The role of emotion in higher education: exploring global citizenship education

ABSTRACT

Students in higher education experience a range of academic emotions, from enjoyment or boredom in learning, to fear of failure or optimism about high stakes assessments. While there is general consensus regarding the importance of academic emotions, reflected in the increased emphasis on social and emotional learning, and advocacy for the inclusion of learning experiences that foster relevant competences – there remains the need to further understand the role of academic emotions in higher education. This paper explores the role of emotion in a university-based global citizenship education (GCE) intervention. Focus groups were conducted with 36 pre-service teachers across six teacher education programmes that explored participants’ understandings and experiences of GCE. Findings suggest marginally more naturally-occurring mentions of negative emotions and affect states compared to positive, with more of these relating to students’ responses to epistemic awareness of humanitarian issues, than to pedagogy. Some implications for practice are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic emotions
• epistemic emotions
• global citizenship education
• higher education

Introduction

Affective and emotion processes in students’ learning from pre-school through to post-school, have received extensive research attention over the past two decades, with less attention evident in higher education contexts (Kahu et al. 2015; Linnenbrink 2006). Thus, it is timely to acknowledge the need for a pedagogy of emotion in higher education (Marquis, Redda, and Twells 2018; Walker and Palacios 2016). Pekrun (2019) has made similar recommendations from the perspective of academic emotions, meaning those emotions linked to academic classroom instruction, learning and achievement. Students in higher education are likely to experience a wide range of academic emotions, such as pride in their achievements, enjoyment or boredom in learning, and fear of failure or optimism about assessment and other high stakes goals (Kahu et al. 2015; Pekrun 2019). While there is consensus on the importance of academic emotions in higher education, there remains the need to further understand and explore their role (Pekrun 2019). Furthermore, the international conceptualization of twenty-first century skills in education including higher education, places an emphasis on social and emotional skills, and advocates for competences such as compassion, empathy, awareness, openness and tolerance (Care et al. 2018). Development of such competences is entwined amongst the goals of global citizenship education (GCE), which is the context of the present study.

Emotions can be defined as ‘multi-component, coordinated processes of psychological subsystems including affective, cognitive, motivational, expressive, and peripheral physiological processes’ (Pekrun 2006, 316). Each component may be identifiable within a specific emotion (Pekrun 2006). In this paper, the authors focus on the affective and cognitive components of emotion. Affect refers to the experiential component of emotion (Lazarus 1991), as an embodied state related to the cognitive appraisal (or judgement) that an experience is either ‘good for me [or] bad for me’ (DeSteno, Gross, and Kubzansky 2013, 475). The terms affect and emotion may be used collectively (DeSteno, Gross, and Kubzansky 2013), or interchangeably (Izard 2000a). Core affect acknowledges the awareness of a certain level of activation, perceived as pleasant (positive) or unpleasant (negative) (Posner, Russell, and Peterson 2005). Cognitively, emotions are ‘organized cognitive-motivational-relational configurations whose status changes, with changes in the person-environment relationship as this is perceived and evaluated (appraised)’ (Lazarus 1991, 38). In academic contexts, positive emotions may be associated with cognitive appraisals of success, and negative emotions with appraisals of failure (Pekrun 2006).

Since the 1970s, there have been numerous educational drives to incorporate a greater sense of global citizenship education (GCE), social awareness and responsibility in higher education (Hogan and O'Flaherty 2022; McCormack and O'Flaherty 2010; O'Flaherty and Liddy 2018). Sklarwitz (2017, 179) suggests that in order for individuals to take action to address issues of social justice, they ‘must engender attitudes that support three dimensions of global citizenship including global competence, global social responsibility, and global civic engagement’. In this article, based on theories of Lazarus (1991) and Pekrun (2019), we interpret attitude as a tripartite theory incorporating affect, cognition and behaviour (Lee et al. 2015), of which affect and cognition may be regarded as the ‘building blocks’ (Keer et al. 2013, 896). Attitude involves ‘an evaluation of an object [or concept] in terms of the degree of it being favourable or unfavourable’ (Lee et al. 2015, 911). Attitudes may predict approach- or avoidance-oriented behaviours, which for the purposes of GCE, include appropriate, pro-social, active and competent engagement in global affairs. Attitudes can be powerful or weak, with affectively-based attitudes likely to persist longer than cognitively-based, the latter perhaps being more responsive to persuasion (Keer et al. 2013). Attitude change in GCE is more likely when students are both affectively and cognitively engaged. GCE coursework is therefore designed to promote social responsibility, and develop active citizenship that is cognizant of local and global issues (Lima and Brown 2007; Sklarwitz 2017; Tarrant 2010). Pedagogical processes and practices are integrated to engage affective elements of the attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions students have about global citizenship (McCormack and O'Flaherty 2010; O'Flaherty and Liddy 2018; Sklarwitz 2017).

This paper explores the role of emotion in university-based GCE interventions. In the next sections, we discuss our conceptual understanding of academic emotions in higher education. We briefly describe GCE in higher education and describe the context of this research. The study was framed by the following research question, what is the role, if any, of emotion in the GCE learning experiences and outcomes of this cohort of pre-service teachers? The methodology and findings are reported. Finally, some ways of understanding these findings and implications for practice are explored.

Academic emotions

Academic emotions fall into three categories: achievement emotions, social emotions, and epistemic emotions (Pekrun 2019). Epistemic emotions are elicited by the cognitive characteristics of learning tasks, are fundamental to the learning process, and may include surprise, curiosity or confusion, (Pekrun et al. 2017). Cognitive dissonance can occur in response to exposure to new epistemologies and challenging worldviews. Resolving this dissonance may require students to manage strong negative emotions (Cancino-Montecinos, Björklund, and Lindholm 2018). Using the Epistemic Emotions Scale (EES), Pekrun et al. (2017, 1272) assessed the emotions experienced by university students while reading controversial texts on climate change. Two main factors emerged: ‘positive affect’, including interest, curiosity, surprised, happy and joyful, and ‘negative affect’ including bored, irritated, worried and confused.

Interest is regarded as both an affective and cognitive state, in that there is a cognitive focus accompanied by an alert physiology. Lazarus (1991) regards interest as a pre-emotion along with surprise. In contrast, Izard (2007) suggests interest is a basic emotion stating that, ‘it would be difficult to conceive of an emotion that is more important than interest’ (Izard 2000b, 332). Interest may be associated with cognitive appraisals of high pleasantness and enjoyment, or unpleasantness (Turner and Silvia 2006). Interest may also be a pre-existing intrinsic preference held by a person, or developed as a result of a novel situation eliciting interest at the time, termed situational (Hidi and Renninger 2006).

Epistemic empathy has been the focus of recent research on epistemic emotions in pre-service teacher education (Jaber, Southerland, and Dake 2018). Empathy may be regarded as a synonym for compassion, which both Lazarus (1991) and Pekrun (2019) have categorized as an emotion. Compassion is also a twenty-first century skill goal of GCE (Care et al. 2018). The epistemic approach extends our general understandings of empathy beyond its essential humanitarian component, to also understand ‘how teachers come to identify with learners’ intellectual and emotional work of constructing, communicating and critiquing knowledge’ (Jaber, Southerland, and Dake 2018, 15). Empathy has both cognitive and affective components. The cognitive component enables perspective taking, while the affective component comprises the emotional ‘tuning into’ (Oxley 2011, 14) another person’s experience. It has been suggested that teachers’ empathetic desires to protect students from emotional stress might impede students’ emotional engagement in challenging tasks, or controversial epistemologies. Therefore, the epistemic approach to empathy encourages teachers to ‘attune to and make sense of the cognitive and emotional dynamics’ (Jaber, Southerland, and Dake 2018, 16) experienced by students as they negotiate their learning of new epistemologies.

Transformative learning

Transformative learning is defined as ‘learning that transforms problematic frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, reflective, open and emotionally able to change’ (Mezirow and Taylor 2009, 22). Transformative learning usually commences with a ‘disorienting dilemma’ (Mezirow and Taylor 2009, 102), that is triggered by a realization of an inconsistency among thoughts, feelings and actions, creating an uncomfortable experience of disequilibrium. If the learner is willing to reflect upon these dissonances, they may be more open to re-examining and revising currently-held epistemic beliefs and assumptions, towards ‘overturning habits of mind’ (Bamber, Lewin, and White 2018, 212). Strong affective or emotional responses may be the first indicator of the disorienting dilemma, which has been acknowledged as prevalent in higher education in response, not only to global justice education (Marquis, Redda, and Twells 2018), but also to the academic demands of university study (Lummis et al. 2019). Mezirow (1981, 7) suggests that the ‘traumatic severity of the disorienting dilemma is clearly a factor in establishing the probability of a transformation’. In one example, South African university students undertaking a citizenship education project underpinned by a ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ (Constandin and Alexander 2019, 5), reported ‘visceral [and] powerful’ affective first responses, including shame, anger and a desire for forgiveness, eventually leading to their increased social awareness and desire to prevent future social injustices. The transformative process aligns with UNESCO’s stated goals for GCE, to gradually expand students’ perspectives to connect and engage with other perspectives and possibilities (UNESCO 2014).

Global citizenship education

In Europe, the term global citizenship education (GCE) is commonly used to encompass development education, human rights education, education for sustainability, education for peace and conflict prevention and intercultural education (Global Education Network Europe [GENE] 2015). Hovland (2005) notes that GCE provides students with an opportunity to gain knowledge about the world’s people and problems, explore tensions that affect the world, and discover how their own identity fits with these tensions. Takkac and Akdemir (2012) emphasize the importance of the interdependence of local and global issues. A number of international policies aim to support these goals including the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO 2012) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN 2015). Goal 4.7 stipulates that by 2030 we must ensure that all learners, acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development (UN 2015). Equally, the focus and inclusion of ‘global competencies’ in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), focuses on building:

the capacity [of young people] to analyse global and intercultural issues critically and from multiple perspectives, to understand how differences affect perceptions, judgements, and ideas of self and others, and to engage in open, appropriate and effective interactions with others from different backgrounds on the basis of a shared respect for human dignity. (OECD 2016, 4)

In Ireland, the inclusion of global development topics in education is termed both development education (DE) and GCE (McCormack and O'Flaherty 2010; Baily, O'Flaherty, and Hogan 2017; Irish Aid 2021). DE as an educational process, supports the learner to critically engage with local and global development issues, it supports the learner to explore complex, interdependent and inter-related issues such as poverty, inequality, production and consumption, climate change, population growth, migration, homelessness, sustainability, conflict and human rights (Ubuntu Network 2017). Irish Aid¹ defines GCE as ‘a lifelong educational process, which aims to increase public awareness and understanding of the rapidly changing, inter-dependent and unequal world in which we live’ (Irish Aid 2021). To reflect the ‘mainstreaming’ of DE and GCE, there have been a number of policy and practice initiatives in Ireland aimed at incorporating a greater sense of global and social responsibility in the formal education sector (DES 2016). The Irish National Strategy for Higher Education 2030 articulates the need to ‘place more emphasis on generic skills, especially those required for … active citizenship’ (DES 2011, 56), within a context where higher education needs to evolve to meet new social and cultural challenges both locally and globally. In alignment with these goals, the Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education, published by the Teaching Council of Ireland (2020) includes GCE as a core element for all initial teacher education programmes. The Ubuntu Network supports teacher educators to incorporate DE/GCE into post-primary teacher preparation programmes. The integration framework adopted by the Network (Ubuntu Network 2017), advocates that DE/GCE is blended incrementally across programmes in areas including subject pedagogy/methods modules, foundation modules and school placement experiences. Such an approach has been shown to increase the capacity of pre-service teachers to engage with development issues and integrate DE into their teaching (McCormack and O'Flaherty 2010; Baily, O'Flaherty, and Hogan 2017).

Methodology

This study reports a subset of data from a larger study on pre-service teachers’ engagement with GCE/DE programmes. The study is embedded within the interpretivist paradigm, which helps us understand the world of human experience (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2018) through the existence of multiple realities (Dumas and Anderson 2014). At the time of data collection, participants had completed a variety of GCE/DE interventions that were designed as active and participatory educational processes that support the learner to build an awareness and understanding of local and global development issues and their interconnectedness. Approaches to GCE varied within institutions, thus ensuring appropriateness to the nature and culture of individual programmes. Interventions included immersive GCE week, engagement with elective modules; a focus on subject pedagogics e.g. CSPE, Geography, Politics and Society, Mathematics, Art and Design and an integrated approach, where GCE related content/pedagogies were included in a variety of modules across the programme. A review of project proposals suggests that the following GCE issues were addressed within the interventions: inequality; children’s rights; human rights; global food production; environmental issues; the role of education in society; social justice and critical media literacy. All participants were in the final semester of their university programme. Ethical approval was sought and granted from the Institutional Ethics Review Board. Informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to data collection. The study was framed by the following research question: what is the role, if any, of emotion in the GCE learning experiences and outcomes of this cohort of pre-service teachers?

Methods

Focus groups were conducted with 36 pre-service teachers across six teacher education programmes and explored participants’ understandings and experiences of GCE/DE. Participants were selected based on convenience and timetabling availability in participant institutions. Focus groups were audio-recorded for transcription purposes. Participants reflected upon their engagement with GCE/DE interventions through a series of open-ended questions exploring their understandings and experiences of GCE/DE, their confidence in, and intentions for integrating GCE/DE in their teaching upon qualification as teachers. Sample questions included: How do you understand GCE; Can you describe your experience of the GCE intervention; Where there particular aspects that you enjoyed / did not enjoy; How would you integrate GCE in to your teaching; What are the challenges, in your view, of integrating GCE into your future teaching. During these discussions, a range of emotions and affective states were reported.

Data analysis strategy

Using deductive thematic analysis, the focus group transcripts were explored for mentions of emotion and affective states, guided by the theoretical perspective that emotions and affect provide diagnostic indicators as to what is important for those expressing these (Braun and Clark 2013; Lazarus 1991; Pekrun 2019). The emotion and affect terms were identified, and tallied (Braun and Clark 2013). Multiple coders allowed for the emotion and affect coded tallies to be applied in a reliable way.

Findings and discussion

Emotion and affective states have been separated into positive and negative affect, using the EES (Pekrun et al. 2017) as a general guide. Findings will be presented as follows: the frequencies of mention of emotion and affect; the context of emotion and affect states as focusing on the self (S), other (O) or general (G) and finally, epistemic and pedagogical emotion and affect states shall be presented.

Positive affect

(Table 1) The most commonly reported positive states were open(ness) and interest, referred to by all six focus groups across personal, coded as self (S), other (O), and general (G) contexts, in relation to both epistemic understanding (E) and pedagogy (P). Openness is traditionally regarded as a personality trait or disposition. ‘Open people actively seek out experience, and are apt to be particularly reflective and thoughtful about the ideas the encounter’ (McCrae and Costa 1997, 830). Openness is treated as a positive affective state in this study and is also a component of transformative learning as part of emotional responsiveness (Mezirow and Taylor 2009). Participants referred to the need to ‘open their [school student’s] eyes to what’s outside the classroom’.

It was really eye-opening […] Like what we have, what we need to develop ourselves in comparison to other countries, like what they were dealing with and we’re pretty-well off. It was just really eye opening to see the difference and how much we can help even by doin’ [sic] just a little. (FG1)

I think generally the students are open to it, it’s just actually giving it priority alongside everything else is difficult. (FG2)

Table 1. Frequencies of positive affect terms.

Positive affect	Frequency of mention	Context Self (S), other (O), general (G)	Epistemic (E) Pedagogical (P)
Open	6	S, O, G	E, P
Interested	6	S, O, G	E, P
Care	4	S, O, G	E, P
Enjoyment	3	S, O, G	P
Excited	2	S, O	P
Confident	2	S	P
Passionate	2	O, G	E
Comfort	1	S, G	E
Complacent	1	S, G	E
Empathy	1	O, G	E, P
Cautious	1	S	P
Surprised	1	O	E
Curious	1	O	E
Enthusiastic	1	O	E
Blown away	1	S	E

Openness has predicted interest in Chinese post-primary school students (Zhang, Dong, and Yang 2019), and moderated anxiety and stress during independent problem solving, in Australian university students and researchers (Sanatkar and Rubin 2020).

Interest was mentioned 26 times across the six FG’s. Ten of these mentions pertained to the self, where participants reported feeling interested in some epistemic or pedagogic aspect of GCE/DE. Six of the mentions were attributed to their school students’ interest within their placement classrooms. Examples of these are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Examples of interest attributions across antecedent contexts of self, other and general.

Focus Group (FG)	Contexts Self (S), Other (O), General (G)	Examples
FG 1	O, S, G	‘I was saying that to one of the teachers: ‘It’s hard to fit it in’ and she had actually done a Masters in climate change and she was really interested, she said:’ Don’t push it till Third Year, don’t even go near it’ which was very different to what we were told here’. ‘But in Music I was interested, like the students I had, they were interested in Fair Trade’. ‘Some people are very interested in it; you could give them an option to do more, a module here or there’.
FG 2	G	‘Do people have time or interest?’
FG 3	S	‘There was a heavy emphasis on visual representation and ways to use that using pictures and to really hammer home the point of political literacy so that you’re not seeing an image in a really reductionist way … That was really interesting. These days, everything is so visual: Instagram and Facebook. Critical thinking is crucial’.
FG 4	S, G	‘Yeah and then you were given our own time to research whatever you had an interest in’. ‘So it was kind of interesting then actually figure it out so everyone’s poster different things. Kind of everyone had different ideas’. ‘I think though, it’s to do with different people’s interests as well cos some people were very interested in it’.
FG 5	S, O	‘I thought it was really interesting. There was a session where different pictures were put all around the room. And we had to identify who do you think these people are and even bringing around the global issue of racism and cultural diversity and things like that’. ‘A lot of students I had were like: We didn’t wanna go, we had to go, and found it really interesting’. ‘I think from that point of view it depends how it’s put to teachers … If it’s something they’re interested in, then there will be more of a take up on it where they’ll want to learn about it. They’ll want to better their kids’ knowledge in their classes’.
FG 6	S, O	‘Just the fact that the nature of the course is cross curricular I think that’s of interest for us as educators and for them as students’. ‘Yeah I would say that it’s interesting how I’m currently almost doing a kind of DE scheme looking at peace and the troubles in the North … so it’s tapping into what interests them’.

As shown in Table 2, the FG discussions yielded several examples of intrinsic interest (Hidi and Renninger 2006). FG1 identified the intrinsic interests of the classroom teacher in GCE/DE, the participant (self) in music, and the school students’ interest in Fair Trade. Having found a ‘music thing’ (Table 2) for Fair Trade, the participant further explained that, ‘I played a song about bananas and earning money through bananas and it’s from [region] I think’. Reference was also made to the intrinsic interest of ‘some people’ in general. Situational interest (Hidi and Renninger 2006), was evident in statements such as, ‘that was really interesting’ and ‘it was interesting’. These statements align with the perspective of situational interest as a consequential state, resulting from behavioural engagement in the learning experience (Schmidt and Rotgans 2017). In FG5, an example of reluctant participants who eventually ‘found it really interesting’ after engaging with the work, supports this perspective and epitomizes a key goal of education where students’ interest can be captured and developed based on effective pedagogy in the learning situation. Effective situational interest can result in the development of intrinsic interest in higher education (Quinlan 2019). In Irish pre-service teacher education, McCauley, Davison, and Byrne (2015, 319) found that effective collaborative learning activities ‘create a bridge between situational and personal interest’ and may lead to persistent intrinsic interest.

Both epistemic and pedagogical perspectives on interest were articulated (Table 2). Epistemic intrinsic interest in music, Fair Trade and ‘whatever you had an interest in’ was identified across three of the FGs. Epistemic situational interest was stimulated in the FG1 example noted above, and in FG5’s example having to identify people and relate to global issues. In comparison, FG3 expressed interest in the emphasis on visual images as a pedagogical method, and the need for support. The confronting pedagogical approach using visual images, as is commonly employed in GCE (Constandin and Alexander 2019), and was noted as being interesting from a pedagogical perspective, alongside cautions for its use. As summed up by one participant,

f you’re gonna [sic] give it to the teacher who just throws it in a corner and not have an interest in it, they’re not going to enjoy it. They’ll just sit there. But if you make it interesting (they will).

Returning to Table 1, 10 of the 15 positive states (66.66%) were reported in relation to the self (S). Eleven of the 15 positive states were predominantly associated with epistemic understanding and knowledge (E) (Pekrun 2019), eight were related to pedagogical practices (P), and four were discussed in both categories. Examples of care and caring were expressed as what ‘you’ need to do, especially when using visual images as a pedagogical tool in teaching GCE (Constandin and Alexander 2019). While acknowledging the importance of visual images as an ‘eye opening’ methodology, participants were also concerned about the impact that such images had on school children. As one participant said, ‘it comes back to being careful of the pictures you use’. Another said that some people ‘couldn’t care less’ about humanitarian issues, that it was important to ‘get them to care’ (E). However, there was acknowledgement of the need to teach this topic sensitively (P), due to extending students’ comfort zones, and potential complacency.

It takes care as well cos being politically correct around here, is so difficult … it’s such a sensitive area, you’re gonna [sic] offend someone, somewhere. (FG1)

Another noted:

I think you definitely need to be careful with how you present it. What pictures you use and what they portray and what impact they can have on students. (FG5)

These aspects requiring care, could be dealt with through teaching with empathy, as explained by three participants in FG1:

One of the most important things is looking at empathy and building on empathy with the students and starting with that.

I love situations or even roleplay, to put themselves in situations that they have empathy.

I think to link in with what you’re talking about empathy and what you’re talking about raising awareness, again just getting back to what [DE] is all about.

FG1’s empathy discussion aligns with the role of empathy as a social emotion in academic contexts (Pekrun et al. 2002). Empathy may also assist students’ ‘achievement of epistemic ends’ (Jaber, Southerland, and Dake 2018, 15). As implied in FG1, in pedagogy, there should be a balance between supporting students’ emotional wellbeing to minimize anxiety and supporting them to safely experience and regulate their emotions in response to epistemic content (Jaber, Southerland, and Dake 2018).

Personal enjoyment was expressed in relation to pedagogical visual presentation mode, ‘I really enjoyed the module, and coming from the visual point of view we all really liked, it was much more engaging’. Another participant explained that the apparent enthusiasm and enjoyment as shared by former students was helpful for their understanding, both epistemic and pedagogical.

It was great to hear from their perspective and how they feel about it. They were very enthusiastic about it and they seemed to really enjoy doing it and taking part and applying it to their subjects. (FG1)

Other positive states emerged when discussing pedagogy. For example, to prevent stereotyping, one participant suggested a debate comparing conditions in their capital city with those of a focus country, anticipating that the students would ‘be really surprised to find’ the number of similarities. Another participant summed up, ‘I think that’s important to remember, you should go with what they’re [school students] really interested in or what they have a passion for, what they’re curious about. You should follow that to encourage them’. Finally, two participants noted feeling personally ‘more confident’ in their knowledge (E) and teaching (P) of GCE/DE, subsequent to their learning experiences. One participant simply stated ‘I’m excited’. Another explained that the host teachers were ‘really excited about it, but they hadn’t any prior knowledge of it and how to implement it’.

In summary, these naturally-occurring mentions of positive emotions and affect have shown that openness, interest, and care were common to both pedagogical and epistemological emotions. More intense epistemic emotions such as passion and enthusiasm were relevant to epistemic awareness, while enjoyment, confidence and excited were more relevant to their anticipated pedagogical practices.

Negative affect

Of the 16 negative states shown in Table 3, three emotions shocked, concerned, panic were mentioned twice, while the remaining emotions were mentioned once. Shocked was recalled by two participants in response to realizing how much they did not know about GCE/DE (epistemic knowledge), compared to previous students. One participant explained, ‘Honestly I was so shocked and I was just like, they [previous students] know so much because of this and their eyes have been opened and widened to issues all around the world’. Another explained that in viewing humanitarian situations statistically,

I think we become desensitised to a level even where we don’t think that we are. I think that it takes doing your own research project where you put the body of research together [yourself] that you get really shocked by it.

These discussions align with transformative learning perspectives that occur in resposnse to disorienting dilemmas (Constandin and Alexander 2019).

Table 3. Frequencies of negative affect terms.

Negative affect	Frequency of mention	Context Self (S), other (O), general (G)	Epistemic (E) Pedagogical (P)
Shocked	2	S	E
Concerned	2	S	E, P
Panic	2	S, O	P
Ignorant	1	S	E
Frustrated/ing	1	S	E
Uncomfortable	1	S	E
Boring	1	S	E
Mad	1	S	E
Confused	1	S, O, G	E, P
Worried	1	S, O, G	E, P
Fear	1	S	P
Pressured	1	S	P
Overwhelmed	1	O	P
Depressing	1	G	E
Upset	1	O	E
Pity	1	O	E

Concerned was expressed in regard to the lack of prior knowledge, ‘I don’t think I would have really known much to be concerned about’ (E). Another stated their pedagogical concern about the ‘big focus’ on lesson planning (P). Panic was expressed in response to the amount of work and lack of structure, due mostly to students’ school placement experiences, trying to fit GCE/DE into the curriculum. One participant described it as ‘mad panic’. Other negative emotions and affective states mentioned included ignorant and uncomfortable. As one participant explained, ‘to be honest, for me, I felt so ignorant that I didn’t know what it [GCE/DE] was’. Another participant indicated how they experienced discomfort.

But that uncomfortable truth of ‘what I do and what I buy’ affects other people you know yourself you have to choose your own ways and how you’re going to interact with society. …. So, it’s an uncomfortable truth what I’m doing right now is affecting millions of people elsewhere. (FG1)

This participant’s description provides insights into their development of a new ‘habit of mind’ (Bamber, Lewin, and White 2018), through gaining insights into the global effects of their shopping, in alignment with UNESCO’s (2014) gradual process.

Twelve of the 16 negative states (75%) were personal states experienced by the participants themselves (S), of which confused also referred to others (O) and generally (G). Twelve states related to the participants’ epistemic understandings (E), and seven related to pedagogy (P). Frustrating was described by a participant from an epistemic perspective,

There’s such a need for publicity and it’s not getting out there. Between journalism and whatever, conformism media, it’s just not. They don’t think it’s of interest or of interest enough, that it would sell papers or whatever the case may be, which I find really frustrating. (FG2)

Confusion relating to epistemic beliefs was stated personally (S),

Even we would be confused cos [sic] you read one paper which could have one opinion. And then you talk to someone on the street who’ll have a completely, like even the refugee crisis, everybody’s [different] so I think as adults we’re confused. (FG 6)

Confusion was also encountered pedagogically, as to who should teach this topic (G), ‘So I think there’s a lot of handing the responsibility to other people and I think in some ways it’s very confused’.

The remaining personally-reported negative states related mainly to pedagogical aspects. For example, feeling worried about creating the ‘perfect lesson plan’, under pressure of time and curriculum expectations, and performance-related teaching fear. One participant explained their epistemic process as follows:

… it can get very deep and down and depressing but we’ve actually things to learn from these societies. They were talking about the danger of thinking ‘our way’s the right way’ because we’re more developed in some areas. It’s not like that. We’ve to learn from other countries and cultures and stuff in all the subjects. (FG1)

Dealing with sensitive issues such as the refugee crisis, had both epistemic and pedagaogical challenges, ‘Y’know [sic] how do you deal with an issue such as that? Could be very personal and get very upset. I think it’s a very sensitive [topic]’. Pity was expressed later in the same FG discussion in the context of it being ‘a pity that not all students will get the opportunity to study DE’ consistent with pity as a social emotion (Pekrun 2019).

Bored, ‘blown away’ and mad

The entwined nature of epistemic understanding and pedagogy within GCE/DE is exemplified in the way that this participant described the journey from boredom to awareness, with emotions elicited along the way, through asking and answering the following question:

How am I going to learn to bring DE into [the] Irish? [language] … I went in with that in my head. This is going to be so boring, sure we’re not going to learn anything. I went in and it was staring me right in the face. I watched the film. I had watched that in school and completely forgotten about it. But I never realised, that this is DE. How that lad came over to Ireland. He knew everything that was in the dictionary, went into an Irish speaking place and they hadn’t a clue what he was saying. It shows that cultural diversity and it shows how we have prejudices against that: people who come in and he was doing his best to integrate and he was excluded. It might have been the way he was pronouncing his words cos the dialect was different. I just learnt so much. How did I not realise that? That was one of the things that stood out for me so much. That’s how I’m going to use it in my classroom. Even if I’m just going to ask questions about the movie. Or give the kids the questions first and find the answers in the movie. That’s integrating it into the classroom and I was just totally blown away. First of all, I was so mad at myself because how did I think it couldn’t be brought into Irish? Obviously, it can in so many ways. I was even more mad that I had seen that film, that video, and I just hadn’t thought of it. (FG5)

This participant has described transformational learning (Mezirow and Taylor 2009). Expecting to find the movie boring, the participant found the story confronting, ‘staring me in the face’ causing them to further question their assumptions resulting in feeling mad at the self for not having learned this before, especially having seen this movie before. Emotional responses are integral to transformational learning, tending to commence with negative emotions associated with discomfort. Mezirow (1990) has noted guilt and shame as commonly experienced during this phase, with fear and frustration acknowledged as part of the process. Finding new meaning should reduce these negative emotions, so that we might expect more positive emotions such as confidence and eagerness being experienced upon completion of transformational learning (Kerins et al. 2020). Having gone through the self-reflective process and social discourse within the focus group, this participant has experienced an intensely-surprising ‘blown away’ epistemic change. Irish students on placement in Africa, revealed a similar transformative process, whereby the initial feelings of ‘being driven mad’ (Ryan 2012, 43), changed through increased cultural understanding and acceptance.

In summary, there was only one more naturally-occurring mention of negative emotions and affective states compared to positive (16:15), with more of these respectively (13:10), relating to participants’ personal responses to epistemic awareness of humanitarian issues, than to pedagogy. Discussions about pedagogy – both their own and as observed in other teachers, elicited mentions of worry, feeling overwhelmed, panic and fear. These emotions reflect participants’ appreciation of the importance of teaching these sensitive topics with care and empathy. Both positive and negative emotions and affective states discussed in the FG’s have provided insights into the personal epistemic changes experienced by these participants during GCE/DE interventions. They reveal participants’ developing awareness of the issues for themselves individually and collectively, in combination with their perspectives on pedagogical implications requiring care and empathy in teaching GCE/DE.

While examining the role of emotion in GCE/DE interventions contributes to our understanding of emotion in higher education, some caution is required when interpreting these findings. First, this small convenience sample was recruited from six pre-service teacher preparation programmes in Ireland. Second, qualitative studies are helpful, but by themselves do not allow for a sufficient level of causal inference in the current policy context. More replication studies with rigorous designs are needed to build the evidence base to better understand emotion in higher education.

Implications for practice

In order to develop our understanding of the role of academic emotions in higher education the authors suggest the following implications for practice: consideration of students’ personal values and beliefs, instruction in the pedagogy of emotion and finally the need to focus explicitly on enhancing and assessing students’ own emotional competence. Results reported here support the general aims and purposes of GCE as articulated earlier, where interventions are designed from the perspective of ‘engendering attitudes’ (Sklarwitz 2017, 179), and gaining knowledge that encompasses a desire to change and feel empathy. Oppenheim (1992) suggests that attitudes are enforced by beliefs that attract strong feelings, and these feelings may lead to particular behaviours or actions. Reflecting the work of Sklarwitz (2017), it is important to recognize that students engage with GCE coursework with a variety of personal values and beliefs, and the individual prior experiences of students may impact the way in which they engage with the coursework. Our university participants were pre-service teachers and demonstrated some metacognitive and reflective appraisal of content learning. Some shared their personal disorienting dilemmas experienced through a continuum from ignorance, through shock and anger at the self. Participants essentially occupied two roles – learning about the concept and experiencing their personal emotions, then considering how to teach this content to others.

In developing our understanding of a pedagogy of emotion in GCE/DE for pre-service teachers, it is important to acknowledge that this process involves two steps. First, pre-service teachers must be supported in learning about emotionally-challenging issues, and dealing with their emotional responses. This requires explicit instruction in the pedagogy of emotion in GCE/DE interventions – which begins with the self. In this study, participants experienced their emotional responses in real time in the real-world context of becoming aware of confronting issues and having their comfort zones disrupted as a result of their individually experienced disorienting dilemmas, that ‘always involved emotions’ (Meyer and Turner 2002, 107). From the perspective of developing social awareness and empathetic dispositions (Sklarwitz 2017), this is an important finding. As one student noted, it is easy to become immune to global problems when viewing these solely statistically, but when being confronted with realistic sights and sounds at the human level, emotions are engaged as a natural response. GCE/DE interventions draw upon visual methods and pedagogical approaches (Constandin and Alexander 2019). Having acknowledged that this creates the disorienting dilemma, we can also see emotion regulation moving participants from focusing on their own experience to cognitively reappraising these responses through the lens of interest, even being able to note that some aspects of teaching GCE/DE can be enjoyable. Moving into the state of interest brings more cognitive processes into the reflection (Lazarus 1991). The very process of formulating the question of ‘how might we teach this?’ is a cognitive reappraisal which is one of the more effective emotion regulation strategies according to Gross (2013).

Second, pre-service teachers must develop their pedagogy for teaching about these issues in the real-life context of school. GCE/DE interventions may offer a useful vehicle for pre-service teachers to develop empathy not only for the topic, but also pedagogical empathy whereby they become experientially aware of the potentially emotional impacts on their students and how to teach with empathy. GCE and empathy development may be mutually informative and supporting of same. Participants in this study articulated their processes of achieving their change in attitudes, therefore, mirroring transformative learning. This analysis uncovered the natural process that occurs for pre-service teachers who – like teachers, have described a process of understanding their own emotional responses and resulting changes (e.g. Sutton 2004). They have reflected on the process, as well as the content of their own learning and can then anticipate how they might facilitate engagement with this content. The focus groups provided a safe space for students to reflect upon their learning, an opportunity for the social discourse that has enabled the depth of their learning to be articulated and consolidated. This qualitative analysis has shown that the role of emotion in students’ learning experiences and transformative learning was strongly present, yet hitherto not explored nor potentially exploited to include an explicit focus on emotion (Meyer and Turner 2002). The focus of this study has revealed the role of emotion in fostering the attitudinal changes and appropriate dispositions towards global issues that are intended in GCE/DE interventions in higher education (Sklarwitz 2017).

Finally, while teacher preparation programmes focus on preparing pre-service teachers to know the subjects they teach and how to teach them, little attention is paid to evidence-based approaches to developing and assessing pre-service teachers own social and emotional competence (Corcoran and O'Flaherty 2016, 2017, 2022; Corcoran et al. 2020; Corcoran and Tormey 2012a, 2012b; 2013; Phillippo 2013; Schonert-Reichl, Kitil, and Hanson-Peterson 2017). Findings from the current study support the need to focus explicitly on students’ learning to enhance their own emotional competence supported by systematic policy, legislation, accreditation and certification requirements, and institution culture and climate.

In conclusion, the current findings make a useful contribution to GCE, drawing upon qualitative analysis of a small sample of pre-service teachers’ reports of their learning, confirming the role of emotion in their affective attitudinal change. This affective change should predict a more effective outcome for CGE than simply understanding the issues at an intellectual level, with little challenge to habitual thinking (Bamber, Lewin, and White 2018; Keer et al. 2013; Sklarwitz 2017). Framed by varying standards, certification requirements and competency frameworks, these current insights could be applied by all stakeholders involved in teacher education to focus on the development of emotional competence as a vehicle for supporting the attitudinal learning outcomes of GCE in higher education (Baily, O'Flaherty, and Hogan 2017; O'Flaherty and Liddy 2018; O'Toole 2017a, 2017b, 2018; O'Toole and Friesen 2016; Teaching Council of Ireland 2020). This highlights the need to develop a robust teaching, learning and assessment framework, implementation, and evaluation enterprise which focuses on how teachers are prepared and supported in their personal and pedagogical epistemic emotions throughout their careers from pre-service through in-service. One such approach may involve the development of further interventions through a transformative learning lens (Mezirow 1990), focusing explicitly on students developing their awareness, understanding, monitoring and management of their emotions as they engage with and respond to issues of social justice and sustainability. Such interventions could enhance students’ developing awareness of both the self and the global world in which we live in a supported and scaffolded learning environment.

Acknowledgements

Chloe Fraser University of Canterbury, Summer Research Scholarship (#2019-127); the Ubuntu Network and all the pre-service teacher participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Veronica O’Toole

Veronica O’Toole is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. She is involved in coordinating and teaching education and educational psychology courses offered by the Faculty of Education at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. Her research interests include emotional intelligence and social emotional wellbeing of teachers and students. In 2019, Veronica was a Visiting Scholar to the University of Limerick.

Joanne O’Flaherty

Joanne O’Flaherty is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Limerick. She has a primary degree in Physical Education and English. Joanne has worked in a variety of educational settings, including the formal post-primary sector and the NGO sector, before joining the University of Limerick faculty. She is involved in coordinating and disseminating different education modules offered by the School of Education at both undergraduate and post-graduate level. Joanne also acts as the Academic Coordinator of the Ubuntu Network, which seeks to foster the integration of global competences in teacher preparation (see www.ubuntu.ie). Her research interests include social and emotional learning and social justice education and she has published in these areas.

Notes

1 Irish Aid, a division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is the Irish Government’s official aid program, working on behalf of Irish people to address poverty and hunger in some of the world’s poorest countries (see https://www.dfa.ie/our-role-policies/irish-aid/).