International Journal of Emotional Education

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Authors: Larisa McLoughlin, Barbara Spears and Carmel Taddeo

A substantial amount of research has documented the negative impact technology has on young people's lives: particularly cyberbullying and the negative mental health outcomes associated with it. Research examining how technology could promote mental health and wellbeing in young people however, needs further investigation. This paper reports on a mixed methods study, which involved quantitative online surveys (N=229), and face to face interviews (N=30), across eight South Australian high schools. This paper will only address the quantitative results. The study involved young people aged 12 to 17 years. This paper discusses the importance of social connectedness and the use of technology to promote social connectedness among young people. A key finding was that young people who were more socially connected, were more likely to cope actively in response to frequent cyber victimisation. They were more likely to seek help and have positive mental health as a consequence. Findings from this study could aid policy development, social media campaigns, and the education of health professionals, teachers, and parents about the benefits of technology and the importance of staying connected.

47 - 67

Authors: Antonella D'Amico

Developing Emotional Intelligence” is an Italian language multimedia tool created for children between 8 and 12 years of age. The software is based on the four ‘branches’ of model of emotional intelligence proposed by Mayer and Salovey and aims to evaluate and improve abilities in perception of emotions; using emotion to facilitate thought; understanding emotions; and managing emotions. In the software, four characters represent the four branches of emotional intelligence and guide children through the ‘world of emotions’ using drawings, animations, music, sounds and verbal instructions. The software is comprised of two components, namely an assessment section (27 items) and a training section (46 exercises). Both the assessment and the training sections aim to measure and improve children’s abilities in perceiving emotions (faces, drawings and music); using emotions (emotional synaesthesia and facilitation); understanding emotions (blend and transformation of emotions); and managing emotions (personal and interpersonal situations). Two studies involving primary and secondary school children respectively, demonstrated the efficacy of the training performed with the software in improving performance in emotional tasks and academic achievement in the linguistic-literary area. A comparison between the two studies offers interesting insights about the best ways to integrate technology in social and emotional learning programs.

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Authors: Francesca D'Errico, Marinella Paciello, Bernardina De Carolis, Alessandro Vattanid, Giuseppe Palestra, Giuseppe Anzivino

In times of growing importance and emphasis on improving academic outcomes for young people, their academic selves/lives are increasingly becoming more central to their understanding of their own wellbeing. How they experience and perceive their academic successes or failures, can influence their perceived self-efficacy and eventual academic achievement. To this end, ‘cognitive emotions’, elicited to acquire or develop new skills/knowledge, can play a crucial role as they indicate the state or the “flow” of a student’s emotions, when facing challenging tasks. Within innovative teaching models, measuring the affective components of learning have been mainly based on self-reports and scales which have neglected the real-time detection of emotions, through for example, recording or measuring facial expressions. The aim of the present study is to test the reliability of an ad hoc software trained to detect and classify cognitive emotions from facial expressions across two different environments, namely a video-lecture and a chat with teacher, and to explore cognitive emotions in relation to academic e-self-efficacy and academic adjustment. To pursue these goals, we used video-recordings of ten psychology students from an online university engaging in online learning tasks, and employed software to automatically detect eleven cognitive emotions. Preliminary results support and extend prior studies, illustrating how exploring cognitive emotions in real time can inform the development and success of academic e-learning interventions aimed at monitoring and promoting students’ wellbeing.

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Authors: John P. Portelli and Patricia Koneeny

The popular discourse of democratic education is home to numerous myths surrounding our conceptions of what inclusion means in today’s schools. Certain beliefs like the idea that offering equal opportunities for participation to all students regardless of individual need, which conflates equality and equity, or that democracy in classrooms involves nothing more than limitless inclusion are upheld as go-to solutions for the inevitable dilemmas for educators committed to inclusion. This paper argues that philosophical clarification of the concept of inclusion is urgently required by teachers, policy makers, and theorists of education committed to both democracy in education and democratic education. Our most urgent concern is related to the inherent attitude toward deficit implied by different understandings of inclusion. This is not necessarily due to the unclarities and ambiguities associated with the concept itself, but rather reflect the calculated and anticipatory way educators tend to approach classroom practice. We argue that with careful philosophical clarification, along with an entirely new stance on the part of teachers regarding their pedagogical practice and a reconceptualized notion of student ‘needs’, the concept of inclusion can continue to remain not only useful but essential to creating a robust democratic community in the classroom.

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Authors: Abdollah Makvandi, Farah Naderi, Behnam Makvandi, Reza Pasha and Parvin Ehteshamzadeh

Short Research Report: Academic optimism and organizational citizenship behaviour amongst secondary school teachers