The emphasis on factual knowledge, the impact of rankings, and the outcome-driven notion of education persist to define learning and teaching as a rational enterprise. Such understanding of schooling influences teacher training programs and the respective school routines, neglecting the inseparable connection of emotional and cognitive processes. Especially the relevance of emotions and emotional markers in educational pathways and biographies is still hardly considered in the context of schooling or school development processes. However, plenty of studies underline the tremendous importance of this interdependency from several perspectives (Zimmermann 2003, Gieseke/Stimm 2018). Therefore, this research project focuses on the significance of emotions for educational biographies considering (1) the relevance of emotional markers for educational career choices, (2) the factors of influence constituting these emotional markers, and (3) the design possibilities for future educational policies, supporting the sensitization and reflection of students’ emotionality. To fulfill these research interests, different sources of data were analyzed with a multi-method and participatory research design: The mixed-methods approach developed here is oriented towards the idea of the “fully integrated mixed design” (Teddly/Tashakori 2009), enabling the dynamic integration of various single methods. Subjects of the data collection were five consecutive sensitization workshops with groups of students, videorecorded at a specifically equipped observation room. Participants of this study are the students in transition from high school to university. As the assumed experts of their emotionality (Huber 2018), they were mainly involved in the analysing process (focusgroups). The collected corpus of data, including the video recordings, the products from the workshop, and the students’ research journals, was analysed through the following complementary methods: the qualitative emotion-based (video) content analysis, the quantitative standardized video analysis, and, in addition, the qualitative interpretation (QCA) of the students’ research journals, as well as the products of the workshop sessions. Moreover, the study used a standardized questionnaire (EKF) in order to compare the students’ self-evaluation and emotional sensitization level from three different European countries. The results of the presented project not only highlight the emotions’ crucial role for educational pathways and future career choices of students, but also illuminate the great influence of teachers and schools on the process and communication of adaptive decision making and, accordingly, adaptive problem solving competence. This leads to the critical conclusion that rethinking school culture and (the possibility of) the communication of adaptive knowledge requires a holistic image of humanity for teaching and learning.

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