‘Getting high on learning... but seriously!’ with Sandris Zeivots | Monday March 9, 2015 | 5.30pm

For decades emotions have been viewed as an obstacle in the learning environment. Only recently scholars and practitioners have started understanding the crucial role of emotions that affects the way we think, our motivation and beliefs, our attitudes and values. Meyer & Turner (2002) claim that learning is not likely to happen in the absence of emotions. While research on emotions is largely dominated by negative emotions, e.g. anxiety and stress, positive emotions have been often been left out and considered as less important human experiences. Lately positive emotions have begun to be considered as essential experiences for learning. Recent studies illuminate the essential benefits of positive emotions for learning, including broadening a learner’s thinking and attention, enhancing optimal human functioning and providing the seed for personal development. In this session, we will focus on strong positive emotions or ‘emotional highs’ and their role in learning. We will reflect on how emotional highs are ‘lived’ in different learning environments and reconsider some invisible features that may exist behind these experiences. Activities will be complemented with insights from the presenter’s journey researching emotional highs for a PhD. About Sandris Zeivots: Sandris Zeivots’ professional background is in experiential learning having facilitated personal and professional development courses for a decade. Sandris has just submitted his PhD on “Lived experience of emotional highs in experiential learning”. For further information contact Sandris on: sandris.zeivots@gmail.com.