Educational Moods: Exploring the Concept of Classroom Climate from a Sensory-Phenomenological Perspective 

Elisabet Langmann (Södertörn University, Sweden)

5.30-7pm

The value of sustaining an open and positive classroom climate for student’s cognitive, social, and emotional development is well documented in educational research. At the same time, the notion of ‘classroom climate’ remains nebulous and hard to define. By discerning some of the meanings of classroom climate in educational research, and by drawing on Martin Heidegger’s phenomenology of Stimmung (Eng. mood) and on Rita Felski’s work on affective attunement in literary studies, the purpose of the paper is to offer an existential language about classroom climate that acknowledges   the lived and embodied dimensions of educational life. 

Elisabet Langmann is Associate Professor in Education and Head of the Department of Education at Södertörn Univeristy, Stockholm, Sweden. Placing educational practice and ethical encounters at the centre of her work, her research is situated within the field of philosophy and theory of education and is informed primarily by continental philosophy, general didactics, and feminist theory. Her research interest focuses on tolerance, care, hospitality, the complex nature of educational encounters, and on embodied dimensions of teaching and learning. She is currently engaged in two research projects funded by the Swedish Research Council: Forms of Formation and How can the school reduce unequal educational opportunities?  

For further inquiries: Yuxin Su, Programme Administrator (yuxin.su.16@ucl.ac.uk).

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