Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom: Creative Learning Strategies for 11‐18s

Health Education

ISSN: 0965-4283

Article publication date: 1 April 2002

448

Citation

Weare, K. (2002), "Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom: Creative Learning Strategies for 11‐18s", Health Education, Vol. 102 No. 2, pp. 84-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/he.2002.102.2.84.1

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited


Draw on Your Emotions: Creative Ways to Explore, Express and Understand Important Feelings

Margot Sutherland

Speechmark

The Mental Health Manual

Trevor Powell

Speechmark

The promotion of mental health and a concern with emotional intelligence are rapidly gaining ground as central issues for the twenty‐first century. The scientific evidence for the centrality of these issues for health and for learning has been well established, and what is needed now is some strategies for action in the contexts in which these sometimes abstract ideas can be made real. We begin this book review section by looking at three excellent manuals which are now moving the field along by exploring ways to promote mental health and develop emotional intelligence through practical exercises with people. The books are relevant to three rather different contexts, but what they have in common is that they are clearly written and highly accessible, designed to be photocopied and used as the basis for the planning of real life interventions.

Emotional Intelligence in the Classroom by Michael Brearley provides a clear account of some practical strategies for integrating emotional intelligence across the school curriculum. A major strength of the book is the way in which it links affective and cognitive learning, demonstrating ways in which emotional factors underlie learning in general, and are central to the teaching of thinking skills and accelerated learning. It draws on the work of theorists such as Maslow, Porter, and Gardner, showing how ideas can be put to work by teachers in helping them understand how people learn and plan more effective learning strategies – although an irritation is the lack of referencing to the books by the theorists on which the author has drawn. The book explores techniques for self review of the “habits, attitudes, beliefs and emotions of success”, including several useful self completion inventories. It is full of useful ideas and is a treasure house for teachers and lecturers trying to teach about emotional intelligence in ways which practitioners will find relevant to their pressing concerns in the classroom.

Draw on Your Emotions by Margot Sutherland is an unusual manual, which aims to help adults as well as children to express, communicate and deal effectively with their emotions through drawing. It contains picture exercises which are designed to ease the process of talking about feelings and facilitate the expression of many layers of experience, including those which learners may find painful to express in more direct ways. The exercises explore ways of looking at feeling about the learner’s own life, their self concept, the “things which can make life difficult”, the “good things in life”, places, and other people. The intention is to help learners to deal with the apparently chaotic world of feelings in a systematic way, by exploring, expressing and clarifying emotions, then organising them in new ways and finding new ways to think about them, and finally to moving forward by rehearsing alternatives safely on paper. The book offers useful advice on how to use the exercises, including notes of caution for untrained teachers, who are advised to let the learner lead and be careful not to comment on the drawings in a judgmental and interpretative way.

The Mental Health Manual by Trevor Powell is a more specialist work, written by a clinical psychologist, and focuses on working with clients in therapeutic contexts. That said it is a treasure trove of ideas for anyone who works with troubled people, including children and young people, provided of course they realise the need to operate with a clear understanding of their own limitations. Many of the problems the manual explores, such as anxiety, stress, anger and fear are problems with which we all have to deal, and the manual offers simple but invaluable exercises to help with these issues. They include ways to become more aware of the body’s reactions, practising relaxation, positive self talk and steady breathing. Some of the more specialist work on specific conditions such as agoraphobia, panic attacks and obsessive compulsive disorder are clearly more appropriate for specialists, but the suggestions on how to deal with them nevertheless make useful reading for those who may come across people with these problems, and need to be able to refer them on with confidence that something practical can be done.

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