Emotion is fundamental to every learning and teaching situation for students and for staff. Yet how much do we consciously consider emotion in our educational practice? Interest is growing in STEMMB higher education about the role of emotion, and how to understand and work with it to improve learning and teaching experiences. We invite all staff who support learning to join this SIG to discuss how this relates to our experiences at Imperial.
This year, the SIG is co-lead by:
- Kate Ippolito (Principal Lecturer - Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship)
- Catherine Mansfield (Senior Strategic Teaching Fellow - Faculty of Natural Sciences)
- Manuela Mura (Senior Teaching Fellow - Faculty of Medicine Centre)
What will we discuss?
Through sessions held once per term, we will discuss questions such as:
• How do ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ emotions impact on student experiences and learning outcomes?
• What is the role of university in helping students to regulate emotion in challenging learning?
• How does emotion spread within cohorts and how can this be used to inform teaching, assessment and feedback design?
• How do the ways teachers and other staff feel influence educational practice?
Meeting Schedule:
We convene once a term to ensure everyone has the opportunity to participate and contribute. These meetings serve as a forum for lively discussions, presentations, demonstrations, and networking opportunities.
Communication Channels:
Our primary communication platform is Microsoft Teams. Here, you'll find updates on upcoming events (General Channel).
If you would like to join a SIG, fill out the form here to be added to the mailing list. You will then be informed about future activities.
We anticipate our discussions will be enjoyable, surprising and confusing enough to make us curious!
Meeting history
Agenda
Why an Emotion in STEMMB Education SIG?
What is the role of emotion in university learning and teaching? An introductory stimulus on what is ‘known’ and of current interest.
How does emotion influence teaching and learning in your practice? Small group discussion about experience and approaches.
Shaping our Special Interest Group – What would members like to get out of it? What are initial aspects of interest? Preferred meeting dates and formats?
Summary
We enjoyed an energizing first meeting exploring people's very varied reasons for being interested in emotions in STEMMB education (see Menti). These included wanting to better understand positive and negative emotional experiences of university students and teachers and how these impact on learning, teaching and well-being. Interest in specific experiences emerged, including emotion in HE linked to intercultural interaction and neurodivergence. Looking through the lens of emotion can help us see new ways of designing and facilitating more inclusive approaches. There is appetite to explore how we work with difficult emotions like disappointment and frustration, both to critically consider the role and value of these emotions and our choice of strategies as teachers for helping students to work with these emotions. In small groups, we shared examples that illustrate the importance of recognising the range of emotions experienced in challenging academic contexts. We look forward to exploring specific avenues next time.
Agenda
How emotionally (il)literate are you and your students and why does it matter? (Festival of Learning and Teaching workshop)
By Kate Ippolito, Dr Catherine Mansfield, Dr Manuela Mura
How emotionally literate...? Presentation
• Critically consider what being emotionally literate in a STEMMB university context means.
• Identify emotional experiences that you’d like to understand/regulate and why.
• Identify opportunities to develop your students’ and your emotional literacy.
• Use tools to initiate reflection and conversation about emotion in learning.
Summary
This session involved participants exploring the meaning and relevancy of emotional literacy in STEMMB Teaching and Learning by considering questions like: What is emotional literacy? Why is it important in STEMMB education contexts? How does emotional (il)literacy help or hinder learning and teaching?
We introduced Prof Marc Brackett’s framework of emotional literacy – RULER. An experiential approach enabled participants to apply the RULER framework to develop their own emotional literacy, better understand their students’ emotional literacy and support embedding this in practice. Together we identified specific approaches to facilitate better understanding of emotion our contexts and promote learning and teaching well.
View the recording of this event (Imperial log in required).
Agenda
Emotions in group working and learner collaboration
2 x 15 mins of input on examples from lab-based collaboration and team-based learning
Discussion, guided by the following questions:
- What emotions do you anticipate students will experience in group working?
- What are your emotional experiences of group work and how does this influence your teaching?
- How can/does group work design and set up influence emotion?
- How can group work be used as an opportunity to develop emotional literacy?
Summary
The group enjoyed presentations from Dr. Manuela Mura (Emotion emerging in biomedical science lab group work) and Dr Chris John (Clinical & Scientific Integration: Development of student empathy) about how they support students to work with the emotions they experience whilst collaborating in groups. Manuela presented her research that revealed how aware some students are of regulating their emotions as they learn together in lab pods. Chris talked about how the UG medicine module Clinical and Scientific Investigations module is designed to help students develop empathy. We had an interesting discussion including about how students developing emotional competence associated with group working should be reflected in learning outcomes. We also talked about emotions experienced during the interactions in teaching teams.
Agenda
Focus: Integrating emotional awareness into science-based curricula
12:00 – Introductions to the SIG, ‘emotion in education’ and each other.
12:05 – Dr Laura Patel, Principal Teaching Fellow in Dept of Chemistry (Emotions in Chemistry) and Dr Jon Fenton, Senior Teaching Fellow in Dept of Physics (Building Collective Intelligence ) share 10 min insights into how they are embedding approaches to help students understand and work with the emotional dimension of university learning into their first year UG curricula. Followed by questions and discussion.
12:40 – Experience and idea sharing over lunch.
13:00 – Small group discussion about where and how awareness raising about emotion in STEMMB learning can be meaningfully and helpfully integrated into science-based curricula.
13:20 – Whole group consideration of questions and take away ideas.
Summary
Laura and Jon's evidence-informed reflections on their rationale for building emotional awareness through undergraduate teaching and what they learnt from this provided valuable, practical examples. Participants were interested in how they had managed to integrate this into formal curricula, and indicators of engagement and impact - attendance, participation and evaluation data. Both highlighted students' willingness to engage in peer discussion in lecture theatre settings. Opportunities to embed conversations about emotion in learning in timely and meaningful ways, such as around groupworking, fieldwork and assessment were shared. We discussed the value of formally gathering and interpreting data that helps us make sense of, and observe changes, in students' reported emotion over time and how use of emotion terms is important e.g. difference between anger and frustration.
View the recording of this event (Imperial log in required).
Agenda
12:30 - Lunch
12:45 - 14:00 Small group discussion, led by Dr James Huff, Associate Professor, University of Georgia, based on his excellent and very well-received presentation this week's Festival of Learning and Teaching 2025 on "Building a resilient and relational teaching practice amid professional shame".
Summary
The small group discussion, inspired by James' keynote, created a valuable space for informal conversation about how the emotion of shame operates in university learning and teaching, and how we can work with shame and address problematic aspects. We used James' questions to scaffold our discussions around how shame is closely related to expectations of us as professionals and how we feel about those expectations:
1. What do I feel is expected of me in this moment?
2. Why does the expectation matter to me?
3. Do I want to meet the expectation?
4. Do I think I can meet the expectation at this time?
5. Who can I safely and bravely find connection with?
Feedback included that James had given us a way to recognise and talk about this personal emotion that has a significant impact our practice and interactions.
Agenda
Focus: Emotions in Action
Student Wellbeing Advisors, Anna Goodwin and Becky Zamora, will be leading our discussion with a focus on talking with students about uncomfortable learning-related emotions. Based on their valuable experiences and insights, they will promote understanding about why students may feel the way they do and introduce practical strategies for supporting emotional awareness. This will be helpful for thinking about personal tutoring, supervision and other conversations with students.
12:30 - Sandwich lunch available
12:40 - Interactive, discussion-based session led by Anna and Becky
13:50 - Taking ideas forward
Summary
Anna and Becky led a very engaging session, Emotions in Action, with a great in-person turn out, on how to better understand student and staff emotion and practical approaches for regulating emotion. Valuable take aways included 'thoughts are not facts', what do we have control over, challenges of empathy (even being too empathetic) and how to keep the agency with the students.
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