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PERSONALITY AND EMOTIONAL SPHERE
PERSONALITY EMOTIONAL SPHERE
I talked about cognitive styles in the previous paragraphs. But cognitive styles are always interrelated and blended with emotional features , with affective and social factors .
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For this reason I will try to deal, in this section, with the emotional sphere.
We are all familiar with the terms impulsive and reflective , introvert and extrovert . These terms are used to describe not only different cognitive styles; they can be used to refer to the emotional and the affective sphere. This is to say that different students’ reactions to different tasks are determined not only by cognitive preferences, but also by emotional tendencies (students can be risk-taking or cautious; they could prefer working with their classmates or by themselves).
We can intuitively understand that various individual preferences are linked and connected to define different learners.
Introverted
people, for example, prefer working on their own, tend to have a restricted group of friends and few social relations; they tend to be reflective and to focus on thoughts and concepts in impersonal situations; they tend to avoid social and emotional subtleties.
And extraverted people tend to be outgoing and active; they tend to like working with their classmates and frequently interacting with people; they tend to prefer concrete experiences and contact with the real world; they have a feel for social and emotional setting.
No style is better than another, but different styles could better suit different students, in relation to the learning task they have to perform, and to the different context they have to accomplish the task.
What’s important is to help the students become aware of their own tendencies, and to help them exploit them in the best possible way (according to context, to the task and to availability of resources).
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE TEACHERS
Try to help your students discover their personality traits. You can use
questionnaires
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[F1]
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and informal interviews in order to help them in the task. You can ask them, for example, to think about whether they prefer working in groups or working on their own; whether they think they are talkative or inwardly focused; whether they feel comfortable when they are close to other people; whether his/her classmates think he/she is a good leader, etc.
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