Psychosocial Perspectives on Learning, Teaching and Emotion

Psychosocial perspectives on learning, teaching and emotion is an innovative advanced text book that aims to go beyond current understandings of the relationship between teaching and learning, foregrounding unconscious and emotional dimensions of schooling. The author traces the roots of key ideas in educational psychology and critically looks at the ways in which they have shaped how we have come to think about ‘learners’ and what happens in classrooms.

Putting forward a psychosocial perspective to challenge the notion of the rational, aware, independent learner, using real-life case studies from educational institutions, the home and the street, this book highlights the ways in which unconscious emotions, in constant interplay with social, structural and institutional forces, have the power to enhance, enable, block, distort and interfere with learning and teaching. Through this psychosocial framework the book will cast valuable light on some of the most pressing issues that all those involved in education persistently face, in particular resistance to learning and failure to learn.

This book will:

• Introduce the reader to a psychosocial perspective on learning and teaching
• Critically evaluate traditional perspectives in the psychology of education
• Provide case-studies from empirical research to explore issues and experiences of learning and teaching which are rarely discussed despite their centrality to educational practice
• Encourage readers to reflect on their own experiences of learning and teaching in the light of a psychosocial perspective

Supporting the development of skills in critical evaluation, argument and self reflection, this text is essential reading for all educational psychology and education studies students at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and researchers interested in the complex psychosocial influences on the relationships between teaching and learning.

Helen Lucey is currently a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the Open University, UK. She will shortly be taking up the position of Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Bath.