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A Síndrome de Burnout, especialmente no contexto emocional, está intimamente ligada à forma como os profissionais lidam com o estresse e a pressão no ambiente de trabalho. Na educação, a Síndrome do Burnout é uma preocupação crescente, afetando professores e educadores. 

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A Síndrome de Burnout, especialmente no contexto emocional, está intimamente ligada à forma como os profissionais lidam com o estresse e a pressão no ambiente de trabalho. Na educação, a Síndrome do Burnout é uma preocupação crescente, afetando professores e educadores. 

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A Síndrome do Burnout é uma preocupação crescente na educação, afetando professores e educadores devido a diversas causas. Entre elas, a carga de trabalho excessiva, que inclui a elaboração de planos de aula e a correção de provas, contribui para o esgotamento.

Profissionais, como educadores, que enfrentam emoções intensas muitas vezes se investem emocionalmente em suas funções, o que pode levar ao esgotamento se essas emoções não forem geridas adequadamente. A necessidade de empatia e de estar presente para os alunos pode resultar em sobrecarga, contribuindo para a sensação de desamparo e perda de controle. A exposição contínua a situações estressantes cria um ciclo vicioso em que o estresse leva ao esgotamento, diminuindo a capacidade de enfrentar novos desafios. Além disso, a falta de apoio emocional e profissional intensifica a sensação de isolamento, deixando os educadores sem um espaço seguro para compartilhar suas experiências. Os sintomas emocionais do Burnout, como ansiedade, depressão e irritabilidade, não afetam apenas o desempenho profissional, mas também a vida pessoal. Portanto, é crucial que os profissionais desenvolvam estratégias saudáveis de enfrentamento, como técnicas de relaxamento, suporte social e a promoção de uma cultura de apoio no ambiente de trabalho. Compreender a dinâmica emocional do Burnout é fundamental para criar intervenções que ajudem os profissionais a se recuperarem e a evitarem o esgotamento.

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Entenda como a Síndrome de Burnout afeta os professores - Vivescer

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Excesso de trabalho, acúmulo de funções, falta de autonomia... Descubra como reconhecer o Burnout, lidar com seus efeitos e aprender a evitá-lo.

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A Educação Socioemocional na Infância em "Vida Maria"

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A Educação Socioemocional na Infância em "Vida Maria"

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"Vida Maria" é um curta-metragem que captura a complexidade da infância através da história de uma menina que, apesar das adversidades, busca seu lugar no mundo. A narrativa não apenas retrata as experiências cotidianas de Maria, mas também ilumina a importância da educação socioemocional no desenvolvimento infantil.

"Vida Maria" nos convida a refletir sobre o papel da educação na formação de indivíduos resilientes. Através da trajetória de Maria, somos lembrados de que a educação socioemocional é fundamental para preparar as crianças para os desafios da vida. Ao proporcionar um ambiente que valorize tanto o aprendizado acadêmico quanto o desenvolvimento emocional, podemos ajudar a construir um futuro mais justo e igualitário.

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A representação da infância no curta metragem Vida Maria

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Afinal, aprender em sala de aula como lidar melhor com as emoções, adquirir empatia, e desenvolver autonomia para tomar decisões e resolver conflitos, podem colaborar, e muito, com a plena formação de crianças e adolescentes. 

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Afinal, aprender em sala de aula como lidar melhor com as emoções, adquirir empatia, e desenvolver autonomia para tomar decisões e resolver conflitos, podem colaborar, e muito, com a plena formação de crianças e adolescentes. 

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A Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) é uma importante ferramenta que visa promover uma educação de qualidade no Brasil, abrangendo desde a educação infantil até o ensino médio. Um dos focos principais da BNCC é o desenvolvimento de competências e habilidades, especialmente na área socioemocional. ‍

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Contribuições da BNCC para a educação socioemocional

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A Base Nacional Comum Curricular atua como um guia para diretores e professores incentivarem crianças e adolescentes a desenvolverem competências e habilidades

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Seja sincero em responder a sua emoção.

Ao final aperte ENVIAR

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Esse vídeo é bem legal, ele aborda a importância do desenvolvimento de competências socioemocionais nas pessoas para o desenvolvimento pleno frente a situações difíceis assim é primordial o trabalho em sala de aula. O vídeo também traz cinco competências essenciais para o desenvolvimento socioemocional.

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Competência socioemocional: o que diz a BNCC?

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POR QUE AS CRIANÇAS PRECISAM APRENDER A NOMEAR EMOÇÕES?

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POR QUE AS CRIANÇAS PRECISAM APRENDER A NOMEAR EMOÇÕES?

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O texto "A importância de Nomear Emoções" sublinha a relevância de ensinar as crianças a identificar e expressar os seus sentimentos de forma clara. Estudos mostram que, além das capacidades cognitivas, é essencial trabalhar competências socioemocionais para um desenvolvimento completo. As crianças lidam diariamente com várias emoções, como alegria, tristeza e raiva, e a forma como as expressam nem sempre é adequada. No entanto, quando conseguem nomear e reconhecer essas emoções, tornam-se mais aptas a interagir de forma saudável com os outros.

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Estudos internacionais comprovam que crianças e jovens que se movimentam na escola podem desenvolver habilidades de comunicação, liderança, responsabilidade, tomada de decisão e resolução de problemas

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Educação física pode ser importante aliada no desenvolvimento socioemocional dos estudantes - Vivescer

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Estudos comprovam que a prática esportiva ajuda no desenvolvimento de habilidades de liderança, responsabilidade resolução de problemas

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Competências socioemocionais da BNCC: quais são e como trabalhar? 

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Competências socioemocionais da BNCC: quais são e como trabalhar? 

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Leia o artigo completo em: https://www.clubedoportugues.com.br/competencias-socioemocionais-na-bncc/

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Atuando em parceria com os educadores brasileiros ao longo das últimas décadas, o Instituto Ayrton Senna mapeou a necessidade de desenvolver as competências socioemocionais fundamentais para a prática docente.

"Acesse o link e fique por dentro de todo conteúdo!"

https://institutoayrtonsenna.org.br/o-que-defendemos/socioemocional-professores/

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Atuando em parceria com os educadores brasileiros ao longo das últimas décadas, o Instituto Ayrton Senna mapeou a necessidade de desenvolver as competências socioemocionais fundamentais para a prática docente. Ao realizar experiências formativas bem-sucedidas em diversas regiões do país e ao mesmo tempo em que produziu um mergulho científico na temática , alinhado com os marcos normativos da educação brasileira, o Instituto idealizou o projeto de desenvolvimento socioemocional de educadores.

Atualmente, o projeto tem como um dos principais focos a identificação e o uso de uma matriz de competências específicas para professores. Essa inovação reconhece que o educador mobiliza em seu cotidiano um conjunto de competências e habilidades socioemocionais que se somam aos conhecimentos e práticas instrucionais (conteúdos, didática, metodologias), tendo reflexos na sua própria carreira e saúde emocional, assim como também no desenvolvimento pleno dos estudantes.

Para que o desenvolvimento socioemocional aconteça, o projeto não fornece apenas conteúdos, teorias e técnicas, mas também uma experiência de desenvolvimento que permite os educadores se autoconhecerem e a mobilizarem toda as suas capacidades instrucionais e socioemocionais, inclusive ao lidar com emoções, se relacionar com outras pessoas e se abrir a novas possibilidades.

Ampliando o olhar de desenvolvimento socioemocional focado no estudante para atender a toda a comunidade escolar, o Instituto busca encontrar caminhos para apoiar os profissionais em sua atuação e para exercer a presença pedagógica em seu dia a dia.
Já está disponível a jornada de socioemocional de professores na plataforma humane, totalmente gratuita e online! Acesse!
E na prática?

O primeiro passo no trabalho com competências socioemocionais é reconhecê-las, entender o que são, quais são, como impactam o nosso trabalho. A partir disso, é possível desenvolver uma percepção sobre si mesmo e sobre as pessoas de convívio, reconhecendo seu próprio desenvolvimento e entendendo que não existe uma versão padronizada do desenvolvimento socioemocional.

O segundo passo é entender que não há percurso obrigatório ou único. O desenvolvimento socioemocional precisa ser um processo que cada um vai trilhar - num determinado momento, em um momento individual; e, depois, em um momento relacional, ele que ele vai construir uma rede de apoio única, com as pessoas com que têm confiança", explica Helena.

O QUE SÃO COMPETÊNCIAS SOCIOEMOCIONAIS DE EDUCADORES?

A partir de pesquisas, teóricas e empíricas, realizadas pelo eduLab21, o Laboratório de Ciência para Educação do Instituto Ayrton Senna, foi possível identificar um conjunto de competências mais relevantes para o fazer docente. Atualmente, o Instituto propõe a seguinte definição geral para competências socioemocionais de professores:

As competências socioemocionais de professores são características individuais que se manifestam em padrões de pensamentos, sentimentos e comportamentos, sendo originadas na relação recíproca de aspectos biológicos e ambientais. Elas continuam a se desenvolver por meio de experiências formais e informais de aprendizagem e podem ser adquiridas e desenvolvidas em formações iniciais e na prática profissional, além de poderem facilitar direta e indiretamente a aprendizagem dos estudantes e a interação com colegas, profissionais da educação, pais e sociedade.

Essas características individuais podem ser percebidas por meio de reflexões como "Quais são as situações que me deixam nervoso? Como costumo lidar com desafios para o planejamento de aulas? Que ações costumo ter para estimular trocas entre meus colegas? Como posso me abrir par anovas formas de fazer meu trabalho?", entre outras.

Professores que têm contato com estratégias de desenvolvimento socioemocional relatam maiores níveis de bem-estar e de satisfação com o trabalho, e também tendem a acreditar mais na sua capacidade de alcançar objetivos, tanto profissionais quanto pessoais. Em geral, o clima escolar também é favorecido por esse desenvolvimento entre os profissionais.

QUAIS SÃO AS COMPETÊNCIAS SOCIOEMOCIONAIS DE PROFESSORES?

Para materializar a definição acima em competências específicas, o Instituto norteou uma série de linhas de pesquisa, incluindo revisão de literatura, revisão de modelos de competências para descrever a profissão em sistemas de classificação de ocupações e pesquisas empíricas online com educadores brasileiros.

Uma parte dessas análises segue recebendo novos insumos e, por isso, a divulgação detalhada das competências específicas que compõem cada macrocompetência será realizada em breve. Até o momento, no entanto, já foi possível elaborar um modelo inicial, composto por quatro macrocompetências:

Todo conhecimento científico está em constante aperfeiçoamento, e no Instituto Ayrton Senna isso não é diferente. As pesquisas são alimentadas pela própria experiência prática derivada de implementações em redes parceiras, de novos levantamentos junto a educadores, entre outros processos, como também a produção de ciência em educação no Brasil e no mundo.

O processo de estruturação dessa taxonomia com a organização das competências e sua operacionalização por meio de um instrumento de medida representam os mais recentes passos dados pelo Instituto Ayrton Senna em busca de contribuir para ampliar a compreensão sobre as competências relevantes ao fazer docente de forma sistematizada.

O Instituto acredita que todo processo de desenvolvimento deve ser baseado em evidências para nortear seus rumos. Por isso, o principal objetivo de conhecer essas competências é abrir um espaço estruturado de reflexão e autoconhecimento e embasar processos formativos que considerem o educador em todas as suas dimensões, permitindo a cada um mobilizar todo seu potencial em prol de uma educação cada vez mais conectada com o século 21.

Saber quais são as competências que os próprios educadores consideram que podem desenvolver mais e quais aquelas que já estão fortalecidas é também uma forma de atualizar a visão sobre a profissão docente, como algo em constante desenvolvimento em todas as dimensões.

Nas experiências anteriores...

Em suas primeiras implementações, o projeto de socioemocionais de educadores foi totalmente voltado para estimular entre os professores um conhecimento aprofundado sobre a matriz de competências socioemocionais dos estudantes.

O objetivo sempre foi o de dialogar com educadores para que identificassem o valor dessas competências para a vida de crianças e adolescentes, incluindo maiores conquistas no processo de aprendizagem, mas também em questões de bem-estar, saúde, relações sociais e com seus próprios objetivos de vida.

Por isso, projetos já implementados em redes parceiras como de Teresina (Piauí), Mato Grosso do Sul e o Estado de São Paulo, contaram com metodologias e um itinerário formativo próprio para que os educadores pudessem refletir sobre práticas de ensino que promovem o desenvolvimento socioemocional, e soubessem reconhecer, valorizar e aprimorar essas mesmas competências em si mesmos.

Durante a pandemia, essa proposta ganhou novo alcance, por meio do projeto Volta ao Novo que, com parceria com o Consed (Conselho Nacional de Secretários de Educação) e a UNDIME (União Nacional dos dirigentes municipais de educação), levou conteúdo e estimulou planos de ação locais em centenas de municípios e Estados brasileiros.

Esses e outros projetos que seguem sendo implementados pelo Instituto Ayrton Senna e por agências técnicas parceiras com foco no educador, têm como base o reconhecimento da relevância desse profissional.

A educação no mundo complexo e dinâmico em que vivemos requer um olhar ainda mais atencioso para os educadores e seu papel como mediadores da aprendizagem e do desenvolvimento pleno de estudantes, preparando-os não somente para dominar conteúdos, mas também para fazer escolhas e agir no mundo com autonomia. Veja a seguir algumas reflexões sobre esse contexto e seus reflexos para a atuação docente.

COMO O SOCIOEMOCIONAL DE EDUCADORES SE CONECTA COM A EDUCAÇÃO DO SÉCULO 21?

O mundo atual demanda novas formas e estratégias que possam fortalecer o professor. É cada vez mais essencial promover a reflexão sobre a sua prática de modo ampliado, e sobre a construção conjunta da formação plena dos estudantes, que são também protagonistas no ambiente escolar e em seus projetos de vida.

A concepção de educação integral apresentada na Base Nacional Comum Curricular (BNCC) traz uma visão abrangente da educação, que vai além do conteúdo, e explicita as competências gerais que devem ser promovidas para todos os estudantes da Educação Básica. Essa mudança trouxe a necessidade de que os educadores conheçam essas competências e as metodologias mais eficientes para garantir esse desenvolvimento. Usando os conhecimentos e competências já consolidados em sua própria prática cotidiana, e se abrindo para inovações nas formas de ensinar e aprender, professores podem fortalecer seu papel de conectar o que se aprende na escola com o que a vida demanda dos estudantes.

A atuação dos professores gera efeitos no desenvolvimento intelectual, físico, cultural e socioemocional dos estudantes. Pesquisas científicas indicam que aproximadamente 30% dos resultados relacionados à aprendizagem dos estudantes pode ser atribuído à influência do professor. E sabemos que não para por aí. Para desenvolver características como a colaboração, a assertividade, a curiosidade, a empatia, entre tantas outras, muitas vezes são necessárias vivências, que podem ser promovidas de formas mais eficazes por professores que também tiverem tido a oportunidade de desenvolver essas competências em si mesmos.

A BNCC destaca a educação básica como espaço para a construção de conhecimentos e a formação de habilidades, atitudes e valores, preparando o estudante para lidar com o mundo. É direito do estudante aprender seus componentes curriculares com qualidade e desenvolver sua capacidade de usar a curiosidade e criatividade para resolver problemas, se expressar, argumentar e saber dialogar com pessoas diferentes, produzir soluções a partir da tecnologia e do pensamento crítico, respeitar e valorizar a diversidade e agir de forma colaborativa.

O QUE DIZ A BNCC?

A BNCC (Base Nacional Comum Curricular) evidencia a ampliação do escopo de atuação dos educadores e, como marco na educação, precisa ser apropriada por toda a comunidade escolar. Os educadores, como principais mediadores do processo de ensino e aprendizagem, compartilham da responsabilidade de se apropriar desse novo leque de reflexões, premissas e ações possíveis para a formação dos estudantes. Esse cenário atual possui, no entanto, um caráter paradoxal para o educador: é preciso que ele seja um agente de concretização da educação integral, mas seu próprio percurso formativo não foi estruturado com base nessa perspectiva.

A BNCC, que institucionalizou em lei a perspectiva da formação plena, só foi publicada em 2017. A maior parte dos educadores brasileiros, em seu período como estudantes da Educação Básica e em sua formação inicial como docentes, vivenciou uma realidade escolar diferente da que se firma nesse referencial curricular. É preciso considerar a demanda de desenvolvimento dos profissionais que já estão em atuação e que veem a necessidade constante de atualização e compartilhamento de novas evidências científicas e perspectivas educacionais, levando sempre em conta o dinamismo da realidade e da profissão docente.

O QUE DIZ A BNC-FORMAÇÃO?

A necessidade do desenvolvimento socioemocional de educadores também ganhou recentemente mais espaço na visão de formadores e gestores, e atualmente está prevista no principal marco legal sobre o tema: o Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE) publicou duas resoluções que instituem as Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais para a formação inicial e continuada de professores para a Educação Básica e a Base Nacional Comum para Formação Inicial de Professores da Educação Básica (BNC- Formação).

No artigo 2º, a diretriz defende uma formação docente que compreenda a integralidade do profissional, em articulação com as competências gerais para o desenvolvimento do estudante (BNCC). Ao trazer como fundamento pedagógico dos cursos de formação o olhar para o professor também em suas competências intra-pessoais e inter-pessoais em três dimensões (conhecimento profissional, prática profissional e engajamento profissional) a BNC-Formação apresenta espaços para soluções que atendam a problemáticas de longa data, como cursos de graduação muito teóricos e com pouco espaço para metodologias, práticas de ensino e aprofundamento na psicologia do desenvolvimento, entre outras indicações. O documento aponta a necessidade de um novo olhar para a formação docente, iniciada em instituições de ensino superior e continuada na formação ao longo da carreira.

Leia também: Como falar de competências socioemocionais com estudantes sem olhar também para as de seus educadores?

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Socioemocional para Professores - Instituto Ayrton Senna

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Atuando em parceria com os educadores brasileiros ao longo das últimas décadas, o Instituto Ayrton Senna mapeou a necessidade de desenvolver as competências socioemocionais fundamentais para a prática docente. Ao realizar experiências formativas bem-sucedidas em diversas regiões do país e ao mesmo tempo em que produziu um mergulho científico na temática , alinhado com os marcos normativos da educação brasileira, o Instituto idealizou o projeto de desenvolvimento socioemocional de educadores.

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A EDUCAÇÃO SOCIOEMOCIONAL E SEU IMPACTO NO DESENVOLVIMENTO INTEGRAL DAS CRIANÇAS

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A EDUCAÇÃO SOCIOEMOCIONAL E SEU IMPACTO NO DESENVOLVIMENTO INTEGRAL DAS CRIANÇAS

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A educação socioemocional é, de fato, um componente fundamental para o desenvolvimento integral das crianças. Sua integração ao currículo escolar não só enriquece o aprendizado acadêmico, mas também promove habilidades essenciais, como empatia, resiliência e comunicação eficaz.

A pesquisa aqui mencionada destaca benefícios claros da implementação de programas socioemocionais. A melhoria do clima escolar e a redução do bullying são resultados significativos, pois ambientes mais saudáveis e respeitosos favorecem o aprendizado. Além disso, as habilidades socioemocionais contribuem para que os alunos enfrentem melhor os desafios, tanto na escola quanto na vida futura, preparando-os para o mercado de trabalho e para interações sociais complexas.

Integrar a educação socioemocional de forma sistemática no currículo é uma estratégia que pode transformar a experiência educacional, promovendo não apenas o conhecimento, mas também a formação de cidadãos mais conscientes e empáticos. Isso reforça a necessidade de uma abordagem holística na educação, onde a preparação emocional é tão valorizada quanto o conhecimento acadêmico.

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Não trabalhar o desenvolvimento socioemocional pode trazer diversas consequências negativas, tanto para indivíduos quanto para o ambiente em que vivem e trabalham. Algumas dessas consequências incluem:

1. Dificuldades nos relacionamentos interpessoais: Pessoas que não desenvolvem habilidades socioemocionais, como empatia, comunicação e cooperação, podem ter dificuldades em interagir de forma saudável com os outros, levando a conflitos frequentes e relacionamentos instáveis.

2. Baixa resiliência emocional: A falta de habilidades para lidar com frustrações, pressões e emoções negativas pode resultar em maior vulnerabilidade ao estresse, ansiedade e depressão. Indivíduos podem ter mais dificuldade em superar desafios e lidar com fracassos.

3. Dificuldade de resolução de problemas: Habilidades como o pensamento crítico, a capacidade de tomar decisões e de resolver conflitos de forma construtiva podem ficar prejudicadas, limitando o crescimento pessoal e profissional.

4. Desempenho acadêmico ou profissional afetado: A ausência de competências socioemocionais pode impactar diretamente a capacidade de concentração, organização e motivação, afetando o desempenho em diversas áreas, desde o ambiente escolar até o mercado de trabalho.

5. Comportamentos inadequados: A falta de controle emocional pode levar a atitudes impulsivas, agressivas ou desrespeitosas, que prejudicam tanto o próprio indivíduo quanto os demais, criando ambientes de convivência negativos e menos produtivos.

6. Baixa autoestima e insegurança: Sem trabalhar o autoconhecimento e a autorregulação, é comum que a pessoa tenha uma imagem negativa de si mesma, o que pode gerar insegurança e menor confiança para enfrentar desafios ou buscar novas oportunidades.

Desenvolver o socioemocional ajuda a criar ambientes mais colaborativos e saudáveis, além de preparar os indivíduos para lidar melhor com os desafios da vida pessoal e profissional.

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Contribuir para o desenvolvimento socioemocional pode ser muito gratificante e impactante. Aqui estão algumas maneiras de fazer isso:

1. Educação e Formação: Participe de cursos sobre inteligência emocional, empatia e habilidades sociais. Isso pode te ajudar a entender melhor esses temas e a compartilhá-los com os outros.

2. Escuta Ativa: Pratique a escuta ativa nas suas interações diárias. Demonstre interesse genuíno pelos sentimentos e experiências das pessoas.

3. Mentoria e Apoio: Ofereça-se para ser mentor ou voluntário em programas de apoio a jovens ou comunidades. Isso pode ajudar a desenvolver habilidades emocionais e sociais.

4. Promova o Diálogo: Crie ou participe de grupos de discussão onde as pessoas possam falar abertamente sobre emoções, desafios e conquistas.

5. Atividades em Grupo: Organize ou participe de atividades que promovam o trabalho em equipe e a cooperação, como esportes, oficinas ou projetos comunitários.

6. Educação Socioemocional: Se você é educador, incorpore práticas de educação socioemocional nas suas aulas, ajudando os alunos a desenvolver habilidades como autoconhecimento, autocontrole e empatia.

7. Exemplo Pessoal: Seja um modelo de comportamento. Demonstre a importância da empatia, do respeito e da comunicação saudável nas suas relações pessoais e profissionais.

8. Recursos e Materiais: Compartilhe livros, artigos e recursos que abordem o desenvolvimento socioemocional com amigos, familiares ou colegas.

Ao adotar essas práticas, você pode contribuir significativamente para o desenvolvimento socioemocional de si mesmo e dos outros ao seu redor.

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Videoaula Competências socioemocioanais na BNCC com a Profa. Dra. Andréia Martinez.

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Videoaula Competências socioemocioanais na BNCC com a Profa. Dra. Andréia Martinez.

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O desenvolvimento das competências socioemocionais é essencial para enfrentar os desafios cotidianos. Afinal, é por meio delas que conseguimos manter o equilíbrio e lidar com as emoções em diversas situações com as quais nos deparamos ao longo da vida.

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Competências socioemocionais na BNCC - videoaula

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Como trabalhar as competências socioemocionais na escola?

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Como trabalhar as competências socioemocionais na escola?

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A vida em sociedade é marcada por desafios e eles não são restritos à ordem dos conteúdos escolares. Para enfrentá-los, é necessário o desenvolvimento de competências socioemocionais, o que permite a resolução de desafios do dia a dia de maneira mais empática e corajosa.

Por isso, a BNCC (Base Nacional Comum Curricular) entende que uma das funções dos currículos escolares é permitir o desenvolvimento de competências socioemocionais. Sendo assim, as escolas preparam os estudantes integralmente para o futuro, por mais que a introdução dessas habilidades seja um desafio para a comunidade escolar.

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Competências socioemocionais: o que são e como promover na escola | Árvore

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Você sabe o que são as competências emocionais e a importância de seu desenvolvimento? Saiba mais sobre elas e entenda como promovê-las na sua escola!

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Quais são as competências socioemocionais na BNCC?

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Quais são as competências socioemocionais na BNCC?

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O desenvolvimento de habilidades e competências socioemocionais está em alta no contexto educacional. As diretrizes trazidas pela BNCC, a proposta da Educação para o Século 21 (UNESCO) e a abordagem da educação integral reforçaram a necessidade de que gestores e instituições de ensino invistam tempo e planejamento nessa frente.

Mas quais são as competências socioemocionais? Há uma lista exata que deve ser cumprida ao desenvolvê-las no contexto escolar ou, ainda, para o futuro profissional? É possível determinar as mais importantes para os estudantes?

Hoje vamos esclarecer essas e outras questões sobre as competências socioemocionais na BNCC para te apoiar na definição de como esse trabalho será realizado na sua escola.

O que diz a BNCC sobre educação socioemocional?

A BNCC, ou Base Nacional Comum Curricular, é um documento que regulamenta a Educação Básica no Brasil. Ela também determina as diretrizes que as escolas do país devem seguir para construir um currículo unificado para a Educação Infantil, o Ensino Fundamental e o Ensino Médio.

As competências emocionais estão entre aquelas que devem ser desenvolvidas ao longo da educação básica. Essas habilidades passaram a ser valorizadas somente após a implementação das diretrizes do documento e visam desenvolver a formação integral dos alunos, preparando-os para lidar com desafios pessoais e profissionais no futuro.

Na Base Nacional Comum Curricular, as competências socioemocionais fazem parte de todas as 10 competências gerais, que podem ser definidas por:

1. Conhecimento;

2. Pensamento científico, crítico e criativo;

3. Repertório cultural;

4. Comunicação;

5. Cultura digital;

6. Trabalho e projeto de vida;

7. Argumentação;

8. Autoconhecimento e autocuidado;

9. Empatia e cooperação;

10. Responsabilidade e cidadania.

As competências gerais mesclam conceitos e procedimentos da mobilização de conhecimentos e habilidades práticas, cognitivas e socioemocionais. Além disso, inclui atitudes e valores para resolver problemas complexos da vida cotidiana.

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O desenvolvimento de habilidades e competências socioemocionais está em alta no contexto educacional. As diretrizes trazidas pela BNCC, a proposta da Educação para o Século 21 (UNESCO) e a abordagem da educação integral reforçaram a necessidade de que gestores e instituições de ensino invistam tempo e planejamento nessa frente.

Mas quais são as competências socioemocionais? Há uma lista exata que deve ser cumprida ao desenvolvê-las no contexto escolar ou, ainda, para o futuro profissional? É possível determinar as mais importantes para os estudantes?

Hoje vamos esclarecer essas e outras questões sobre as competências socioemocionais na BNCC para te apoiar na definição de como esse trabalho será realizado na sua escola.

O que diz a BNCC sobre educação socioemocional?

A BNCC, ou Base Nacional Comum Curricular, é um documento que regulamenta a Educação Básica no Brasil. Ela também determina as diretrizes que as escolas do país devem seguir para construir um currículo unificado para a Educação Infantil, o Ensino Fundamental e o Ensino Médio.

As competências emocionais estão entre aquelas que devem ser desenvolvidas ao longo da educação básica. Essas habilidades passaram a ser valorizadas somente após a implementação das diretrizes do documento e visam desenvolver a formação integral dos alunos, preparando-os para lidar com desafios pessoais e profissionais no futuro.

Na Base Nacional Comum Curricular, as competências socioemocionais fazem parte de todas as 10 competências gerais, que podem ser definidas por:

1. Conhecimento;

2. Pensamento científico, crítico e criativo;

3. Repertório cultural;

4. Comunicação;

5. Cultura digital;

6. Trabalho e projeto de vida;

7. Argumentação;

8. Autoconhecimento e autocuidado;

9. Empatia e cooperação;

10. Responsabilidade e cidadania.

As competências gerais mesclam conceitos e procedimentos da mobilização de conhecimentos e habilidades práticas, cognitivas e socioemocionais. Além disso, inclui atitudes e valores para resolver problemas complexos da vida cotidiana.
Leia também: Saúde mental x Socioemocional na escola: saiba a diferença e como leitura pode ajudar
Quais são as 5 competências socioemocionais que a escola deve trabalhar segundo a BNCC?

Segundo CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), as habilidades socioemocionais envolvidas nas competências gerais podem ser agrupadas em cinco frentes:

1. Autoconsciência: está relacionada ao conhecimento individual e à noção das aptidões e limitações de cada ser humano;

2. Autogestão: trata-se do gerenciamento das próprias emoções diante de diversas situações, pessoais e profissionais, para uma execução de tarefas eficiente;

3. Consciência social: trata-se do exercício da empatia, do reconhecimento e da valorização da diversidade para uma vida saudável em sociedade;

4. Habilidades de relacionamento: estão ligadas a uma comunicação respeitosa, ao exercício da escuta, do acolhimento e da cooperação;

5. Tomada de decisão responsável: envolve o conhecimento das normas, cuidados com a segurança e padrões éticos da sociedade, além dos interesses pessoais e sociais relacionados.

Leia também: Planejamento Escolar: como deixar sua escola alinhada à BNCC‍

Quais são as competências socioemocionais que a escola deve trabalhar?

A grande maioria das competências socioemocionais conhecidas se desdobram e se interconectam dentro desses cinco eixos de agrupamento. Todos visam ao desenvolvimento integral do estudante.

Nesse sentido, a escola e o seu planejamento pedagógico, norteados pela BNCC, vão definir quais são os aspectos socioemocionais a serem trabalhadas com os alunos.

Esse processo demanda um mapeamento de cada competência socioemocional, partindo da percepção dos educadores sobre o comportamento das turmas no convívio do dia a dia do ambiente escolar e sobre o desenvolvimento pleno de seus alunos.

Atividades que envolvam os estudantes para essa decisão também são fundamentais, já que fomentar a escuta e o protagonismo das crianças e jovens é um passo indispensável ao caminho da educação socioemocional.

‍Baixe gratuitamente: E-book - Competências Socioemocionais na escola

Confira a lista das Competências Socioemocionais na BNCC

Para te ajudar a direcionar o olhar na hora do mapeamento, elaboramos uma lista das 15 competências socioemocionais na BNCC mais conhecidas, separadas conforme os cinco diferentes eixos de agrupamento. Confira:

Autoconsciência

Autogestão

Consciência Social

Habilidades de relacionamento
Leia também: Competências socioemocionais na escola: entenda o papel da instituição
Tomada de decisão responsável

Gestor, quais desses aspectos socioemocionais já estão sendo trabalhadas na sua escola? É importante ressaltar que aquelas que apresentamos nesse texto se misturam e se interconectam. Por isso, é possível desenvolver duas ou mais ao mesmo tempo.‍

Trabalhar o respeito passa pela empatia e pela valorização cultural. Uma comunicação respeitosa envolve responsabilidade. O pensamento crítico se conecta à ética e à criatividade. Esses são alguns exemplos, mas na prática é possível perceber que isso é muito comum.

Quer ter acesso a mais dicas sobre quais as competências socioemocionais estão envolvidas no universo escolar e como desenvolvê-las? Então aproveite para saber como promover as competências socioemocionais em sala de aula.

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Quais são as competências socioemocionais na BNCC?

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Você sabe quais são as competências socioemocionais segundo a BNCC? Confira, neste artigo, como elas se dividem nos diferentes eixos de agrupamento.

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Nesse espaço desenvolvemos nosso conhecimentos a cerca do Socioemocional infantil

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Em sala de aula o educador pode trazer e apresentar para as crianças brincadeiras que possam elucidar as emoções que estão sentindo, dessa forma a criança consegue entender melhor os seus sentimentos e como lidar com eles no decorrer das suas atividades do dia a dia.

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EMOÇÕES  e EMPATIA para crianças - Compilação

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O sociemocional deve ser trabalhado nas escolas, assim diz a BNCC!!

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Importância de trabalhar o socioemocional nas escolas

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Importância de trabalhar o socioemocional nas escolas

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Trabalhar habilidades socioemocionais nas escolas é essencial porque ajuda os alunos a desenvolverem competências fundamentais como controle emocional, empatia, e capacidade de resolver conflitos. Isso melhora o desempenho acadêmico, já que alunos emocionalmente equilibrados conseguem se concentrar e aprender melhor. Além disso, a abordagem socioemocional promove um ambiente escolar mais seguro, reduzindo problemas como bullying e promovendo respeito e cooperação entre os alunos. Essa preparação vai além dos conteúdos acadêmicos, formando cidadãos mais conscientes e capazes de lidar com os desafios da vida em sociedade.

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Com a integração das tecnologia as crianças estão imersas nas mais diversas emoções, no ambiente escolar ou no contexto social ao qual estão inseridos, seja através de uma conversa no whatsapp ou é possivel utilizar emojis, tiktoker, instagram ou em outra diversas outras plataformas de interação

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Trabalhar as competências socioemocionais na sala de aula é muito importante para o desenvolvimento integral dos alunos.

No vídeo, o professor aborda quais são as 5 competências socioemocionais (autoconhecimento, autogestão, consciência social, habilidades de relacionamento e tomada de decisão responsável) e como trabalhar em sala de aula.

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Como TRABALHAR o desenvolvimento SOCIOEMOCIONAL em sala de aula?

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Sentimos, portanto, aprendemos: a relevância da neurociência afetiva e social para a educação

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Sentimos, portanto, aprendemos: a relevância da neurociência afetiva e social para a educação

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Avanços recentes na neurociência estão destacando conexões entre emoção, funcionamento social e tomada de decisão que têm o potencial de revolucionar nossa compreensão do papel do afeto na educação. Em particular, a evidência neurobiológica sugere que os aspectos da cognição que recrutamos mais fortemente nas escolas, ou seja, aprendizagem, atenção, memória, tomada de decisão e funcionamento social, são profundamente afetados e subsumidos nos processos de emoção; chamamos esses aspectos de pensamento emocional . Além disso, a evidência de pacientes com danos cerebrais sugere a hipótese de que processos relacionados à emoção são necessários para que habilidades e conhecimento sejam transferidos do ambiente escolar estruturado para a tomada de decisão no mundo real, porque eles fornecem um leme emocional para orientar o julgamento e a ação. Tomadas em conjunto, as evidências que apresentamos esboçam um relato dos fundamentos neurobiológicos da moralidade, criatividade e cultura, todos tópicos de importância crítica para a educação. Nossa esperança é que uma melhor compreensão das relações neurobiológicas entre esses construtos forneça uma nova base para a inovação no design de ambientes de aprendizagem.

Para saber mais acesse o link e fique impactado com o que tem a descobrir!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2007.00004.x

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Abstract

ABSTRACT- Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education. In particular, the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning, are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within the processes of emotion; we call these aspects emotional thought. Moreover, the evidence from brain-damaged patients suggests the hypothesis that emotion-related processes are required for skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured school environment to real-world decision making because they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action. Taken together, the evidence we present sketches an account of the neurobiological underpinnings of morality, creativity, and culture, all topics of critical importance to education. Our hope is that a better understanding of the neurobiological relationships between these constructs will provide a new basis for innovation in the design of learning environments.

Recent advances in the neuroscience of emotions are highlighting connections between cognitive and emotional functions that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of learning in the context of schools. In particular, connections between decision making, social functioning, and moral reasoning hold new promise for breakthroughs in understanding the role of emotion in decision making, the relationship between learning and emotion, how culture shapes learning, and ultimately the development of morality and human ethics. These are all topics of eminent importance to educators as they work to prepare skilled, informed, and ethical students who can navigate the world's social, moral, and cognitive challenges as citizens. In this article, we sketch a biological and evolutionary account of the relationship between emotion and rational thought, with the purpose of highlighting new connections between emotional, cognitive, and social functioning, and presenting a framework that we hope will inspire further work on the critical role of emotion in education.

Modern biology reveals humans to be fundamentally emotional and social creatures. And yet those of us in the field of education often fail to consider that the high-level cognitive skills taught in schools, including reasoning, decision making, and processes related to language, reading, and mathematics, do not function as rational, disembodied systems, somehow influenced by but detached from emotion and the body. Instead, these crowning evolutionary achievements are grounded in a long history of emotional functions, themselves deeply grounded in humble homeostatic beginnings. Any competent teacher recognizes that emotions and feelings affect students' performance and learning, as does the state of the body, such as how well students have slept and eaten or whether they are feeling sick or well. We contend, however, that the relationship between learning, emotion and body state runs much deeper than many educators realize and is interwoven with the notion of learning itself. It is not that emotions rule our cognition, nor that rational thought does not exist. It is, rather, that the original purpose for which our brains evolved was to manage our physiology, to optimize our survival, and to allow us to flourish. When one considers that this purpose inherently involves monitoring and altering the state of the body and mind in increasingly complex ways, one can appreciate that emotions, which play out in the body and mind, are profoundly intertwined with thought. And after all, this should not be surprising. Complex brains could not have evolved separately from the organisms they were meant to regulate.

But there is another layer to the problem of surviving and flourishing, which probably evolved as a specialized aspect of the relationship between emotion and learning. As brains and the minds they support became more complex, the problem became not only dealing with one's own self but managing social interactions and relationships. The evolution of human societies has produced an amazingly complex social and cultural context, and flourishing within this context means that only our most trivial, routine decisions and actions, and perhaps not even these, occur outside of our socially and culturally constructed reality. Why does a high school student solve a math problem, for example? The reasons range from the intrinsic reward of having found the solution, to getting a good grade, to avoiding punishment, to helping tutor a friend, to getting into a good college, to pleasing his/her parents or the teacher. All of these reasons have a powerful emotional component and relate both to pleasurable sensations and to survival within our culture. Although the notion of surviving and flourishing is interpreted in a cultural and social framework at this late stage in evolution, our brains still bear evidence of their original purpose: to manage our bodies and minds in the service of living, and living happily, in the world with other people.

This realization has several important implications for research at the nexus of education and neuroscience. It points to new directions for understanding the interface of biology, learning, and culture, a critical topic in education that has proven difficult to investigate systematically ( Davis, 2003; Rueda, 2006; Rueda, August, & Goldenberg, 2006). It promises to shed light on the elusive link between body and mind, for it describes how the health and sickness of the brain and body can influence each other. And importantly, it underscores our fundamentally social nature, making clear that the very neurobiological systems that support our social interactions and relationships are recruited for the often covert and private decision making that underlies much of our thought. In brief, learning, in the complex sense in which it happens in schools or the real world, is not a rational or disembodied process; neither is it a lonely one.

Reasoning, decision making, and emotion: evidence from patients with brain damage

To understand why this is so, we begin with some history, and a problem. Well into the 1980s, the study of brain systems underlying behavior and cognition was heavily dominated by a top-down approach in which the processes of learning, language, and reasoning were understood as high-order systems that imposed themselves upon an obedient body. It is not that emotions were completely ignored or that they were not viewed by some as having a brain basis. Rather, their critical role in governing behavior, and in particular rational thought, was overlooked ( Damasio, 1994). Emotions were like a toddler in a china shop, interfering with the orderly rows of stemware on the shelves.

And then an interesting problem emerged. In a research atmosphere in which cognition ruled supreme, it became apparent that the irrational behavior of neurological patients who had sustained lesions to a particular sector of the frontal lobe could not be adequately accounted for by invoking cognitive mechanisms alone. After sustaining damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, these patients' social behavior was compromised, making them oblivious to the consequences of their actions, insensitive to others' emotions, and unable to learn from their mistakes. In some instances, these patients violated social convention and even ethical rules, failing to show embarrassment when it was due and failing to provide appropriate sympathetic support to those who expected it and had received it in the past.

These patients' ability to make advantageous decisions became compromised in ways that it had not been before. In fact, there was a complete separation between the period that anteceded the onset of the lesion, when these patients had been upstanding, reliable, and foresightful citizens, and the period thereafter, when they would make decisions that were often disadvantageous to themselves and their families. They would not perform adequately in their jobs, in spite of having the required skills; they would make poor business deals in spite of knowing the risks involved; they would lose their savings and choose the wrong partners in all sorts of relationships. Why would patients suffering from compromised social conduct also make poor decisions about apparently rational matters, such as business investments?

The traditional way to explain these patients' symptoms had been that something had gone wrong with their logical abilities or their knowledge base, such that they could no longer make decisions in a rational way. But, in fact, with further testing, it became apparent that these patients did not have a primary problem with knowledge, knowledge access, or logical reasoning, as had previously been assumed. To the contrary, they could explain cogently the conventional social and logical rules that ought to guide one's behavior and future planning. They had no loss of knowledge or lowering of IQ in the traditional sense. Instead, it gradually became clear that disturbances in the realm of emotion, which had been viewed as a secondary consequence of their brain damage, could provide a better account of their poor decision making. Those emotional aspects included a diminished resonance of emotional reactions generally as well as a specific compromise of social emotions, such as compassion, embarrassment, and guilt. By compromising the possibility of evoking emotions associated with certain past situations, decision options, and outcomes, the patients became unable to select the most appropriate response based on their past experience. Their logic and knowledge could be intact, but they failed to use past emotional knowledge to guide the reasoning process. Furthermore, they could no longer learn from the emotional repercussions of their decisions or respond emotionally to the reactions of their social partners. Their reasoning was flawed because the emotions and social considerations that underlie good reasoning were compromised ( Damasio, Grabowski, Frank, Galaburda, & Damasio, 1994; Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1990, 1991).

In retrospect, these patients provided a first glimpse into the fundamental role of emotion in reasoning and decision making. Missing a brain region that is now understood as needed to trigger a cascade of neurological and somatic events that together comprise a social emotion, such as embarrassment, compassion, envy, or admiration, their social behavior suffered. This is significant in itself, but even more intriguing was the realization that, without the ability to adequately access the guiding intuitions that accrue through emotional learning and social feedback, decision making and rational thought became compromised, as did learning from their mistakes and successes. While these patients can reason logically and ethically about standard cognitive and social problems in a laboratory setting ( Saver & Damasio, 1991), out in the real world and in real time, they cannot use emotional information to decide between alternative courses of action. They can no longer adequately consider previous rewards and punishments or successes and failures, nor do they notice others' praise or disapproval. These patients have lost their ability to analyze events for their emotional consequences and to tag memories of these events accordingly. Their emotions are dissociated from their rational thought, resulting in compromised reason, decision making, and learning.

What does this mean for our argument about relevance to education? In addition to these patients, further evidence from psychophysiological and other studies of brain-damaged and normal people has allowed us to propose specific neural mechanisms underlying the role and operation of emotional signaling in normal and abnormal decision making ( Bechara, 2005; Bechara & Damasio, 1997; Damasio, 1996). While the details of these neural mechanisms and evidence are beyond the scope of this article, taken as a whole, they show that emotions are not just messy toddlers in a china shop, running around breaking and obscuring delicate cognitive glassware. Instead, they are more like the shelves underlying the glassware; without them cognition has less support.

To recap, the prefrontal patients we have described have social deficits. We have argued that these are fundamentally problems of emotion and therefore manifest as well in the realm of decision making. The relationship between these symptoms is very informative, in that it suggests that hidden emotional processes underlie our apparently rational real-world decision making and learning. Furthermore, this relationship underscores the importance of the ability to perceive and incorporate social feedback in learning.

While the relevance of these insights to educational contexts has not yet been empirically tested, they lead us to formulate two important hypotheses. First, because these findings underscore the critical role of emotion in bringing previously acquired knowledge to inform real-world decision making in social contexts, they suggest the intriguing possibility that emotional processes are required for the skills and knowledge acquired in school to transfer to novel situations and to real life. That is, emotion may play a vital role in helping children decide when and how to apply what they have learned in school to the rest of their lives. Second, the close ties between these patients' decision making, emotion, and social functioning may provide a new take on the relationship between biology and culture. Specifically, it may be via an emotional route that the social influences of culture come to shape learning, thought, and behavior.

While more work on the educational and cultural implications of these findings is warranted, interestingly, and sadly, some further insights into the biological connections between learning, emotion, and social functioning, especially as they relate to our hypothesis about culture, can be gleaned from another group of patients that has been discovered over the past few years. In this group, patients sustained comparable prefrontal damage in early childhood, rather than as adults. As they developed, these children were cognitively normal in the traditional IQ sense, able to use logical reasoning and factual knowledge to solve the kinds of academic problems expected of students. However, while smart in the everyday sense of the word, these children slowly revealed themselves as having varying degrees of psychopathic and antisocial tendencies. They were insensitive to punishment and reward and did not seek approval or social acceptance as typical children do. As adults, they were unable to competently manage their lives, wasting time and squandering resources and engaging in dangerous, antisocial, and aggressive behaviors. By outward appearances, these patients behaved in most ways similarly to the patients described above, who sustained prefrontal damage as adults ( Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Damasio, 2005).

Additional investigation of adult patients with childhood onset of brain damage, though, revealed an intriguing difference between childhood and adult-onset prefrontal brain damage. While both groups can reason about traditional cognitive problems in the structure of the laboratory setting and both have normal IQs in the traditional sense, unlike patients with adult-onset prefrontal damage, childhood-onset patients appear never to have learned the rules that govern social and moral behavior. While adult-onset patients know right from wrong in the lab but are unable to use this information to guide their behavior, childhood-onset patients have apparently not learned right from wrong or the proper rules of social conduct. They do not know the social and ethical rules that they are breaking.

What is happening with these patients and how is it relevant to the argument at hand? Unlike the often remarkable compensation for linguistic and other capacities after early childhood brain damage, so far the system for social conduct and ethical behavior does not show this kind of compensation. It is not that access in an abstract sense to the rules of social conduct requires intact frontal cortices, as the adult-onset patients show, and it is not that a social or moral conduct center in the brain has been irreparably damaged, as this scenario would not explain changes in general decision making. Instead, the situation is both simpler and more grave. These early-onset prefrontal patients may be suffering from the loss of what we might term the emotional rudder. Without the ability to manipulate situations and to mark those situations as positive or negative from an affective point of view, these children fail to learn normal social behavior. In turn, they lose the commensurate decision-making abilities described earlier. Insensitive to others' responses to their actions, these children fail to respond to educators' and others' attempts to teach them normal behavior.

But there is another intriguing piece to be learned from these children regarding the relationship between cognition and emotion and the role of the emotional rudder in learning. As in the adult-onset patients, it is still possible for these patients to have an operating cognitive system that allows them to be smart on certain measures and in certain contexts, solving standard cognitive tasks in a laboratory or structured educational setting without difficulty. In these contexts, their lack of knowledge is confined to the social and moral domains.

And yet, once outside of the structured school setting, their social deficits manifest as a much broader problem. They have the nonsocial knowledge they need, but without the guiding effects of the emotional rudder, they cannot use this information to guide their everyday living, even in nonsocial contexts. What these patients confirm is that the very neurobiological systems that support emotional functioning in social interactions also support decision making generally. Without adequate access to social and cultural knowledge, these children cannot use their knowledge efficaciously. As Vygotsky posited more than three quarters of a century ago, social and cultural functioning actually does underlie much of our nonsocial decision making and reasoning. Or, more precisely, social behavior turns out to be a special case of decision making and morality to be a special case of social behavior (see Damasio, 2005, for a more complete treatment of this argument). The neurological systems that support decision making generally are the same systems that support social and moral behavior. Without adequate access to emotional, social, and moral feedback, in effect the important elements of culture, learning cannot inform real-world functioning as effectively.

A physiological and evolutionary account of emotion and cognition: from automatic responses to morality, creativity, high reason, and culture

In the perspective of the insights described earlier, and of much research in neurobiology and general biology in the two intervening decades, the connection between emotion and cognition is being seen in a very different light. To outline the current position, we shall present a simple scenario. Think of an ant crawling along a sidewalk, carrying a piece of food back to its nest. The ant scurries into a sidewalk crack to avoid being stepped on, then continues industriously on its way. What motivates this ant to preserve its own life? How did it decide, albeit nonconsciously and automatically, to carry the piece of food and to turn toward its nest? Clearly, the decisions to hide to avoid being crushed, to carry the food, and to continue in the direction of the nest are primitive instances of cognition, composed of complex packages of innate responses that enable the ant to react advantageously to particular classes of situations. But what is essential to understand is that these and myriads of other primitive examples of cognition, even in the lowly ant, act together in the service of an emotional goal: to maintain and promote homeostasis and thus fitness. In short, the ant behaves the way it does because those behaviors promote its survival and efficiency. (Humans, as conscious beings, perceive that efficiency as well-being and pleasure.) Every action the ant takes is inherently biased toward helping the ant, or its group, do well.

Taking an evolutionary perspective, even the simplest unicellular organism has within the nucleus of its cell a master controller that permits that living organism to maintain itself for a certain span of life and to seek during that period the conditions that will allow it to thrive. Emotions and the mechanisms that constitute them as behaviors, which humans experience as resulting in punishment or reward, pain or pleasure, are, in essence, nature's answer to one central problem, that of surviving and flourishing in an ambivalent world. Put simply, the brain has evolved under numerous pressures and oppressions precisely to cope with the problem of reading the body's condition and responding accordingly and begins doing so via the machinery of emotion. This coping shows up in simple ways in simple organisms and in remarkably rich ways as brains get more complex. In the brains of higher animals and people, the richness is such that they can perceive the world through sensory processing and control their behavior in a way that includes what is traditionally called the mind. Out of the basic need to survive and flourish derives a way of dealing with thoughts, with ideas, and eventually with making plans, using imagination, and creating. At their core, all of these complex and artful human behaviors, the sorts of behaviors fostered in education, are carried out in the service of managing life within a culture and, as such, use emotional strategies ( Damasio, 1999).

Emotion, then, is a basic form of decision making, a repertoire of know-how and actions that allows people to respond appropriately in different situations. The more advanced cognition becomes, the more high-level reasoning supports the customization of these responses, both in thought and in action. With evolution and development, the specifications of conditions to which people respond, and the modes of response at their disposal, become increasingly nuanced. The more people develop and educate themselves, the more they refine their behavioral and cognitive options. In fact, one could argue that the chief purpose of education is to cultivate children's building of repertoires of cognitive and behavioral strategies and options, helping them to recognize the complexity of situations and to respond in increasingly flexible, sophisticated, and creative ways. In our view, out of these processes of recognizing and responding, the very processes that form the interface between cognition and emotion, emerge the origins of creativity-the artistic, scientific, and technological innovations that are unique to our species. Further, out of these same kinds of processing emerges a special kind of human innovation: the social creativity that we call morality and ethical thought.

As the childhood-onset prefrontal patients show, morality and ethical decision making are special cases of social and emotional functioning. While the beginnings of altruism, compassion, and other notions of social equity exist in simpler forms in the nonhuman primates ( Damasio, 2003; Hauser, 2006), human cognitive and emotional abilities far outpace those of the other animals. Our collective accomplishments range from the elevating and awe inspiring to the evil and grotesque. Human ethics and morality are direct evidence that we are able to move beyond the opportunistic ambivalence of nature; indeed, the hallmark of ethical action is the inhibition of immediately advantageous or profitable solutions in the favor of what is good or right within our cultural frame of reference. In this way, ethical decision making represents a pinnacle cognitive and emotional achievement of humans. At its best, ethical decision making weaves together emotion, high reasoning, creativity, and social functioning, all in a cultural context ( Gardner, Csikszentmihaly, & Damon, 2001).

Returning to the example of the ant, our purpose in including this example was not to suggest that human emotions are equivalent to those of the ant or that human behavior can be reduced to simple, nonspecific packages that unfold purely nonconsciously in response to particular situations. Although some aspects of human behavior and emotion could be characterized in this way, such reductionism would be grossly misplaced, especially in an essay about connections to education. Instead, we aimed to illustrate that most, if not all, human decisions, behaviors, thoughts, and creations, no matter how far removed from survival in the homeostatic sense, bear the shadow of their emotive start.

In addition, as the prefrontal patients show, the processes of recognizing and responding to complex situations, which we suggest hold the origins of creativity, are fundamentally emotional and social. As such, they are shaped by and evaluated within a cultural context and, as we described in the previous section, are based upon emotional processing. No matter how complex and esoteric they become, our repertoire of behavioral and cognitive options continues to exist in the service of emotional goals. Neurobiologically and evolutionarily speaking, creativity is a means to survive and flourish in a social and cultural context, a statement that appears to apply from the relatively banal circumstances of daily living to the complex arena of ethical thought and behavior. In beginning to elucidate the neurobiological interdependencies between high reasoning, ethics, and creativity, all of which are fundamentally tied to emotion and critically relevant to education, we hope to provide a new vantage point from which to investigate the development and nurturance of these processes in schools.

Emotional thought: toward an evidence-based framework

In general, cognition and emotion are regarded as two interrelated aspects of human functioning. However, while it is perfectly reasonable and in fact necessary to distinguish between these two aspects in studying learning and development ( Fischer & Bidell, 1998), the overly stringent preservation of this dichotomy may actually obscure the fact that emotions comprise cognitive as well as sensory processes. Furthermore, the aspects of cognition that are recruited most heavily in education, including learning, attention, memory, decision making, motivation, and social functioning, are both profoundly affected by emotion and in fact subsumed within the processes of emotion. Emotions entail the perception of an emotionally competent trigger, a situation either real or imagined that has the power to induce an emotion, as well as a chain of physiological events that will enable changes in both the body and mind ( Damasio, 1994). These changes in the mind, involving focusing of attention, calling up of relevant memories, and learning the associations between events and their outcomes, among other things, are the processes with which education is most concerned. Yes, rational thought and logical reasoning do exist, although hardly ever truly devoid of emotion, but they cannot be recruited appropriately and usefully in the real world without emotion. Emotions help to direct our reasoning into the sector of knowledge that is relevant to the current situation or problem.

In Figure 1, we provide a graphical depiction of the neurological relationship between cognition and emotion. In the diagram, we have used the term emotional thought to refer to the large overlap between cognition and emotion. Emotional thought encompasses processes of learning, memory, and decision making, in both social and nonsocial contexts. It is within the domain of emotional thought that creativity plays out, through increasingly nuanced recognition of complex dilemmas and situations and through the invention of correspondingly flexible and innovative responses. Both the recognition and response aspects of creativity can be informed by rational thought and high reason. In our model, recognition and response processes are much like the concepts of assimilation and accommodation proposed by Piaget (1952, 1954). However, Piaget focused almost exclusively on cognition and the development of logic, and although he recognized a role for emotion in child development ( Piaget, 1981), he did not fully appreciate the fundamentally emotional nature of the processes he described.

In the diagram, high reason and rational thought also contribute to high-level social and moral emotions to form the specialized branch of decision making that is ethics. Motivated reasoning works in a similar manner and refers to the process by which emotional thoughts gain additional significance through the application of rational evidence and knowledge. In the other direction, rational evidence can be imposed upon certain kinds of emotional thought to produce the sort of automatic moral decision making that underlies intuitive notions of good and evil ( Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). For example, in evaluating the morality of incest, experimental evidence suggests that people decide quickly at the subconscious and intuitive level and later impose ad hoc rational evidence on their decision ( Haidt, 2001). Conversely, complex moral dilemmas such as whether to send a nation to war are (one hopes) informed by an abundance of rational evidence.

On the left side of the diagram, the bodily aspects of emotion are represented as a loop from emotional thought to the body and back. Here, emotional thoughts, either conscious or nonconscious, can alter the state of the body in characteristic ways, such as by tensing or relaxing the skeletal muscles or by changing the heart rate. In turn, the bodily sensations of these changes, either actual or simulated, contribute either consciously or nonconsciously to feelings, which can then influence thought. (Simulated body sensation refers to the fact that sometimes imagining bodily changes is sufficient; actually tensing the fists, for example, is not necessary.) This is the route by which rational deliberations over, say, a nation's wartime decisions can produce high-level social emotions such as indignation, as well as the bodily manifestations of these emotions, such as tensed fists, increased heart rate, or loss of appetite. The feeling of these bodily sensations, either consciously or not, can then bias cognitive processes such as attention and memory toward, in this case, aggression. The end result may be an unprovoked argument with one's friend over a topic totally unrelated to the war, the creation of a bleak and angry abstract painting, or a generally tense mood.

In addition to the evidence discussed above, support for these relationships between the body, emotion, and cognition comes mainly from neurobiological and psychophysiological research, in which the induction of emotion, either directly by a stimulus in the environment or indirectly via thoughts or memories, causes mental changes as well as physiological effects on the body. In turn, feelings of emotion rely on the somatosensory systems of the brain. That is, the brain areas associated with interoception (the sensing of body states) are particularly active as people feel emotions such as happiness, fear, anger, or sadness ( Damasio et al., 2000).

To conclude, in presenting this model, our goal is not to devalue established notions of cognition and emotion but to provide a biologically based account of this relationship and to begin to specify the nature of the overlap between cognition and emotion in a way that highlights processes relevant to education. These processes include learning, memory, decision making, and creativity, as well as high reason and rational thinking. They also include the influence of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind.

Educational implications: a call for further research

In teaching children, the focus is often on the logical reasoning skills and factual knowledge that are the most direct indicators of educational success. But there are two problems with this approach. First, neither learning nor recall happen in a purely rational domain, divorced from emotion, even though some of our knowledge will eventually distill into a moderately rational, unemotional form. Second, in teaching students to minimize the emotional aspects of their academic curriculum and function as much as possible in the rational domain, educators may be encouraging students to develop the sorts of knowledge that inherently do not transfer well to real-world situations. As both the early- and late-acquired prefrontal damage patients show, knowledge and reasoning divorced from emotional implications and learning lack meaning and motivation and are of little use in the real world. Simply having the knowledge does not imply that a student will be able to use it advantageously outside of school.

As recent advances in the neurobiology of emotions reveal, in the real world, cognition functions in the service of life-regulating goals, implemented by emotional machinery. Moreover, people's thoughts and feelings are evaluated within a sociocultural context and serve to help them survive and flourish in a social, rather than simply opportunistic, world. While the idea that learning happens in a cultural context is far from new ( Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005), we hope that these new insights from neurobiology, which shed light on the nested relationships between emotion, cognition, decision making, and social functioning, will provide a jumping-off point for new thinking on the role of emotion in education. As educators have long known, it is simply not enough for students to master knowledge and logical reasoning skills in the traditional academic sense. They must be able to choose among and recruit these skills and knowledge usefully outside of the structured context of a school or laboratory. Because these choices are grounded in emotion and emotional thought, the physiology of emotion and its consequent process of feeling have enormous repercussions for the way we learn and for the way we consolidate and access knowledge. The more educators come to understand the nature of the relationship between emotion and cognition, the better they may be able to leverage this relationship in the design of learning environments.

In conclusion, new neurobiological evidence regarding the fundamental role of emotion in cognition holds the potential for important innovations in the science of learning and the practice of teaching. As researchers struggle with new directions and techniques for learning about these connections, a biological framework may help to constrain possibilities and generate new hypotheses and research directions. Just as neuroscience is coming to inform other education-related topics and problems ( Goswami, 2006), the study of emotions, creativity, and culture is ripe for interdisciplinary collaborations among neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators. After all, we humans cannot divorce ourselves from our biology, nor can we ignore the high-level sociocultural and cognitive forces that make us special within the animal kingdom. When we educators fail to appreciate the importance of students' emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in students' learning. One could argue, in fact, that we fail to appreciate the very reason that students learn at all.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments- This work was supported by a grant from the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California and by a grant from the Mathers Foundation.

Abstract

ABSTRACT- Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education. In particular, the neurobiological evidence suggests that the aspects of cognition that we recruit most heavily in schools, namely learning, attention, memory, decision making, and social functioning, are both profoundly affected by and subsumed within the processes of emotion; we call these aspects emotional thought. Moreover, the evidence from brain-damaged patients suggests the hypothesis that emotion-related processes are required for skills and knowledge to be transferred from the structured school environment to real-world decision making because they provide an emotional rudder to guide judgment and action. Taken together, the evidence we present sketches an account of the neurobiological underpinnings of morality, creativity, and culture, all topics of critical importance to education. Our hope is that a better understanding of the neurobiological relationships between these constructs will provide a new basis for innovation in the design of learning environments.

Recent advances in the neuroscience of emotions are highlighting connections between cognitive and emotional functions that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of learning in the context of schools. In particular, connections between decision making, social functioning, and moral reasoning hold new promise for breakthroughs in understanding the role of emotion in decision making, the relationship between learning and emotion, how culture shapes learning, and ultimately the development of morality and human ethics. These are all topics of eminent importance to educators as they work to prepare skilled, informed, and ethical students who can navigate the world's social, moral, and cognitive challenges as citizens. In this article, we sketch a biological and evolutionary account of the relationship between emotion and rational thought, with the purpose of highlighting new connections between emotional, cognitive, and social functioning, and presenting a framework that we hope will inspire further work on the critical role of emotion in education.

Modern biology reveals humans to be fundamentally emotional and social creatures. And yet those of us in the field of education often fail to consider that the high-level cognitive skills taught in schools, including reasoning, decision making, and processes related to language, reading, and mathematics, do not function as rational, disembodied systems, somehow influenced by but detached from emotion and the body. Instead, these crowning evolutionary achievements are grounded in a long history of emotional functions, themselves deeply grounded in humble homeostatic beginnings. Any competent teacher recognizes that emotions and feelings affect students' performance and learning, as does the state of the body, such as how well students have slept and eaten or whether they are feeling sick or well. We contend, however, that the relationship between learning, emotion and body state runs much deeper than many educators realize and is interwoven with the notion of learning itself. It is not that emotions rule our cognition, nor that rational thought does not exist. It is, rather, that the original purpose for which our brains evolved was to manage our physiology, to optimize our survival, and to allow us to flourish. When one considers that this purpose inherently involves monitoring and altering the state of the body and mind in increasingly complex ways, one can appreciate that emotions, which play out in the body and mind, are profoundly intertwined with thought. And after all, this should not be surprising. Complex brains could not have evolved separately from the organisms they were meant to regulate.

But there is another layer to the problem of surviving and flourishing, which probably evolved as a specialized aspect of the relationship between emotion and learning. As brains and the minds they support became more complex, the problem became not only dealing with one's own self but managing social interactions and relationships. The evolution of human societies has produced an amazingly complex social and cultural context, and flourishing within this context means that only our most trivial, routine decisions and actions, and perhaps not even these, occur outside of our socially and culturally constructed reality. Why does a high school student solve a math problem, for example? The reasons range from the intrinsic reward of having found the solution, to getting a good grade, to avoiding punishment, to helping tutor a friend, to getting into a good college, to pleasing his/her parents or the teacher. All of these reasons have a powerful emotional component and relate both to pleasurable sensations and to survival within our culture. Although the notion of surviving and flourishing is interpreted in a cultural and social framework at this late stage in evolution, our brains still bear evidence of their original purpose: to manage our bodies and minds in the service of living, and living happily, in the world with other people.

This realization has several important implications for research at the nexus of education and neuroscience. It points to new directions for understanding the interface of biology, learning, and culture, a critical topic in education that has proven difficult to investigate systematically ( Davis, 2003; Rueda, 2006; Rueda, August, & Goldenberg, 2006). It promises to shed light on the elusive link between body and mind, for it describes how the health and sickness of the brain and body can influence each other. And importantly, it underscores our fundamentally social nature, making clear that the very neurobiological systems that support our social interactions and relationships are recruited for the often covert and private decision making that underlies much of our thought. In brief, learning, in the complex sense in which it happens in schools or the real world, is not a rational or disembodied process; neither is it a lonely one.

Reasoning, decision making, and emotion: evidence from patients with brain damage

To understand why this is so, we begin with some history, and a problem. Well into the 1980s, the study of brain systems underlying behavior and cognition was heavily dominated by a top-down approach in which the processes of learning, language, and reasoning were understood as high-order systems that imposed themselves upon an obedient body. It is not that emotions were completely ignored or that they were not viewed by some as having a brain basis. Rather, their critical role in governing behavior, and in particular rational thought, was overlooked ( Damasio, 1994). Emotions were like a toddler in a china shop, interfering with the orderly rows of stemware on the shelves.

And then an interesting problem emerged. In a research atmosphere in which cognition ruled supreme, it became apparent that the irrational behavior of neurological patients who had sustained lesions to a particular sector of the frontal lobe could not be adequately accounted for by invoking cognitive mechanisms alone. After sustaining damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, these patients' social behavior was compromised, making them oblivious to the consequences of their actions, insensitive to others' emotions, and unable to learn from their mistakes. In some instances, these patients violated social convention and even ethical rules, failing to show embarrassment when it was due and failing to provide appropriate sympathetic support to those who expected it and had received it in the past.

These patients' ability to make advantageous decisions became compromised in ways that it had not been before. In fact, there was a complete separation between the period that anteceded the onset of the lesion, when these patients had been upstanding, reliable, and foresightful citizens, and the period thereafter, when they would make decisions that were often disadvantageous to themselves and their families. They would not perform adequately in their jobs, in spite of having the required skills; they would make poor business deals in spite of knowing the risks involved; they would lose their savings and choose the wrong partners in all sorts of relationships. Why would patients suffering from compromised social conduct also make poor decisions about apparently rational matters, such as business investments?

The traditional way to explain these patients' symptoms had been that something had gone wrong with their logical abilities or their knowledge base, such that they could no longer make decisions in a rational way. But, in fact, with further testing, it became apparent that these patients did not have a primary problem with knowledge, knowledge access, or logical reasoning, as had previously been assumed. To the contrary, they could explain cogently the conventional social and logical rules that ought to guide one's behavior and future planning. They had no loss of knowledge or lowering of IQ in the traditional sense. Instead, it gradually became clear that disturbances in the realm of emotion, which had been viewed as a secondary consequence of their brain damage, could provide a better account of their poor decision making. Those emotional aspects included a diminished resonance of emotional reactions generally as well as a specific compromise of social emotions, such as compassion, embarrassment, and guilt. By compromising the possibility of evoking emotions associated with certain past situations, decision options, and outcomes, the patients became unable to select the most appropriate response based on their past experience. Their logic and knowledge could be intact, but they failed to use past emotional knowledge to guide the reasoning process. Furthermore, they could no longer learn from the emotional repercussions of their decisions or respond emotionally to the reactions of their social partners. Their reasoning was flawed because the emotions and social considerations that underlie good reasoning were compromised ( Damasio, Grabowski, Frank, Galaburda, & Damasio, 1994; Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1990, 1991).

In retrospect, these patients provided a first glimpse into the fundamental role of emotion in reasoning and decision making. Missing a brain region that is now understood as needed to trigger a cascade of neurological and somatic events that together comprise a social emotion, such as embarrassment, compassion, envy, or admiration, their social behavior suffered. This is significant in itself, but even more intriguing was the realization that, without the ability to adequately access the guiding intuitions that accrue through emotional learning and social feedback, decision making and rational thought became compromised, as did learning from their mistakes and successes. While these patients can reason logically and ethically about standard cognitive and social problems in a laboratory setting ( Saver & Damasio, 1991), out in the real world and in real time, they cannot use emotional information to decide between alternative courses of action. They can no longer adequately consider previous rewards and punishments or successes and failures, nor do they notice others' praise or disapproval. These patients have lost their ability to analyze events for their emotional consequences and to tag memories of these events accordingly. Their emotions are dissociated from their rational thought, resulting in compromised reason, decision making, and learning.

What does this mean for our argument about relevance to education? In addition to these patients, further evidence from psychophysiological and other studies of brain-damaged and normal people has allowed us to propose specific neural mechanisms underlying the role and operation of emotional signaling in normal and abnormal decision making ( Bechara, 2005; Bechara & Damasio, 1997; Damasio, 1996). While the details of these neural mechanisms and evidence are beyond the scope of this article, taken as a whole, they show that emotions are not just messy toddlers in a china shop, running around breaking and obscuring delicate cognitive glassware. Instead, they are more like the shelves underlying the glassware; without them cognition has less support.

To recap, the prefrontal patients we have described have social deficits. We have argued that these are fundamentally problems of emotion and therefore manifest as well in the realm of decision making. The relationship between these symptoms is very informative, in that it suggests that hidden emotional processes underlie our apparently rational real-world decision making and learning. Furthermore, this relationship underscores the importance of the ability to perceive and incorporate social feedback in learning.

While the relevance of these insights to educational contexts has not yet been empirically tested, they lead us to formulate two important hypotheses. First, because these findings underscore the critical role of emotion in bringing previously acquired knowledge to inform real-world decision making in social contexts, they suggest the intriguing possibility that emotional processes are required for the skills and knowledge acquired in school to transfer to novel situations and to real life. That is, emotion may play a vital role in helping children decide when and how to apply what they have learned in school to the rest of their lives. Second, the close ties between these patients' decision making, emotion, and social functioning may provide a new take on the relationship between biology and culture. Specifically, it may be via an emotional route that the social influences of culture come to shape learning, thought, and behavior.

While more work on the educational and cultural implications of these findings is warranted, interestingly, and sadly, some further insights into the biological connections between learning, emotion, and social functioning, especially as they relate to our hypothesis about culture, can be gleaned from another group of patients that has been discovered over the past few years. In this group, patients sustained comparable prefrontal damage in early childhood, rather than as adults. As they developed, these children were cognitively normal in the traditional IQ sense, able to use logical reasoning and factual knowledge to solve the kinds of academic problems expected of students. However, while smart in the everyday sense of the word, these children slowly revealed themselves as having varying degrees of psychopathic and antisocial tendencies. They were insensitive to punishment and reward and did not seek approval or social acceptance as typical children do. As adults, they were unable to competently manage their lives, wasting time and squandering resources and engaging in dangerous, antisocial, and aggressive behaviors. By outward appearances, these patients behaved in most ways similarly to the patients described above, who sustained prefrontal damage as adults ( Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Damasio, 2005).

Additional investigation of adult patients with childhood onset of brain damage, though, revealed an intriguing difference between childhood and adult-onset prefrontal brain damage. While both groups can reason about traditional cognitive problems in the structure of the laboratory setting and both have normal IQs in the traditional sense, unlike patients with adult-onset prefrontal damage, childhood-onset patients appear never to have learned the rules that govern social and moral behavior. While adult-onset patients know right from wrong in the lab but are unable to use this information to guide their behavior, childhood-onset patients have apparently not learned right from wrong or the proper rules of social conduct. They do not know the social and ethical rules that they are breaking.

What is happening with these patients and how is it relevant to the argument at hand? Unlike the often remarkable compensation for linguistic and other capacities after early childhood brain damage, so far the system for social conduct and ethical behavior does not show this kind of compensation. It is not that access in an abstract sense to the rules of social conduct requires intact frontal cortices, as the adult-onset patients show, and it is not that a social or moral conduct center in the brain has been irreparably damaged, as this scenario would not explain changes in general decision making. Instead, the situation is both simpler and more grave. These early-onset prefrontal patients may be suffering from the loss of what we might term the emotional rudder. Without the ability to manipulate situations and to mark those situations as positive or negative from an affective point of view, these children fail to learn normal social behavior. In turn, they lose the commensurate decision-making abilities described earlier. Insensitive to others' responses to their actions, these children fail to respond to educators' and others' attempts to teach them normal behavior.

But there is another intriguing piece to be learned from these children regarding the relationship between cognition and emotion and the role of the emotional rudder in learning. As in the adult-onset patients, it is still possible for these patients to have an operating cognitive system that allows them to be smart on certain measures and in certain contexts, solving standard cognitive tasks in a laboratory or structured educational setting without difficulty. In these contexts, their lack of knowledge is confined to the social and moral domains.

And yet, once outside of the structured school setting, their social deficits manifest as a much broader problem. They have the nonsocial knowledge they need, but without the guiding effects of the emotional rudder, they cannot use this information to guide their everyday living, even in nonsocial contexts. What these patients confirm is that the very neurobiological systems that support emotional functioning in social interactions also support decision making generally. Without adequate access to social and cultural knowledge, these children cannot use their knowledge efficaciously. As Vygotsky posited more than three quarters of a century ago, social and cultural functioning actually does underlie much of our nonsocial decision making and reasoning. Or, more precisely, social behavior turns out to be a special case of decision making and morality to be a special case of social behavior (see Damasio, 2005, for a more complete treatment of this argument). The neurological systems that support decision making generally are the same systems that support social and moral behavior. Without adequate access to emotional, social, and moral feedback, in effect the important elements of culture, learning cannot inform real-world functioning as effectively.

A physiological and evolutionary account of emotion and cognition: from automatic responses to morality, creativity, high reason, and culture

In the perspective of the insights described earlier, and of much research in neurobiology and general biology in the two intervening decades, the connection between emotion and cognition is being seen in a very different light. To outline the current position, we shall present a simple scenario. Think of an ant crawling along a sidewalk, carrying a piece of food back to its nest. The ant scurries into a sidewalk crack to avoid being stepped on, then continues industriously on its way. What motivates this ant to preserve its own life? How did it decide, albeit nonconsciously and automatically, to carry the piece of food and to turn toward its nest? Clearly, the decisions to hide to avoid being crushed, to carry the food, and to continue in the direction of the nest are primitive instances of cognition, composed of complex packages of innate responses that enable the ant to react advantageously to particular classes of situations. But what is essential to understand is that these and myriads of other primitive examples of cognition, even in the lowly ant, act together in the service of an emotional goal: to maintain and promote homeostasis and thus fitness. In short, the ant behaves the way it does because those behaviors promote its survival and efficiency. (Humans, as conscious beings, perceive that efficiency as well-being and pleasure.) Every action the ant takes is inherently biased toward helping the ant, or its group, do well.

Taking an evolutionary perspective, even the simplest unicellular organism has within the nucleus of its cell a master controller that permits that living organism to maintain itself for a certain span of life and to seek during that period the conditions that will allow it to thrive. Emotions and the mechanisms that constitute them as behaviors, which humans experience as resulting in punishment or reward, pain or pleasure, are, in essence, nature's answer to one central problem, that of surviving and flourishing in an ambivalent world. Put simply, the brain has evolved under numerous pressures and oppressions precisely to cope with the problem of reading the body's condition and responding accordingly and begins doing so via the machinery of emotion. This coping shows up in simple ways in simple organisms and in remarkably rich ways as brains get more complex. In the brains of higher animals and people, the richness is such that they can perceive the world through sensory processing and control their behavior in a way that includes what is traditionally called the mind. Out of the basic need to survive and flourish derives a way of dealing with thoughts, with ideas, and eventually with making plans, using imagination, and creating. At their core, all of these complex and artful human behaviors, the sorts of behaviors fostered in education, are carried out in the service of managing life within a culture and, as such, use emotional strategies ( Damasio, 1999).

Emotion, then, is a basic form of decision making, a repertoire of know-how and actions that allows people to respond appropriately in different situations. The more advanced cognition becomes, the more high-level reasoning supports the customization of these responses, both in thought and in action. With evolution and development, the specifications of conditions to which people respond, and the modes of response at their disposal, become increasingly nuanced. The more people develop and educate themselves, the more they refine their behavioral and cognitive options. In fact, one could argue that the chief purpose of education is to cultivate children's building of repertoires of cognitive and behavioral strategies and options, helping them to recognize the complexity of situations and to respond in increasingly flexible, sophisticated, and creative ways. In our view, out of these processes of recognizing and responding, the very processes that form the interface between cognition and emotion, emerge the origins of creativity-the artistic, scientific, and technological innovations that are unique to our species. Further, out of these same kinds of processing emerges a special kind of human innovation: the social creativity that we call morality and ethical thought.

As the childhood-onset prefrontal patients show, morality and ethical decision making are special cases of social and emotional functioning. While the beginnings of altruism, compassion, and other notions of social equity exist in simpler forms in the nonhuman primates ( Damasio, 2003; Hauser, 2006), human cognitive and emotional abilities far outpace those of the other animals. Our collective accomplishments range from the elevating and awe inspiring to the evil and grotesque. Human ethics and morality are direct evidence that we are able to move beyond the opportunistic ambivalence of nature; indeed, the hallmark of ethical action is the inhibition of immediately advantageous or profitable solutions in the favor of what is good or right within our cultural frame of reference. In this way, ethical decision making represents a pinnacle cognitive and emotional achievement of humans. At its best, ethical decision making weaves together emotion, high reasoning, creativity, and social functioning, all in a cultural context ( Gardner, Csikszentmihaly, & Damon, 2001).

Returning to the example of the ant, our purpose in including this example was not to suggest that human emotions are equivalent to those of the ant or that human behavior can be reduced to simple, nonspecific packages that unfold purely nonconsciously in response to particular situations. Although some aspects of human behavior and emotion could be characterized in this way, such reductionism would be grossly misplaced, especially in an essay about connections to education. Instead, we aimed to illustrate that most, if not all, human decisions, behaviors, thoughts, and creations, no matter how far removed from survival in the homeostatic sense, bear the shadow of their emotive start.

In addition, as the prefrontal patients show, the processes of recognizing and responding to complex situations, which we suggest hold the origins of creativity, are fundamentally emotional and social. As such, they are shaped by and evaluated within a cultural context and, as we described in the previous section, are based upon emotional processing. No matter how complex and esoteric they become, our repertoire of behavioral and cognitive options continues to exist in the service of emotional goals. Neurobiologically and evolutionarily speaking, creativity is a means to survive and flourish in a social and cultural context, a statement that appears to apply from the relatively banal circumstances of daily living to the complex arena of ethical thought and behavior. In beginning to elucidate the neurobiological interdependencies between high reasoning, ethics, and creativity, all of which are fundamentally tied to emotion and critically relevant to education, we hope to provide a new vantage point from which to investigate the development and nurturance of these processes in schools.

Emotional thought: toward an evidence-based framework

In general, cognition and emotion are regarded as two interrelated aspects of human functioning. However, while it is perfectly reasonable and in fact necessary to distinguish between these two aspects in studying learning and development ( Fischer & Bidell, 1998), the overly stringent preservation of this dichotomy may actually obscure the fact that emotions comprise cognitive as well as sensory processes. Furthermore, the aspects of cognition that are recruited most heavily in education, including learning, attention, memory, decision making, motivation, and social functioning, are both profoundly affected by emotion and in fact subsumed within the processes of emotion. Emotions entail the perception of an emotionally competent trigger, a situation either real or imagined that has the power to induce an emotion, as well as a chain of physiological events that will enable changes in both the body and mind ( Damasio, 1994). These changes in the mind, involving focusing of attention, calling up of relevant memories, and learning the associations between events and their outcomes, among other things, are the processes with which education is most concerned. Yes, rational thought and logical reasoning do exist, although hardly ever truly devoid of emotion, but they cannot be recruited appropriately and usefully in the real world without emotion. Emotions help to direct our reasoning into the sector of knowledge that is relevant to the current situation or problem.

In Figure 1, we provide a graphical depiction of the neurological relationship between cognition and emotion. In the diagram, we have used the term emotional thought to refer to the large overlap between cognition and emotion. Emotional thought encompasses processes of learning, memory, and decision making, in both social and nonsocial contexts. It is within the domain of emotional thought that creativity plays out, through increasingly nuanced recognition of complex dilemmas and situations and through the invention of correspondingly flexible and innovative responses. Both the recognition and response aspects of creativity can be informed by rational thought and high reason. In our model, recognition and response processes are much like the concepts of assimilation and accommodation proposed by Piaget (1952, 1954). However, Piaget focused almost exclusively on cognition and the development of logic, and although he recognized a role for emotion in child development ( Piaget, 1981), he did not fully appreciate the fundamentally emotional nature of the processes he described.

In the diagram, high reason and rational thought also contribute to high-level social and moral emotions to form the specialized branch of decision making that is ethics. Motivated reasoning works in a similar manner and refers to the process by which emotional thoughts gain additional significance through the application of rational evidence and knowledge. In the other direction, rational evidence can be imposed upon certain kinds of emotional thought to produce the sort of automatic moral decision making that underlies intuitive notions of good and evil ( Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2001). For example, in evaluating the morality of incest, experimental evidence suggests that people decide quickly at the subconscious and intuitive level and later impose ad hoc rational evidence on their decision ( Haidt, 2001). Conversely, complex moral dilemmas such as whether to send a nation to war are (one hopes) informed by an abundance of rational evidence.

On the left side of the diagram, the bodily aspects of emotion are represented as a loop from emotional thought to the body and back. Here, emotional thoughts, either conscious or nonconscious, can alter the state of the body in characteristic ways, such as by tensing or relaxing the skeletal muscles or by changing the heart rate. In turn, the bodily sensations of these changes, either actual or simulated, contribute either consciously or nonconsciously to feelings, which can then influence thought. (Simulated body sensation refers to the fact that sometimes imagining bodily changes is sufficient; actually tensing the fists, for example, is not necessary.) This is the route by which rational deliberations over, say, a nation's wartime decisions can produce high-level social emotions such as indignation, as well as the bodily manifestations of these emotions, such as tensed fists, increased heart rate, or loss of appetite. The feeling of these bodily sensations, either consciously or not, can then bias cognitive processes such as attention and memory toward, in this case, aggression. The end result may be an unprovoked argument with one's friend over a topic totally unrelated to the war, the creation of a bleak and angry abstract painting, or a generally tense mood.

In addition to the evidence discussed above, support for these relationships between the body, emotion, and cognition comes mainly from neurobiological and psychophysiological research, in which the induction of emotion, either directly by a stimulus in the environment or indirectly via thoughts or memories, causes mental changes as well as physiological effects on the body. In turn, feelings of emotion rely on the somatosensory systems of the brain. That is, the brain areas associated with interoception (the sensing of body states) are particularly active as people feel emotions such as happiness, fear, anger, or sadness ( Damasio et al., 2000).

To conclude, in presenting this model, our goal is not to devalue established notions of cognition and emotion but to provide a biologically based account of this relationship and to begin to specify the nature of the overlap between cognition and emotion in a way that highlights processes relevant to education. These processes include learning, memory, decision making, and creativity, as well as high reason and rational thinking. They also include the influence of the mind on the body and of the body on the mind.

Educational implications: a call for further research

In teaching children, the focus is often on the logical reasoning skills and factual knowledge that are the most direct indicators of educational success. But there are two problems with this approach. First, neither learning nor recall happen in a purely rational domain, divorced from emotion, even though some of our knowledge will eventually distill into a moderately rational, unemotional form. Second, in teaching students to minimize the emotional aspects of their academic curriculum and function as much as possible in the rational domain, educators may be encouraging students to develop the sorts of knowledge that inherently do not transfer well to real-world situations. As both the early- and late-acquired prefrontal damage patients show, knowledge and reasoning divorced from emotional implications and learning lack meaning and motivation and are of little use in the real world. Simply having the knowledge does not imply that a student will be able to use it advantageously outside of school.

As recent advances in the neurobiology of emotions reveal, in the real world, cognition functions in the service of life-regulating goals, implemented by emotional machinery. Moreover, people's thoughts and feelings are evaluated within a sociocultural context and serve to help them survive and flourish in a social, rather than simply opportunistic, world. While the idea that learning happens in a cultural context is far from new ( Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne, & Moll, 2005), we hope that these new insights from neurobiology, which shed light on the nested relationships between emotion, cognition, decision making, and social functioning, will provide a jumping-off point for new thinking on the role of emotion in education. As educators have long known, it is simply not enough for students to master knowledge and logical reasoning skills in the traditional academic sense. They must be able to choose among and recruit these skills and knowledge usefully outside of the structured context of a school or laboratory. Because these choices are grounded in emotion and emotional thought, the physiology of emotion and its consequent process of feeling have enormous repercussions for the way we learn and for the way we consolidate and access knowledge. The more educators come to understand the nature of the relationship between emotion and cognition, the better they may be able to leverage this relationship in the design of learning environments.

In conclusion, new neurobiological evidence regarding the fundamental role of emotion in cognition holds the potential for important innovations in the science of learning and the practice of teaching. As researchers struggle with new directions and techniques for learning about these connections, a biological framework may help to constrain possibilities and generate new hypotheses and research directions. Just as neuroscience is coming to inform other education-related topics and problems ( Goswami, 2006), the study of emotions, creativity, and culture is ripe for interdisciplinary collaborations among neuroscientists, psychologists, and educators. After all, we humans cannot divorce ourselves from our biology, nor can we ignore the high-level sociocultural and cognitive forces that make us special within the animal kingdom. When we educators fail to appreciate the importance of students' emotions, we fail to appreciate a critical force in students' learning. One could argue, in fact, that we fail to appreciate the very reason that students learn at all.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments- This work was supported by a grant from the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California and by a grant from the Mathers Foundation.

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We Feel, Therefore We Learn: The Relevance of Affective and Social Neuroscience to Education

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ABSTRACT- Recent advances in neuroscience are highlighting connections between emotion, social functioning, and decision making that have the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the role of affect in education.