EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR EDUCATORS
Emotions arise most often through interactions - real or anticipated - between people. They are part of an organism's social environment. A useful way of thinking about an emotion is as a person's genetic and acquired motivational predisposition to react experientially, physiologically and behaviourally to particular internal and external variables
(Carlson & Hatfield, 1992). Our emotions prepare us for taking needed actions arising from interactions with others - they make it more efficient for us to run away when we are afraid, attack when angry and cooperate when happy, for example (Darwin, 1872/1998).
An emotional experience consists of several components, including the following (Carlson & Hatfield, 1992):
Subjective experience: This involves feelings of pleasure or displeasure, like or dislike, or arousal.
Physiological arousal: Emotions can be accompanied by dramatic physiological changes.
Expressive behaviours: These are facial expressions that typically signal a person's experience of a particular emotion.
Changes in cognition: Changes in thought processes can complement emotions. In general, our thoughts are consistent with and guided by our emotions.
The idea that emotions can assist learning is not entirely new. There are many studies in the literature suggesting that various cognitive tasks - such as creative problem-solving or deductive reasoning - are accomplished more efficiently when a person is in a certain mood (see, for example, Palfai & Salovey, 1993). A way in which learners can be 'smart', or clever, is by understanding their emotions and those of other people.
In his model of multiple intelligences, Gardner (1983: 239, original emphasis) describes a personal intelligence that he labelled as intrapersonal intelligence as follows:
The core capacity at work here is access to ones own