Learning by feeling: excursions into the affective landscape

Abstract

Learning by doing has become a common phrase in the scholarship of teaching and learning as research continues to emphasize the benefits of active student engagement in higher education. Instead of passive vessels to be filled with information, students become the architects of their own education. While traditional ways of teaching focus on what students should learn, there is now more interest in how they should learn. With the emotional turn in geography, research has increasingly focused on the lived experience and the emotional and affective dimensions of space and place. However, the question often remains as to how to bring such research into an active learning environment that extends beyond the classroom. Instead of learning by doing, learning by feeling is presented as a new way of teaching emotional geographies. Student projects from two courses in landscape geography reveal how excursions into the affective landscape help students explore emotional geographies through more creative, reflective, affective, and active learning assessment strategies.

Towards preparing teachers for guiding inter‐affective learning experiences in a higher vocational education curriculum

“…Affective learning is often offered to higher vocational students in a cognitive way, as information‐providing communicative acts in which attention is primarily paid to the external, visible and discussable side of affect (e.g., Gertsen et al, 2017, 2022; Van Stekelenburg et al, 2020, 2021). However, more holistic perspectives (e.g., Burlingame, 2021) see self‐perception of affect as also an important aspect of affective learning. Continuing to place the cognitivist view at the center of curricula supports the belief that affect in the sense of one's own feeling is a private matter that belongs to the individual teacher or student, and that revealing the inner aspect of affect is of no value (Ahmed, 2004).…”

“…This can be realized by providing inter‐affective learning environments. Inter‐affective learning environments have been linked with numerous positive outcomes, such as interaction with fellow students in the classroom (Boler, 1999; Burlingame, 2021). This present study is an exploration of inter‐affective learning experiences that support students in recognizing the deep impact that feelings have in forming their own values and beliefs, through sharing inner feeling experiences with teachers and fellow students and revealing those feelings (Burlingame, 2021).…”

“…Inter‐affective learning environments have been linked with numerous positive outcomes, such as interaction with fellow students in the classroom (Boler, 1999; Burlingame, 2021). This present study is an exploration of inter‐affective learning experiences that support students in recognizing the deep impact that feelings have in forming their own values and beliefs, through sharing inner feeling experiences with teachers and fellow students and revealing those feelings (Burlingame, 2021). Interaction with others is therefore an essential part of constructing, correcting, confirming, building on, and therefore adopting a stand in a value conflict (Kärkkäinen, 2006).…”