Human beings are complex organisms. They exhibit independence and dependence in varying measures; they react to some stimuli and respond to others (see reacting & responding).
In an attempt to understand how human beings work, people have over 3000 years developed a number of distinctions worth discerning and taking account of. Experience suggests that distinguishing emotional-affective responses from cognitive-awareness responses avoids considerable confusion, and that taking into account all three aspects of learners’ psyche can contribute to the effectiveness of task choice and interaction with learners.
Cognitive, Affective & Enactive components:
Modern psychologists (roughly post 1900) often distinguish three components:
Cognition refers to thoughts and knowledge; Affect refers to feelings and emotions; Enaction refers to overt behaviour. Only behavious is visible; the other two have to be inferred.
An alternative language for these, with slight differences of nuance and emphasis, are
awareness (cognition),
emotion (affect) and
behaviour (enaction).
Awareness means different things to different authors. It can mean much the same as consciousness: what you are aware of is what you are conscious of, but it is also used to include unconscious awarenesses which are under the control of the soma, including control of bodily functions such as breathing and heart rate, and also subtle things such as
one-to-one correspondence and
order of operations. [see also
early-algebra].
The significance for mathematics teaching and learning of distinguishing these three components lies in what they illuminate, what they bring to attention for making sense of learner behaviour and hence for
planning for the classroom (see
Preparing to Teach a Topic)
Attention, Intention & Will
What are learners attending to? This is a non-trivial matter, for if they are not attending to what the teacher is attending to, or even attending to the same things but in different ways, they may miss the whole point of a lesson. [see
Structure of Attention]
Intentions are predominantly affective-emotion based, and certainly both influence and are influenced by feelings and concerns, and emotional state generally. They also influence how attention is structured, features such as concentration, and hence
motivation.
Intentions do not always match performance. A teacher can intend to create a certain
atmosphere in the classroom, or to interact with a learner in a particular way, but in the moment, other things are dominating attention, and old habits break through. [See
working on habits].
Learners have many different intentions when coming to, and during a lesson, including ‘getting through without being noticed’ and ‘getting as much attention as possible’. Not all intentions are explicit or even articulated, indeed sometimes we are not even aware of all of the components of our current intentions.
Attention interacts with intention in complex ways.
Will is the force that individuals exert in order to overcome difficulties or to counteract the flow of habits. It is guided by conscience. [see also
Four Rs].
Three Gunas
Ancient Indian psychology proposed that our psychological states are made up of three elements called
gunas:
Rajas is the fiery, active even reactive, component
Tamas is the passive, receptive, inertial component
Sattva is the pensive, thoughtful, aware, component
Psychological states are formed by an interweaving of these three strands, and when immersed in a situation of a particular nature, individuals have propensities based on these three strands.
A
gunagram is a triangle whose vertices represent the each of the three strands in a particular situation. Placing a dot or tracing a small region which represent the perceived balance between the three can help to reflect on reactions to and actions in situations.