The emotional variation can reflect shifts in mental and emotional states. It plays an important role in the field of intelligent education. Emotion recognition can be used as cues for teachers to evaluate the learning state, analyze learning motivation, interest, and efficiency. Although research on emotion recognition has been ongoing for a long time, there has been a restricted emphasis on analyzing the credibility of the recognized emotions. In this paper, the origin, development, and application of emotion recognition were introduced. Then, multiple signals captured from video that could reflect emotion changes were described in detail and their advantages and disadvantages were discussed. Moreover, a comprehensive summary of the pertinent applications and research endeavors of emotion recognition technology in the field of education was provided. Last, the trend of emotion recognition in the field of education was given.