Re: emotional bonds/education

Brian E. McNurlen (mcnurlen who-is-at students.uiuc.edu)
Tue, 10 Feb 1998 16:20:39 -0500

As far as teachers are concerned, I know some research has looked at
emotional bonding but used the term "teacher-student attachment." Although
the early work in attachment I think was ethnographic in nature, it has
become much more reductionist. I know that some people here at Illinois
were designing measures to assess the strength or weakness of
student-teacher attachment, the warmth of that relationship, and how it
affected students' relationships with others as well as academic
achievement. A graduate student, Sondra Birch, has published and presented
quite a bit of data already on this topic. Is this any help?

Mike Cole wrote:
>Dear Xmca-ers,
>
>In connection with our work on afterschool educational activities,
>we have long been impressed by the large role played by the emotional
>bonds that form between undergrads and children and how important
>this seems to be in quality of teaching/learning that goes on. One
>of my students is focusing in on this aspect of the systems and has
>asked if there is any theoretical writing on the topic of emotional
>bonding and learning/teaching.
>
>What sources might you-all recommend? I would note that this question
>indexes a gap in my own work in developing a cultural-historicalactivity
>approach to development: I have been aware of the phenomenon for a long
>time but have not systematically theorized it. The gap may not be
>only in my own work/.
>mike

----------------------------------------
Brian E. McNurlen <mcnurlen who-is-at uiuc.edu>
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Center for the Study of Reading
51 Gerty Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
(217) 244-6497