotional intelligence. So, in order not to fall into the trap of seducing the individual "to police his or her emotions in the interest of neoliberal, globalized capitalism," we should just let him/her express their emotions just anyway they feel, without really analyzing them or even understanding why they have them. Would this be what Boler is preaching? I believe she has missed the whole point behind EQ: it is, without being pushed by anyone or anything except the desire to become a better person, to individually seek to analyze our emotions, to be aware of them and why we are having them so that we can control them in a way that would help us to get over them or to accept them and reach success. Besides, Mayer himself stated in 2005 that personal emotional states and their outcomes are best measured by self-judgment data.
          • The discourse of emotional intelligence is one of social control within a history of pastoral power, "rooted in workplace management and behavioral psychology as a basis for increased social efficiency and cultural assimilation" (p. 59).
          • The new moral person is shaped by cognitive science which unites the traditional "rules-based" morality with the modern "skills-based" morality (p. 59).
          • Boler criticizes the representations of emotional intelligence by saying that none of them "analyse how people are taught different rules of conduct for emotional behavior according to their gendered, racialized, and social class status. Instead, we are all supposed to feel the same 'empathy' and 'optimism.' Gender is powerfully ignored." (pp. 61-62)
          • "Women have historically been characterized as naturally caring and empathetic; yet, in the new discourse of emotional intelligence there is no longer any mention of women's "natural" or historical relation to these emotions. There is certainly no discussion of the possibility that women might be of superior emotional intelligence!" (p. 62)
            • I do not see why gender needs to be acknowledged. Here is the theory... here are the qualities that people in general need to have... each person works on improving the qualities they are lacking. Why does gender have to be specified? There are empathetic men... and my husband is one of them. He is more empathetic than me, a woman. There are women who know how to control their emotions and rationalize them better than some men... they will be lacking other qualities that they will need to work on. I believe the fact that gender is ignored creates fewer conflicts between "Mars" and "Venus." "
          • p. 76: There is a fear of the potential harm that measuring emotions and character, in addition to measuring intellect, might cause to the individual. I do not see any reason for fear here. Intellect is already measured, and it is widely known that a person's IQ cannot be improved. On the other hand, there is way to improve one's EQ, mainly, according to Mayer, through the acquisition of the knowledge required to improve EQ.
        • Emotional literacy curricula offer both promise and cause for alarm" (p. xxiii) > chap 4
          • they present the risk of "individualizing emotions"
          • they promise to expand our capacities to analyze the sociocultural context of emotions
            • we should be careful not to fall into the behavioral modification trap (p. 65 + 90). we do not want to go back to repetition and rote memorization. the way eq should be implemented should actually be in harmony with eq itself whivh is based on reflection, self-awareness... on cognitive skills. >> go to pp 103-104 *****
          • pp. 103-104: Although the concept of emotional intelligence is extremely useful and the implementation of programs in schools that teach EI skills can be extremely beneficial, there is a risk, unfortunately, but the same as it is with any other program that needs implementation, so there is a risk of wrongful implementation that can cause a lot of harm and unwanted effects. The way EQ skills should be taught is through "analysis of social and cultural context," steering away from teaching skills "in purely individualistic terms;" analysis of "social conflict in terms of social injustice and how emotional rules are embedded in power relations"... through "creative expansion and opportunity for growth," instead of "blaming individuals for lacking appropriate skills" (p. 103). Teachers should be given appropriate training and follow-up.
          • p. 104: "Despite these risks, I still celebrate the emergence of explicit curricula in emotional literacy. I believe we owe it to students and to teachers to be explicit about what values we are teaching and to create opportunities for collective self-reflection and evaluation of emotional rules and conduct which are inevitably a part of school curricula" (p. 104).
        • Chap 5: "educational theory and feminist philosophies of emotion might productively cross-fertilize to expand our pedagogical theories of emotion."
        • Chap 7: shortcomings of empathy > passive empathy encourages a passive form of pity. > we should actively engage in an examination of ethical responsibilities through our own emotional self-reflection.
        • Chap 8: pedagogy that explores the emotional dimensions of our cognitive and moral perceptions. > what both educators and students stand to gain by questioning our learned values and assumptions... our modes of seeing > understand the selectivity of our vision and emotional attention. (Apple)
        • "The 'fate' of emotions in education has, so far, been largely one of discipline and subjugation" > there should be a turning point with respect to emotions and education.... we should recuperate emotions from their shunned status and reclaim them in new ways... we should interrogate them.
    • Mayer, J.D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is Emotional Intelligence? In P. Salovey & D.J. Sluyter (Eds.) Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence. Educational Implications. New York: Basic Books.
      • There is no "right" or "best" way to feel.
      • We should respect people's individuality and backgounds. There is no one way fits all approach.
      • We need to focus on identifying our own and others' feelings and trying to understand them.
      • We need to keep in mind that we cannot teach an intelligence; we can teach the skills (basic social skills or socio-emotional skills)
      • EQ programs should aim at reducing "maladaptive interpersonal distress" Mayer, J.D., & Salovey, P. (1997)(p. 22)
      • "Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional meanings, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote both better emotion and thought... using emotions as one basis for thinking, and thinking with emotions themselves, may be related to important social competencies and adaptive behavior." (p. 22) => Thinking and emotions are definitely related and, I believe, they should be interdependent! Our thinking should not be devoid of emotions, and our emotions should definitely not be devoid of thinking, so as not to fall in the trap of being called "touchy-feelie" (Boler, 1999, p. xxiii).
    • Nada:
      • Metacognition = self-awareness??
        • According to Merriam-Webster, metacognition is defined as an "awareness or analysis of one's own learning or thinking processes." > self-awareness = awareness of our own feelings, It does involve cognition (cognitive mental processes) (awareness =  awareness of one's own personality or individuality--mw)
        • Awareness: Awareness is the state or ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects or sensory patterns. It is the state or quality of being aware of something. In biological psychology, awareness is defined as a human's or an animal's perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event. (wikipedia)
        • Self-awareness: being aware of one's awareness- networks in the brain that develop awareness
        • => self-awareness, just like metacognition, does involve cognition. > cognition of the way we feel... versus cognition of the way we think. But aren't feeling and thinking related? Doesn't thinking have roots in feelings?? Isn't thinking affected by feeling? by emotions? > thinking about emotions, about feelings.
        • "These commonalities reveal an undeniable conceptual core binding the three constructs, namely, that individuals make efforts to monitor their thoughts and actions and to act accordingly to gain some control over them. It is, in effect, a marriage between self-awareness and intention to act that aligns these bodies of work" (Dinsmore et al., 2008, p. 404).
        • Metacogntion includes skills like self-awareness, planning, monitoring, and "thinking strategies".
        •  "No man is defeated without until he is defeated within" -- Eleanor Roosevelt > teach EQ so that we are never defeated within.
        • “The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.”Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford- Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (1776-08-16) > I totally agree on the second part of the sentence only; we should definitely not let our feelings rule over us without rationalizing them, without analyzing them and coming to terms with what they really mean, and of course, with their source. If we do so, the world will be indeed a tragedy for us. However, I do not see the world as a comedy to those that think but do not feel. Feelings can just not be disregarded; they do exist; they must exist, otherwise we will be just like robots; we would definitely not have a happy life; hence, the world will not be a comedy for us. So, the way I would rephrase the sentence is the following: "The world is a tragedy to thoe that feel without using their reason; and it is a comedy to those that think and feel at the same time." And this is where EQ can play a positive role to make the world a good, healthy comedy for all (or at least for most because we can definitely not ignore the myriad other factors that enter into play here).
        • And I even agree with those who say that women's emotions can be "touchy-feelie" (p. xxiii), and do not feel ashamed of that.
      • Ad Hominem Fallacy
      • Dewey (1910), “How we Think.” The process of thinking: (Kliebard, 2007, p. 231)

      • 1- a felt difficulty
        2- its location + definition
        3- suggestion of possible solution
        4- reasoning- development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion
        5- further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection
        => So, self-awareness definitely involves thinking.
      • Apple (2004): EQ goes very well with Apple's invitation to question everything we stand for > in EQ we question why we feel and even think in a certain way in order to shed light on our hidden reasons, so that we can understand them better. EQ does involve thought, cognition. We can also question how our feelings shape our knowledge.
      • Interventions for ESL students > empathy. Put yourself in the students' shoes and devise special interventions for them. We can teach teachers to do so.
      • EQ- Nada
        • A person’s ability to handle stress affects his ability to concentrate and put intelligence to use.
        • Given sufficient self-awareness, people develop coping mechanisms.
        • Boler p. 63 *****
    • Emotional Competence Framework- Excellent
    • Beasley coined EQ
    • We should not throw out the baby with the bath water > choose what is good and implement it
    • It doesn’t make sense to speak of raising EI per se, but it does make sense to speak of raising emotional knowledge and that may be of help to some people.
    • Mayer/Goleman:
      • Perhaps the best-known alternative description of emotional intelligence comes from Daniel Goleman’s books. I believe those books, particularly the first, provide a lively, engaging reading experience, full of provocative ideas and coverage of excellent research. In those books, Goleman indicates:
      • Emotional intelligence is a broad description of a major part of an individual’s character and/or personality that includes abilities such as being able: (i) to motivate oneself, (ii) to persist in the face of frustrations, (iii) to control impulses, (vi) to delay gratifications, (vii) to regulate moods, (viii) to keep distress from swamping the ability to think, (ix) to empathize, and (x) to hope. (Goleman, 1995, p. 34). At other times, further characteristics are added, including, (i) to experience enthusiasm, (ii) to feel confident, (iii) to be socially adroit, and (iv) overall, to have good character (Goleman, 1995, pp. 79, 115, 285).
        Together, emotional intelligence and cognitive capacities cover most of an individual’s personality (I am inferring this from the fact that all desirable qualities of an individual mentioned in job advertisements could be classified as one or the other (Goleman, 1998, p. 31).
        The higher the EI the better (again, this is implied rather than stated).
        EI accounts for a great deal of a person’s success in many areas of life.
        EI can be readily changed and improved (Goleman, 1995, p. ; 1998, p. 7).*
        *Daniel Goleman wrote that he was employing one of our basic descriptions of EI as his own, and modifying it by "expanding these abilities [the one's we described] into five main domains" (Goleman, 1995, p. 43/ see also Chapter 3 footnote 14, p. 189). Although the end result was much broader than our own version, there was some justification for claiming the overlap; see Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2000, p. 401-402 for a discussion.
        So why look at EI? For the reason that we look at any feature of our mental life/personality, because it tells us something about ourselves we didn’t know before. By looking at these parts one by one when the opportunities arise, a person gradually gains knowledge of him or herself. One’s model of oneself becomes more accurate, and some people can use that increased accuracy in self knowledge to make better life choices.
    • Can Emotional Intelligence be Enhanced - and Does it Matter?
    • So, should you try to raise your emotional intelligence? First, a quibble: Psychologists mean something very specific about "raising an IQ" - they mean raising your capacity to carry out accurate information processing in a given area. I think what most people mean when they ask about raising emotional IQ is more like, "Can people improve themselves by acquiring knowledge about emotions?" The answer to the "raise your EIQ" question is unknown, but the answer to whether it is worth acquiring knowledge about emotions is surely yes (although I am speaking a bit ahead of the research curve here).
    • Love's return: psychoanalytic essays on childhood, teaching- 2006
    • chap 1: Peter Taubman: I love them to death.
    • Student teachers' worst fears are "losing control of the class" (p. 20)
    • p. 20: Taubman states that student teachers and educators believe that the main focus of teaching is on "controlling students' bodies and minds through discipline, set curricula, and set methods so that teachers could love them by sacrifycing for them, rescuing them, nurturing them, empowering them, and... giving, giving, giving" (in Boldt & Salvio, 2006, p. 20).
    • pp. 20-21: "The standard reply... is that teacher education does not focus on the "kids." Rather, it requires student teachers to focus on themselves through critical self-reflection and knowing how their social identities affect their teaching." Taubman criticizes that reply by saying that "the focus on oneself remains in the service of the students, the Other." He adds that teachers are supposed to sacrifice and work on their own biases in order not to damage their students. They are supposed to sacrifice their own values and adopt some that are suitable for working with students. Everything was dealt with on the surface; the real problems that teachers might have were totally ignored. Teachers' desires and passions, teachers' fantasies of loving and being loved; of control/power and being controlled; of discipline and nurturance were utterly overlooked. Nothing was done to respect those powerful paradoxical fantasies that affect their teaching intensely and work through them so that the teachers understand them and explain them to their students in order for the teaching experience to be genuinely healthy. Moreover, teacher education needs to address the uncontrollable concept of "jouissance"--a feeling of extreme pleasure coupled with pain (p. 28)--that is beyond reason and, if taken seriously, might help us shed the light on the relationship between aggression, love, and altruism; on the cases in which teachers can enjoy their own aggression towards their students in the name of a greater good and sacrifice. EQ can play a great role here through self-awareness and understanding one's feelings and emotions. Taubman also criticizes the created concept of teachers' identity which requires that they repress or deny their "true feelings, urges, impulses, and desires," (p. 27) so they end up projecting them on others: on their students!
    • p. 31: "The only way to break the power of the fantasies of love and control... that persist in the psychic lives of teachers is to confront how these fantasies and how our identities of teachers defend against and are invested with jouissance. We need to work through the misrecognition of our own egos... and our blindness to our own jouissance and the jouissance of the Other. The working through of the misrecognition provides access to the true nature of the other and simultaneously a means to overcome our own distorted perception"
    • Teachers need to overcome their own fantasies of love and control that are inherent to their psychic lives; in order for them to be able to do that, they need to face the fact that their fantasies and identities are ingrained in jouissance; they need to unravel their true egos, their jouissance and the Other's so that they overcome their distorted perception and become enlightened enough to see the true Other.
    • chap 2- Linda C. Powell and Margaret E. Barber: Savage Inequalities Indeed- Irrationality and Urban School Reform.
    • According to Powell and Barber, educators in urban schools have failed to properly deal with their anxiety which increases as the complexity and diversity of society increase (p. 38).
    • p. 43: Educators nowadays face several sources of anxiety in their daily work: teaching poor children whose childhoods differ from what teachers are used to (new minds whose family lives and individual development are affected by technology, the economy, and the media); children whose value systems are different. Hence, educators feel powerless and resort to "pathological denial" (p. 43) as a way to deal with their anxiety. And schools do absolutely nothing to attend to teachers' feelings of anxiety and powerlessness. No change is being made. Powell and Barber state that, in order to effect proper change interventions, we need to gather data about the whole school community, including teachers, students, and parents. They add that educators should reflect on their schooling and past practice, keeping in mind that this might threaten their internal images of themselves "as fair and deserving" (p. 44).
    •  p. 49: In order to deal with anxiety in schooling, we need to "explore and metabolize strong affect... to consider and confront the tensions and dynamics in our world. We must stop denying irrationality and unconscious material and start using it as information that can fuel and support change" (p. 49). We need to follow strategies that help us deal with the sources of our anxiety and that promote stronger defenses against it. They also argue that "the tools of psychoanalytic mindfulness can help us confront our internalized constructs of learning and schooling" (p. 49). So, here they explicitly mention psychoanalysis which, according to Wikipedia, helps us inspect our minds and the way we think.
    • p. 50-51: "... any action that brings genuine improvement will require working through unconscious material" (p. 50-51). Teacher preparation programs should "prepare future educators for the intensity of the unconscious" (p. 52). Teachers need to confront their anxieties instead of avoiding them.
    • p. 54: "Change agents today require a complex set of interdisciplinary analytic, political, and interpersonal skills that will not be developed without substantial shifts in how we think about adult development, about learning, and about schools as organizations" (p. 54).
    • p. 54: What we need in order to fix failing urban schools is "processes and opportunities that give children and adults new skills. We can be better prepared to work through the anxiety that accompanies any transformation in structure, process, or language at the systemic level. In order to change the system... we must do more than acknowledge injustice; we must do the internal work to recognize our role in this injustice and to make meaning of how we can benefit from confronting it" (p. 54).
    • Interlude, p. 63:
    • "What perversions of love are we most attached to as educators?
    • What harm do we do in the name of education, and at what points in our pedagogical practices do we bury the authority associated with maternal desire?"
    • chap 3- Paula M. Salvio- On the vicissitudes (fluctuations/changeability) of love and hate: Anne Sexton's pedagogy of loss and reparation-
    • talk about anne and linda sexton > teachers come with diverse historical backgrounds > and they teach... how to help them overcome their past? + Covey's breaking the viscious cycle.
    • Anne Sexton,
    • a Pullitzer Prize-winning poet > depression, addiction, suicidal mother's love for her daughters < struggled with mental illness and addiction and an anemic education
    • "a woman who experienced the unnamable trauma of incest" (p. 83)
    • one of the highest-paid poetry performers in America (p. 66)
    • had teaching positions in higher education
    • developed reputation as a dedicated teacher > rose to the rank of professor at Boston University
    • made significant contributions to revitalizing English education > in part by initiating teaching partnerships among writers, artists, and teachers.
    • she illuminated "the gender, sexual, and cultural struggles that influence our conscious and unconscious interests, and therefore inevitably are expressed in our scholarship, and our teaching." p. 67
    • "the psychic dilemmas that Anne Sexton faced as a mother influenced her teaching life" (p. 67)
    • "the position of the good enough mother requires women to overwrite their own desires with those of their children, and to deny the rage, pain, fear, and ambivalence that is an inevitable part of mothering" (p. 67)
    • "The ideals of motherhood have affected educators' notions of what it means to be a good teacher, and how such goodness is assessed"
    • Sexton's "pedagogy critiques and exceeds the categories of both 'good enough mother' and 'good enough teacher,' offering possibilities for recognizing alterity (Alain-Miller, 1988) and making reparation for both the teacher and the students" (p. 67)
    • "I consider the project of cultivating a 'true self,' for women who, like Sexton, have experienced what I will refer to as subtle, 'as yet unnamed' traumas" (p. 67)
    • "How can a person represent a self in writing and teaching when that self longs for a place to hide so as to avoid shame, scrutiny, dismissal, or humiliation? How can anyone who has experienced the intolerable pain of trauma represent a 'true' self?" (pp. 67-68)
    • "... a pedagogy of reparation that works to make good the injuries she experienced and to repair the injuries she inflicted upon her family" (p. 68).
    • "A pedagogy of reparation calls upon educators to study our problematic attachments, as well as to consider how the loves in our lives have both helped and hindered us, cared for and hurt us" (Kelly, 2004, pp. 165-166; Walcott, 2005) > P. 80
    • "... she turned to teaching to offer relief for others who suffered with acute depression and suicidal ideations" (p. 68)
    • "How can a writer or a teacher represent a self, if that self is vulnerable to feeling shamed, impoverished, or threatened?" (p. 72)
    • "The teaching life of Anne Sexton offers us a case of a pedagogy of reparation, in part because it presents a teacher engaging in the study of problematic attachments. Her pedagogy is overlaid with emotions that underlie grief--sorrow and feelings of guilt, rage, and horror." (p. 83)
    • "Sexton also offers us a way to think differently about what is at stake in discussions about education" (p. 83)
    • "She presents her students with a series of inquiries into making reparation with a traumatized self through the 'playful' act of writing and teaching" (p. 84).
    • "When Melanie Klein writes that 'a good relation to ourselves is a condition for tolerance and wisdom toward others' (1961, p. 342)... SHE IS CALLING UPON US TO LEARN TO LIVE WITHIN THE TENSION OF OPPOSITES--WITHIN THE TENSION OF LOVE AND HATE--INNOCENCE AND GUILT."- p. 83
    • "Reading, Writing, and the Wrath of My Father" by Jonathan Silin - 2003
    •  (p. 228) Effective teaching "honors student imagination, seeks authentic engagement, and creates spaces for difficult emotions" > in order to create spaces for emotions, we need to know how to deal with them.
    • "Grumet... described the curriculum at large as a 'mediating space,'" which is "a place in which we try to reconnect to the people from whom we have been separated, the things that we have lost, and later, the person we once were" (p. 230) => a place that helps us to make sense of who we are... of why we have become who we are.
      • and all this involves self-awareness on the part of the teachers as well as of the students.
    • "In retrospect, it seems clear that my English teacher was unwilling to step onto that rackety bridge, let alone stand by me as we peered into the unknown" (p. 235) => If that teacher had been trained in EQ, she would have definitely behaved differently. > she needed empathy + self-awareness + people skills.
    • "All education involves socialization and sublimation (refining). Successful education finds a balance where official and unofficial curricula each have a place and where public languages are acquired in such a way that they do not subsume private lives" ( p 237) > teachers need to know how to help students socialize and refine their behavior. They also need to be able to deal with students' private lives effectively ... which they can only do if they, the teachers, know how to deal with their own private lives effectively. We cannot forget that teachers are role models; their effect on students' lives is huge and eternal. They need to be trained in a way that their effect will be as positive as possible. ( see Guinott)
    • "Teachers need to allow time and space for children to take responsibility for their own learning and the difficult emotions it may entail" (p. 239).

NEW...Final Paper:...NEW
"Emotions and Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in Curriculum Theory:
on Incorporating EQ Skills in Teacher Education"
          • Emotions and Education as an Impossible Profession
          • Emotions in Curriculum Theory: Based on Taubman, Powell & Barber, Salvio, and Silin
          • Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
          • Criticisms of Emotional Intelligence
          • On Incorporating EQ Skills in Teacher Education

Education, One of the Impossible Professions
The Relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement in Eleventh Graders
Lesson Plan on Emotional Intelligence Using Glaser’s Learning System (pdf)
Any Suggestion or Recommendation?
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Instructional Systems Design - ISD
Analysis of the Role of Teachers as Articulated in Kliebard, Tyler, and Apple Texts
"Education, One of the Impossible Professions"
Curriculum Theory: Notes & Reflections
Foundations of Curriculum Theory: Notes & Reflections

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