Interaction ritual approaches to emotion and cognition in science learning experiences

Learning science involves situated social practices that are inherently emotional. Despite this fact, research in science education has focused predominantly on learning as a cognitive process with scant attention directed at emotion in the past. There are now a growing number of studies of emotion and affect partly due to international concerns regarding student disaffection with school science. In this chapter, I discuss theoretical orientations to the sociology of emotion that have attracted increasing interest from science education researchers in recent years. In particular, interaction ritual theory has provided a way forward for understanding science learning as an emotional and situated social practice. Fruitful perspectives about emotional engagement have been developed from its application in empirical studies of school and preservice teacher education classes. I begin with an overview of interaction ritual theory and by outlining the outcomes of selected empirical studies to illustrate the basic tenets of the theory. In the second part of the chapter, I consider what else we can learn about the interrelationships between emotion and cognition by taking up some of the roots of interaction ritual theory in Emilé Durkheim’s social epistemology of knowledge. From this foundation, I propose in the third part of the chapter a microsociology of learning as a fruitful direction for research on learning experiences. Exploring Emotions, Aesthetics and Wellbeing in Science Education Researc