ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter will draw on Section II to demonstrate that emotion profoundly influences the ways in which individuals and groups participate in and experience learning. It will continue to interrogate the current frameworks of lifelong learning that rest on dichotomies privileging knowledge constructed as objective, scientific and rational and marginalising knowledge constructed as subjective, irrational and emotional. As we have shown in earlier chapters, ‘knowledge’ is always socially embedded, underpinned by particular values and perspectives. This chapter will argue that current constructions of knowledge undermine the contribution of emotions to learning. We begin the chapter by exploring concepts of ‘emotional capital’ and ‘emotional labour’, and move on to explore emotion with regard to identity and ‘difference’. Although ‘emotion’ is excluded from current conceptualisations of lifelong learning, we argue that identities are shaped by emotional as well as rational processes. We end the chapter by engaging in a debate about emotional literacy, and considering the role of emotion in our own professional identitites. We ask for the role of emotion in lifelong learning to be re/visioned, recognising that emotions are constructed, contested, and as much a part of the development of ‘knowledge’ as supposed objectivity and rationality.
