Learning certainly is both an emotional and logical process. Although perhaps in a bit more complex way than left-right hemisphere dominance.

A good place to start your search would be anterior cingulate cortex (associated with error detection and the emotional components of conflicting inputs). The anterior cingulate has reciprocal connections with the parahippocampus/entorhinal cortex which projects into the hippocampus (a key structure for transitioning short-term memories to long-term memories).

Additional searches that will help would be for H.M.'s amnesia case and Claparede's pinprick experiment.

Learning certainly is both an emotional and logical process. Although perhaps in a bit more complex way than left-right hemisphere dominance.

A good place to start your search would be anterior cingulate cortex (associated with error detection and the emotional components of conflicting inputs). The anterior cingulate has reciprocal connections with the parahippocampus/entorhinal cortex which projects into the hippocampus (a key structure for transitioning short-term memories to long-term memories).

Additional searches that will help would be for H.M.'s amnesia case and Claparede's pinprick experiment.

Do not always think about human. There are some drosophila learning test, they are surprisingly smart. Drosophila has rather few hippocampi and I think not much of its logical ability. I vote, emotional is primary.

I think it is indeed a combination of both, I agree with Keith. Learning process is logical in a way you absorb the information and approach its second piece. At the same time emotions are involved as well, especially after realizing that necessary material has been learned. :)

Both. I have been a Teacher since 16 years old and now I am 61. I toaught being a teenager and a student. I know bouth sides of the coin. Empathy, Communication, Opening minds, Learning and feedback from both sides. That it is ALL.

Simple !

I don´t need to ask cortex or drosophila if doing practical exercises.

My experience is: don´t be to boring, spent a little bit of fun to the pupils. Very often I show the result first, but take a lot of time to show possible ways to solve a task.

Typical example: let pupils calculate the square root of 2 by iterative techniques:

- first step: result is 1, so 1x1 =1, wrong

- second step: result is 2, so 2x2 is 4, wrong again

- third step take a value between 1 and 2, say 1.5, result ist 2,25.

etc, etc.

Because the pupils have fun they will follow your techniques and methods and learn.

Sorry, forgot my bilance:

First emotion, second logic.

@Pavel, @Fermin, @Abderrahmane.

Plus: Learning as Doing by example.

A good teacher -> good learning outcomes. If bad teachers -> not bad students but bad learning and bud outcome study of the subject.

Magic Power of Example.

Hanno,

The problem of which comes first (emotion or logic) may not have a straightforward answer. There are times when it is possible to write out a definition of a new term or the proof of a theorem first and after the logic has fallen into place, then examples follow. But from a student's point of view, the opposite situation is probably the norm, i.e., from examples given to a student, deductions follow. There is the old adage that one learns from examples applies to everyone in general. But then there appear to be many examples where learning occurs before the examples.

The classic example of this is Euclid's Elements. One starts with postulates. From the postulates, we can work through theorems, proofs and examples to illustrate what is meant by the postulates and theorems.

I agree with Hanno, Tolga. I think emotion comes first because it addresses the human being in us; logic comes next because it addresses the mind. A combination of the two, this way, will create perfect equilibrium!

Emotion for attracting the attention of students, then logic for the continue of the lesson.

Learning and teaching are both EMOTIONAL and LOGICAL processes.

Emotional because you cannot learn or teach perfectly unless you are deeply involved with the subject and the students. You also cannot learn without being involved.

It is a logical process because every study has to have a logical base. Only if learning and teaching are logical, they can be perfected and are sensible.

Dear Toyota,

Many have formulated that teaching is at the same time a mixed both emotional and logical process. The manifestation of these components depends on many timely and situational variables and as some mentioned on the fundamental personality types of teachers and students.

I think it is an advantage if emotions help to be more logical but logical thinking generally does not increase the level of emotions. Fine emotions as real senses of achievements usually increase the performance thus one should dare to risk right human sentiments.

Ideally education is the process to make one emotionally strong and logically sound enough to be a productive citizen of the society.

Hi Tolga, I think that Bloom subdivided educational (Teaching/Learning) into Cognitive (Knowledge and brain skills), Affective (emotional/feelings) and Psychomotor (manual skills). Your Taxonomy combines the first and the second. The cognitive and the physical skills skills can be attained easier with the help of both, the emotional and the logical. I can't say which is first. For example remembering (Bloom's first cognitive level) or retention as you say it, is not attained unless we either build emotion about what we need to remember or have some logical implications within it (e.g remembering emotional- poetry is easier than remembering -abstract- text and remembering a number of shuffled steps can be harder than an ordered set of steps, e.g. try to remember the shuffled steps of going to work: have breakfast, drive, get dressed, shave, wake-up. The same story applies to the rest of the rest of Bloom's cognitive levels: you apply, understand, evaluate, synthesis and analyse all the things better if you have passion about what you do and if you feel that what you do is logical. Consider research or inventions for example, you need to be obsessed with the idea and be convinced of it (logical even if others don't find it so). Thanks. @Aldmour.

I believe that learning covers both logical and emotional processes. First of all, we may be attracted by various stimuli, and we feel the need to learn the thing(s) we would like to learn. Moreover, the way we prefer to learn may depend on logic initially but we should like it, feel it, digest it and keep it in our long term memory in the way, shape, color, type or even taste we like. We can even create a story related to it in order to have it as an episodic memory. According to Earl Stevick (1999), the learners are first attracted, then interested, furthermore, what is learned should be meaningful and practical for the learner.

@James, I agree with your appropriate remarks. Indeed the procedure depends strongly from the educational and scientific level of your students. I use the method you propose - show the formula and then try examples- in many cases of my lectures. My really simple iteration example is a very typical case for laughing and amusement of your students because they feel quite superior to the faults, so the emotion helps to find motivation and the way to logic. Thanks for your post.

I resemble teaching and the role of a teacher/instructor/professor to a mother. If we make an analogy, the fact that a mother goes shopping, prepares the food and puts it on the table in front of the beloved son/daughter does not ensure that the son/daughter will eat it, enjoy it and digest it happily. There are some cases that they simply refuse to have, even, a bite or taste it. Their excuse is always ready, "they are not hungry yet!" Our case as a teacher is just like a mother. We prepare the activity, material, examples, tasks assuming that our learners will learn them and hopefully enjoy them and make meaning out of them. The crucial question is "do they? if so, to what extent?"

@Tolga et al., to me, learning is a logical process, until we suddenly feel a 'flow' and everything makes sense and fits into the BIG picture. It has become an emotional process: joyful :)

It's about the same with teaching. It is a cognitive (thinking), meta-cognitive (thinking about the thinking), logical process. But NOT for long. When we interact with students and appreciate their personalities and vice versa, it has become a process that brings a lot of fulfillment.

The learning and teaching process are based upon logic dominated emotions

Very nice question dear Tolga. There is a good evidence in TED conference which prove that learning (particularly Mathematics in the conference) is not only a logical process but also an emotional thing. Here is the link for whom it may concern.

http://new.ted.com/talks/arthur_benjamin_the_magic_of_fibonacci_numbers

A balance is needed (in most cases) although emotions are an intuitive, greater level of knowledge than knowledge and logic per se.

The nature of emotions is interesting. It should matter what kind of emotions are involved, how emotional we are as learners or teachers in terms of emotional intelligence, to what extent emotions are present, how we express and control them whenever we can - sometimes we just can't. Emotions are supposed to make things easy...but the truth is that sometimes when we are overwhelmed by emotions - be it negative or positive - learning, and teaching to some point, is blocked. The lack of emotions could also block learning - some connection between teachers and learners always facilitates the process in both directions.

Actually, I don't think that any kind of learning can happen without emotions. At the same time, learning based solely on emotions (even if we accept that logic is not contained in emotions) could exist.

enjoyed reading all the comment; Hristina, Amir, Bhatti, Miranda and of all

I believe that learning involves both processes. The cognitive process has been much explored scientifically and is inherently present. Thus, I will argue and emphasize the emotional process.

Since the primary learning the emotional aspects of learning seems crucial for boosting motivation and self-esteem with implications on learning outcomes studied.

Also in secondary and higher education is found that emotional competencies (EI) is critical to the success of the student; investment in the study depends on variables such as resilience, emotional management, empathy. The trust and affection in the pedagogical relationship facilitates student learning. A teacher sensitive to the difficulties and feelings of the student will contribute to the processing of emotions of students, could be a "safe haven" to help in solving their problems.

There are some professions where the process of teaching and learning have to give particular emphasis to the emotional dimension of human relations, such as nursing. Hence I develop some research on the issue.

The holistic, humanistic and constructivist perspective on teaching strategies have to be present in the training for care, involving the emotional sensitivity and management. Requires the development of emotional competence, as demonstrated in the study on the supervision of nursing students.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paula_Diogo/?ev=hdr_xprf

The processes of learning and teaching involve both emotional and logical aspects.

In brief: emotion and logic are not separate processes but have strong interactions. Since the type of learning you mentionned seems to be related to remembering a concept, it should mostly involve memory function, and more precisely declarative memory. This type of memory involves brain areas that are themselves involved in emotions.

In detail:

You should definitely look into Antonio Damasio's work. The historical antagonism between emotion and reason has been studied for some time now. Though emotions have been described for a long time as impeding clear thought and reason, research from Damasio and others has shown how patient suffering from loss of emotion (after damage to related brain areas) could be profoundly impaired in rational thinking, decision making, plannification... Because all of these functions involve brain areas that are themselves involved in emotion. For this particular question on emotion and logic, Descartes' Error from Antonio Damasio is a best seller.

For example, as mentionned by Keith Sudheimer, the cingulate cortex is involved in emotions and the anterior part is involved in decision making. Error detection and conflict theory are one thing, but more braodly this area is involved in cognitive control, a function necessary to adjust behavior depending on the outcome of actions.

Emotions and reasonning are so intermingled that it is (to my knowledge, I am not expert in the field) impossible to say "this area is involved in emotion and not in cognitive functions".

Now, about learning, it is a so vague concept by itself. In your case, because the objective is to acquire new concepts, I think it involves mainly memory as metionned in other answers, and especially declarative memory. The example you give about your teaching experience may very well invole primarily memory functions and motivational aspects. Memory function itself is highly influenced by emotions. We can all experience the fact that we remember very well highly emotional events of our lifes. Without putting the students in an highly emotional situation you most probably created surprise, interest, curiosity, emotional states that strengthen memory encoding. Declarative memory is encoded thanks to the hippocampus (as mentionned by Keith) and associated structures that form a cricuit. Among these associated structures you have the amygdala that is highly involved in emotions.

More practically, if you are interested in understanding how learning concepts works, memory encoding, consolidation and retrieval might be very interesting for you. This area is so huge in neuroscience.

Cheers

Without going into biology, when you learn something that you like (emotional) your learning experience is more successful than when you learn only by logic. Logic is very important and necessary for learning, but it can be enhanced with emotion.

I teach introduction to computing course where the students are introduced to the binary numbering system. If you take the approach of pure logic in teaching binary numbers, students tend to learn less. But when you use an emotional approach (for example you shock the students by writing 1 + 1 = 10), and then use logic, the students will learn faster and will never forget the information.

In my opinion teaching starts from logical component to which will be added emotional one during the presentation. The learning process again starts from logical one , emotional component depend on person of learner.

@Marianne,

a short remark. Could you imagine, that the teaching process is sharing enthusiasm and feelings like "it´s so inspiring, I must share my experience" or " I want to educate".

And could you imagine, that the learning process starts by enthusiasm and pleasure in some news.

Both cases are pureley emotional.

From the answers of Pierre Enel and Miche Owayjan we can find that both Emotion and Logic are important in Happy, Quick and Fast Learning.It is a sort of Bootstrapping between them. Which one should be First to start depends on the Individual's Initiative. Earlier days when the Parens say that they should or should  not do it was taken as Gospel Truth and every one followed and they were also leaning well.Nowadays kids want to know the Reason or Logic before following a certain thing,For eg. if it is said that one should not walk abreast with others or should not walk in the Middle of the Road either by telling the Reasons or by showing a Video on the Consequences of such acts they Fall in Line.

It is like Right Hand Threaded Screw or Left Hand Threaded Screw.

Also it depends on the Bent of Mind of the Individual Some Enjoy doing Sums one after another Voluntarily,if they go on getting the Answers correcly or even if not for all.Another reluctant child,once made to solve the First Sum,he Develops interest and stats solving the Sums one after the other.This may be even called overcoming the Initial Inertia.

As it all Depends on Human Beings whose Behavior cannot be Predicted initially unless you study his Behavioral pattern,We cannot which leads or follows the other.There may be case where none of the two can work.

As I always tell my Students that it all depends on Mental make up.If you want to do,you can and Will.

P.S.

Dear Tolga Soyata, Thank you very much for asking this very important question.

In my opinion, according to modern pedagogical knowledge, educational processes in teaching should take into account both logical and emotional issues, as it should be developed in students and students in the scope of abstract and logical thinking for the purpose of shaping the understanding of issues in the field of exact sciences and in the field of emotional intelligence. Both types of intelligence are important and should be included in educational processes.

I invite you to the discussion.

Both of them

Emotion-based logical process. It is like human's decision-making. We all already know that we first make a decision on the matter and then find relevant rationales to support the decision. Education is not also different from the human's decision-making.

BOTH.

I guess this is a reason why there are cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of learning, according.

Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.