Emotions and the learning of school mathematics

• Author: Daniela Caprioara
• Position: Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania
• Pages: 9-18

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 10 (59) No. 1 - 2017

EMOTIONS AND THE LEARNING OF

SCHOOL MATHEMATICS

Daniela CĂPRIOARĂ1

Abstract: Emotions take central stage between the factors which influence

the success of the learning process and, in particular, learning mathematics,

along with the cognitive processes involved. In school practice, however, this

aspect is not fully recognized and, therefore, not valued to the extent that

might serve as important levers to ensure school success. Thus, valuable

resources the mathematics teacher might have to streamline the didactic

process are being lost, but the teacher must be prepaired in this regard. The

learning of mathematics must be seen and approached as a complex,

dynamic and continuous process, with multiple determiners.

Key words: emotion, mathematics anxiety, control strategy, classroom

climate

1. Introduction

Emotions, these “subjective reactions to the environment, accompanied by hormonal

and autonomic responses, usually proven to be agreeable or disagreeable and used as

adaptative reactions that affect our way of thinking” (Papalia & Olds, as cited in Raynal

& Rieunier, 2005, p. 118), are an incontestable reality of the school climate. Student life

is full of experiences more or less intense – joy, pleasure, satisfaction and so on (positive

emotions with sthenic effect, helping to increase exercise capacity), and hatred, sadness,

fear, anger, anxiety, disgust, fear, suffering and so on (negative emotions, with asthenic

consequences on the individual, contributing to the decrease of its exercise capacity).

Some authors would add to these emotions, guilt and shame, phenomena with a high

incidence in school. Therefore, “emotions are complex motivational systems, the

affective echo of the relationship between subject and objects, beings, phenomena. They

have spontaneous manifestation and create an affective tension […]” (Golu, 2014).

Emotions are part of the affective structure of the individual’s psychic system, located

at the interface between cognition and motivation. Cognition mediates and provides

signals in order to activate and trigger emotion. Between emotion and cognition there is a

bilateral relationship of mutual conditioning, but the referent of emotional experience is

always granted by the cognitive experience related to surrounding situations and objects.

The sign and the intensity of the feelings change according to the perception of the

situation or to its anticipated mental representation. The temporal rapport between the

cognitive processes (perception, representation or judgement) and the generation of

emotion is not determined. In general, congnition foregoes and conditions the generation

1 Ovidius University of Constanța, Romania, ccaprioara@yahoo.fr