The psychological principles impacting language learning can have a major impact on the success of the classroom, teachers/coaches, and learners. By successfully guiding and mentoring learners through their language and culture education journey, recognizing that cognition plays an important role in processing and retaining information will contribute to not only language knowledge, but also the development of biculturalism. Chapter 20 focuses on cognitive affect, and the impact of cognition when learning a language. This chapter identifies how to recognize distortions, affective dissonance, and negative classroom behaviors; it contains insights and suggestions on helping autonomous language learners reach their goals by effectively addressing disorienting dilemmas; and it offers teachers, mentors, and coaches concrete examples of how to help learners overcome self-sabotage.

The purpose of these analyses is to show the ideological entanglement of educational psychology constructs that tend to be valued, endorsed, and normalized in education policy discussions and teaching discourse. The noncognitive skills discussed in this book contribute to a vision for neoliberal selfhood and provide a roadmap for cultivating that self. This ideological entanglement is seldom acknowledged, enabling neoliberal ideology to operate unnoticed. Pointing to this alignment opens up the possibility for ethical and ideological conversations about the kind of selfhood that is endorsed and normalized in schooling discourse.