Governing global emotions in the classroom: how the science of feeling re-imagines learning
Export to calendarAbstract
Educational settings have become test-beds for experimental research to develop emotion sensing technologies. These include devices, software, platforms and systems which purport to measure, monitor and in some cases modulate feelings, brain signals and behaviour.
Schools in the US and in Spain have trialled use of biofeedback techs such as heart rate monitors for students to emotionally self-regulate. Systems for whole school approaches to emotional management are being used in UK schools, promising to measure the emotional systems of the brain.
Educational research labs can now purchase off the shelf multimodal psychophysiological research systems, said to be used in 9/10 of the world’s top universities. The sheer range of technologies make applied and prospective emotion detection in schools challenging to research, yet there are significant ethical concerns about their application, and this has led the EU AI Act to ban such technologies in schools and workplaces. There are known limitations to the implementation of this act, and countries outside of the EU are left unprotected from significant societal harms. In the UK, the EdTech industry has been described as completely unregulated.
In this talk the speaker will outline the conceptual parameters of ‘digital emotional governance’ as a novel way to think about, categorise and understand this new species of emotion technologies. I consider how they enact with specific ‘global’ imaginaries, what they do to emotions and what this means for learners and learning.
Bio
Jessica Pykett is Professor of Social and Political Geography and a founding Director of the Centre for Urban Wellbeing at the University of Birmingham. Her research explores how changing forms of expertise about the mind, brain and emotions influence governance practices. She is the author of Governing Global Emotions: Technology and the New Science of Feeling and Brain Culture: Shaping Policy through Neuroscience, and the coauthor of Neuroliberalism: Behavioural Government in the 21st Century and Changing Behaviours: On the Rise of the Psychological State. Current projects include Ethics and Expertise beyond times of Crisis (ESRC), the ERSC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, and WM Adapt (NERC).