Research corner
`Feeling and showing: A new conceptualization of dispositional teacher enthusiasm and its relation to students’ interest’ by Keller, M M, Goetz, T, Becker, E S et al Learning and Instruction, 33: 29-38, October 2014 (Elsevier) “Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic,” opined noted author and lecturer Dale Carnegie, who knew a thing or two about winning friends and influencing people. And, if a new research study is to be believed, act enthusiastic and your students will be enthusiastic as well. The paper, written by academics based in Germany, Switzerland and the US, defines enthusiasm as “teachers’ positive affect and positive emotional expressivity”. Some 75 teachers (of German, English, French and maths) in Switzerland participated in the research, along with 863 students. The aim was to test whether teacher enthusiasm was positively related to students’ interest in a subject, and whether this was affected by how enthusiastic the students perceived their teacher to be. The researchers found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the level of teacher enthusiasm positively predicted students’ interest, as well as their enjoyment of the subject and their perception of its value. However, before you gear yourself up to rhapsodise about an area of your subject that you’re not wild about, a word of caution. The authors found that faking enthusiasm had similar results to “emotional labour or experiences of emotional dissonance.both of which have detrimental effects on health and well-being”. Sarah Cunnane Share your views by tweeting @tes What Will I Be? by Richard Sinclair and Jon Lycett-Smith (Digital Leaf) ISBN 9781909428546 The first in this series of colourful, rhyming books follows a father and son as they ponder the many professions the boy could pursue when he grows up. Will he be an astronaut? A politician? A pastry chef? An actor? The options are endless. ISBN 9780199668588 This book explores the psychology of people who place themselves in highly challenging situations - astronauts and extreme sportsmen and women, for instance. The authors examine what drives such people, what abilities they share and what skills and personality traits enable them to succeed. They also ask what lessons the rest of us can learn from their example. ISBN 9780691161907 Colin Adams’ adventure novel outlines how maths could save your life in a zombie invasion. It covers everything from predator-prey models and pursuit problems to the physics of combat and how to take advantage of the fact that the zombies always point their tangent vector towards their target. For book queries, please email chloe.darracott-cankovic@tesglobal.comHot off the press
Extreme: why some people thrive at the limits by Emma Barrett and Paul Martin (OUP)
Zombies and Calculus by Colin Adams (Princeton University Press)
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