The Interactive Effect of EFL Teachers’ Emotions and Cognitions on Their Pedagogical Practices

Emotion and cognition have long been considered as two influential factors determining the quality of teaching and learning. They form the foundation of all aspects of teaching as an emotional and thought-provoking profession. With the advent of Positive Psychology (PP) and affective pedagogy, now English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ inner states and emotions are placed at the center of every educational program all around the world. This consideration has led to a rise in various domains of teaching and teacher education. However, the interactive influence and association between teachers’ emotions and cognitions concerning their pedagogical practices has been mostly left ignored in EFL contexts. To fill this gap, the present study aimed to offer a mini-review of the concepts, definitions, related theories, and empirical evidence in this line of research. It also presented practical implications for different stakeholders together with research gaps and future directions for enthusiastic L2 investigators.

Reflection on Loving Pedagogy and Students' Engagement in EFL/ESL Classrooms

The role of positive emotions in language education has been exponentially approved in the literature. One such emotion which has been mostly neglected in EFL/ESL contexts due to irrational ethical and professional sensitivities is the concept of love. Although love in education highlights a caring environment and relationship which is oriented toward students' feelings and needs, little (if any) research has been done on a loving pedagogy in the context of EFL/ESL. Trying to shed some light on this novel construct, this review article presents the theoretical underpinnings of love, its definitions, dimensions, and positive outcomes in language learning. Moreover, two trends of positive psychology and affective pedagogy are described. Finally, the study presents the possible implications of this line of research for different stakeholders in EFL/ESL domains along with a number of research gaps and future directions for avid scholars in this area.

Weathering the storm together: Cultivating climate leadership through affective pedagogy and psychological support groups

How can students become transformational leaders if they are left alone to grapple with the emotional toll of climate change, preparing for careers while scientists sound the alarm that business as usual is untenable? Ecoanxiety, solastalgia, and climate grief are the affective undercurrents in sustainability and environmental science classrooms. This case study discusses strategies used to support students’ emotional well-being in an introductory sustainability class and a co-curricular climate change support group program at Oregon State University. Psychologists and sustainability educators created space for students and faculty to engage in authentic dialogues confronting the emotional uncertainty of the climate crisis and working together to define their roles building a resilient future.

Towards a Feminist and Affective Pedagogy of Vulnerability

This paper gives a theoretical-affective account of my experience of teaching the course “Vulnerability, Gender, and Justice.” Applied to pedagogy, the notion of vulnerability, diffractive methodologies, and rhizomatic thinking can potentially transform traditional ways of reading philosophy, of understanding ourselves, and of understanding how we are situated in practices within molar and molecular lines. This course aimed to activate potential lines of flight that may fly away from normativity.

Editorial

This issue shows how matter is mathematical, artistic, propositional, an ethical apparatus, affective pedagogy and, above all, everyday experiences. The combination of these elements can help to create innovative methodologies based upon affirmative practices able to undo the global state of pandemic in which human, and more-than-human beings, suffer from their own precarity.

Learning the Elsewhere of ‘Inner Space’

How is access to the Elsewhere facilitated through affective pedagogy in a contemporary Sufi setting in Germany? This article draws analytical lessons from Inayati healing seminars that took place in the summer of 2013. Participants were instructed to feel the Elsewhere of ‘inner space’ in the material/corporeal realities by attuning to breath, sonic resonance, collective movement, and attentive listening. The affective pedagogy of the teacher extended the spatial-temporal coordinates of the Elsewhere (as framed by Mittermaier) to include ‘fleeting affects’ among its unknown elements. These pedagogic tactics entangled religious and secular life-worlds with aesthetic and therapeutic traditions. Learning to feel the unknown affects emanating from the Elsewhere in this setting aimed to provide existential resources to cope with the everyday struggles of post-secular life.

Grace as Experience

This chapter gives a constructive account of saving encounter with divine grace, through the Spirit, in the context of embodied experience. It draws on the insights of affect theory and the “material turn” in religious studies to argue for the ongoing experiential plausibility of the doctrine of sin in the contemporary world. The chapter demonstrates that theologians in recent decades have tended to follow Lindbeck and Stendahl, amongst others, in making assumptions about the plasticity of human experience through the instruments of language and discursive practice, and that these assumptions require substantial qualification. The second half of the chapter builds on these insights, together with the theology of Martin Luther, to describe Christian experience of grace in terms of an affective pedagogy effected by the Spirit through the instruments of the law and the gospel. It concludes by showing how this account of grace can make religious sense of a wide variety of experiences of affective plight in the contemporary world.