Release date: Dec. 10, 2004

Teaching to the Minds – and Hearts – of Students Is Focus of New Journal

As part of a national effort to enhance the scholarship of teaching, Oxford College of Emory University has launched an online journal that seeks to explore the connections between emotion and understanding in the classroom.

The Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning (JCAL), a peer-reviewed, open-access journal, is designed to promote research, education and community building related to the scholarship of teaching. The biannual journal can be found at www.jcal.emory.edu, and subscriptions are free. The journal debuted on the Web in November, and already has attracted visitors from around the world – reflecting a universal interest in improving teaching.

"When many professors teach, they think they are teaching to students' brains only. But psychologists, and even some K–12 teachers, have known for a while that your emotions either impede or aid in processing information in the long term," says JCAL editor-in-chief Kenneth Carter, associate professor of psychology at Oxford.

"Think back to the most meaningful education experience you've had," he says. "There's usually an emotion that's tied to it: Your professor helped you to feel a certain way, or you learned something and were really excited about it. We've usually ignored that emotional component."

Teaching the mind to feel and the heart to think is an easy-to-digest definition of cognitive-affective learning, but according to Carter, it's also limiting. Emotions, when they come to learning, are not always positive. "In some classes, professors can come on too strong emotionally, and students will shut down and not pay attention," he says.

The journal's creation is a result of Oxford's role as one of 12 national cluster leaders for the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Campus Program. With the mission of discovering new ways of recognizing excellent teaching and improving the quality of teaching in colleges and universities, the Oxford cluster focuses on cognitive-affective connections in learning. Other members of the cluster include Agnes Scott College, Kennesaw State University, the Community College of Philadelphia and Wright State University (Ohio) School of Medicine.

Although most of the articles in the inaugural issue are from within the cluster, Carter says the journal is seeking submissions from scholars around the country and world.

"A lot of people think we only teach at Oxford," Carter says. "We may define ourselves as a teaching institution, but we have a scholarly mission as well. We are a 'laboratory of teaching.' We try new ideas and techniques – we're on the cutting edge of teaching."

Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and Emory Healthcare, the state's largest and most comprehensive health care system.

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