Effects of Emotions and Stress on Learning by Lisa Melby

Emotions are important in adult learning because they can either impede or motivate learning[1] Every adult is unique in how they produce and process their emotions, anxieties, and their stress. It's important for adult learners to understand how emotions manifest themselves in learning and also in their life. Open, honest, friendly discussions are always a good idea.

When adults experience “negative cognitive emotional moments”, they exhibit the following behaviors:
* high absenteeism
* little or no engagement with classroom discussions
* an abundance of missed assignments
* appears more anxious
* can't concentrate; impaired attention control
* more attentive to non-verbal cues such as tone of voice, body posture, and
facial expression
* bad decision making
* slowed decision making
* impaired attention control
* biased memory recall for negative event
* shallow depth processing
* poor communication - excessive silence or talking; not listening; repeating
phrases

Guidelines for instructors are as such:
* encourage small-group work
* avoid singling students out in front of their peers
* avoid the absence of routine; routine is good because it cuts down on stress;
some content should be predictable

* show students that they DO have some control in what they do; this will
lessen some stress

* do not completely eliminate stress from your program
* focus on improving stress tolerance
* make sure to self-evaluate
* make students feel safe to interact, inquire, and fail
* become trustworthy
* read about the concept of psycho-physiological states; don't neglect its
message
* encourage students to take self-assessments
* have open, honest discussions about stress, anxiety, and emotions
* make sure not to treat adult learners as children - this produces
defensiveness
* make certain that students know how to access counseling services at/from
school

A deeper reflection on how to create the adequate emotional tone to facilitate learning is necessary to overcome the challenges of apathy, passiveness, or stress commanding attention in classroom settings today; settings low in emotional awareness that fail to produce a sense of engagement do not fully develop the student's potential[2].

Through research, we were able to find that some authors of adult education[3] feel that more research is needed to appropriately equip teachers with strategies to instruct in an environment that is "emotionally aware" and that offer “pragmatic techniques”; the information that is available is too "narrow" [4]. Furthermore, "relatively few scholars and practitioners in adult and higher education regard emotion as integral to the meaning-making process[5].

As an instructor, it's crucial that you set up the learning situation in a manner that arouses learners' feelings of security, well-being, and self-confidence. It's equally important to challenge them without threats, intimidation, or pressure[6].

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[1] Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2006[2] Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2007[3] Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2007; Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002)[4] Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2007[5] Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2007 [6] Weiss, 2000 as cited in Cleveland-Innes & Campbell, 2012(behaviors taken from: Gower, 2004 as cited in Bigdeli, 2010; Shuck, Albornoz & Winberg, 2007; Earhart, 2012; Mackeracher, 2004)

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