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ELEP Toolkit 2: Working with emotions in the higher education classroom
This toolkit considers a range of strategies to utilise when dealing with strong emotions in the classroom.
12 May 2025
Aims
This toolkit aims to support you to:
Identify the role of emotions in teaching and learning, particularly in higher education settings, and understand how these emotions can impact classroom dynamics and student engagement.
Develop the ability to plan and implement educational strategies that effectively address and manage strong emotions when teaching potentially sensitive or contested topics.
Critically evaluate the inclusion of current, contested, or sensitive topics in the curriculum. Ensuring that such content is educationally justified, carefully planned, and aligned with relevant intended learning outcomes to enhance student experience.
Introduction
This toolkit explores the role of emotions in teaching and learning in higher education settings. It considers a range of educational strategies to use when strong emotions enter the classroom. Planning for this eventuality, especially when teaching topics that are potentially sensitive, can help to support positive engagement and participation.
The inclusion of topics that are current, contested or sensitive can be important to keep curriculum content up to date and relevant. However, we should never assume that teaching sensitive topics is inherently transformative or educational. Instead, it is crucial to provide pre-emptive strategies so that students feel prepared to work with potentially sensitive content that is carefully planned, educationally justified, and has relevant intended learning outcomes (ILOs).
Emotions and Learning: the ‘affective turn’ in Education
The ‘affective turn’ in education (Zembylas, 2021) is a phrase that highlights the role of emotions and relationships in the learning process, and recognises learning is more than simply cognition. In thinking about educational practices in this way, emotions are not just by products of learning but integral to how students interact with content, peers, and tutors. Curriculum planning, where emotional engagement is considered, can help students cope with challenges, stay motivated, and maintain focus on their learning. Similarly, the relationships we form with our peer or the people who teach us can be a significant predictor of success.
Figure 2: Quinlan's four key relationships in higher education.
Quinlan (2016) notes that emotions are vital in four key relationships in higher education (Figure 1). Enhancing these emotional connections can enrich social and relational experiences, supporting student development.
- Further reading on emotions
This set of Times Higher Education articles explore different aspects of understanding emotion and learning.
Make social-emotional learning part of teaching: it’s easier than you think shares practical tips to incorporate social-emotional learning into the classroom.
Belonging: why it is the next step on the equity, diversity and inclusion ladder, explores six strategies for enhancing feelings of belonging.
Say goodbye to bored students, looks at practical ways to minimise boredom, the enemy of learning.
Using empathy in the classroom can have a great impact on learning shares a ideas to make students feel welcome.
Understanding student motivation and expectations
There are many models and concepts that can help to understand the link between learning and emotion, but a good starting point is to acknowledge that emotions will arrive at the classroom at some point and do influence student outcomes.
Normalising emotions in the teaching and learning context can be done in a range of ways, for example:
Normalising failure in learning – destigmatising failure in education is important.
Exploring the value of making mistakes - in contexts that feel psychologically safe, making mistakes is something that happens because we are human. Exploring ways to acknowledge and learn from mistakes can be valuable and help people to understand the relationship between mistakes and success.
Acknowledging discomfort in learning – discomfort is an inevitable component of learning, and it can be helpful to be clear about this especially when students are encountering difficult or sensitive curriculum areas.
Understanding the role of care in learning – in what ways do we show that we care about student experience and student outcomes? This can sometimes be implicit in our work but consider how this can be made more explicit either through preparatory materials or the questions we ask in evaluation exercises.
Reflecting on the role of learning relationships – these are important considerations when incorporating any kind of collaborative work in modules or sessions that will involve forming and maintaining effective relationships. How do you establish and support learning relationships in groups you work with?
- Further reading on student motivation and expectations
Failing forward: how we can destigmatise failure in research is a series of short videos from Newcastle University in which colleagues discuss how we can think differently about failure, a necessary part of research.
To build resilience, we need to embrace failure in the classroom and beyond searches to redefine failure in teaching, assessment, and support processes.
Unsettling feelings in the classroom: scaffolding pedagogies of discomfort as part of decolonising human geography in higher education explores how discomfort can be approached productively and safely
Care as choreographed: what is the role of care in higher education teaching? This literature review outlines the emerging scholarship on pedagogies of care.
Integrating Indigenous Pedagogy in Remote Courses shares a culturally responsive model to incorporate relationship-centred approaches to learning.
Preparing to bring emotions into the classroom
Preparing to intentionally bring emotions into the higher education classroom begins with cultivating an anticipatory mindset. This starts by reflecting on and anticipating the emotional dynamics that may arise during learning and planning accordingly.
This preparation could involve:
Establish clear norms and expectations for respectful communication.
Activities that promote mutual respect and trust.
Space for active listening and empathy.
When students feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to engage fully and authentically in the learning process. Educators to hold the space and develop reactive skills and strategies. This involves:
Being empathetic and understanding that everyone will experience an emotion differently, even if we name it as the same emotion.
Being responsive to students' emotional cues.
Developing techniques for de-escalating tension. This means that you might have to shorten, stop, or even abandon a session if appropriate.
Offering emotional support and signposting to relevant services. This works best when it’s done intentionally. For example, shared on Moodle pre module information or in post session follow up information.
By being prepared to hold space and react effectively, educators can create a classroom environment that acknowledges and values the emotional dimensions of learning.
Reflecting on practice
Learning to work with emotions in the classroom is an ongoing and dynamic process. Success is not always dependent on years of teaching experience - experienced educators can and do make mistakes. Noticing when emotions come into the classroom and how they are managed and supported is important to build successful practices. Developing this learning into more formal opportunities to reflect can cement success and support skills sharing with colleagues:
Dialogic approaches to professional learning: engaging in dialogic teaching and learning involves open, reflective conversations with colleagues and students. This approach encourages the sharing of experiences and perspectives, fostering a deeper understanding of teaching practices. Continuous Module Dialogue (CMD) can be a useful mechanism for exploring the relationship between student experiences and teaching approaches on a particular topic.
Figure 2: Gibb's model of reflection
Peer observation and feedback: Inviting colleagues to observe teaching sessions and provide constructive feedback can offer valuable insights. This process allows tutors to see their practice from an external perspective and identify areas for improvement. Regular peer observations can foster a culture of continuous improvement and mutual support. See UCL’s guidance on peer dialogue.
Professional learning communities: Joining or forming professional learning communities (PLCs) can provide a platform for ongoing reflection and discussion. Considered planning opportunities to talk regularly with others and encourage sharing of best practices with colleagues. This can also support tutors in staying updated with the latest educational research and innovations, enhancing their reflective practice.
Key takeaways
Emotions play a crucial role in higher education, influencing students' engagement, performance, and interpersonal perceptions (Pekrun, 2019).
Teachers' emotions significantly impact their teaching approaches and student responses to these approaches (Trigwell, 2012).
Emotions influence how students experience and engage with learning. This is heightened when teaching topics that are potentially sensitive. Addressing these emotional dimensions can promote more inclusive and equitable educational practice (Burke, 2015).
References
Beard, C., Clegg, S. and Smith, K. (2013) 'Acknowledging the affective in higher education', British Educational Research Journal, 33(2), pp. 235-252. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920701208415
Burke, P. J. (2015). Re/imagining higher education pedagogies: gender, emotion and difference. Teaching in Higher Education, 20(4), 388–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1020782
Gravett, K., Taylor, C. A., & Fairchild, N. (2021). Pedagogies of mattering: re-conceptualising relational pedagogies in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 29(2), 388–403. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1989580
Pekrun, R. (2019). Inquiry on emotions in higher education: progress and open problems. Studies in Higher Education, 44(10), 1806–1811. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1665335
Quinlan, K. M. (2016). How Emotion Matters in Four Key Relationships in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. College Teaching, 64(3), 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/87567555.2015.1088818
Trigwell, K. Relations between teachers’ emotions in teaching and their approaches to teaching in higher education. Instr Sci 40, 607–621 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-011-9192-3
Zembylas, M. (2021, February 23). The Affective Turn in Educational Theory. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Retrieved 27 Feb. 2025.
Further resources
ELEP Toolkit 1: Preparing a session teaching difficult and/or sensitive topics.
ELEP Toolkit 3: Teaching UCL’s eugenics legacies now and in the future.
The ELEP website has a suite of resources including a framework for teaching difficult knowledge, a set of case studies, and a UCL Extend course.
There are several UCL teaching toolkits and resources that support further learning and development around this topic. These include:
The Intercultural competency module (Level 2) as part of the Inclusive Education Programme. Please note you must complete level 1 before you can progress to level 2 modules. This is available to UCL and non-UCL participants.
UCL provides guidance for those interested in continuous module dialogue.