Exploring teacher emotions in the college classroom : a qualitative study

Interest in the role of emotion in education emerged in recent decades with a focus on how student emotions affect their learning. However, to fully understand the impact of emotion on learning, the emotions that teachers experience during the act of teaching need consideration. This qualitative study explored the emotions experienced by a purposive sample of four teachers while teaching in a college classroom. An emic and etic analysis was conducted on transcripts of semi-structured interviews that took place while teachers watched and reflected on a video recording of themselves teaching in class. Theoretical concepts from Gross’ models of emotion generation and emotion regulation (Gross, 2015), and the control-value theory of achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006) were used to inform the analysis. Although numerous emotions became apparent in the analysis of these teacher reflections, this study focused on feelings of aggravation because their negativity, arousal intensity, and relationship to questions of power and control presented the most risk to ignore and the highest benefit to understand for teachers and students. Several factors that contribute to teacher aggravation and its successful or unsuccessful emotion regulation were identified, including management of teaching goals and values, as well as beliefs and perceptions of authority, control and identity. Presence or absence of conflict among these factors affected teachers’ emotions and the pedagogical decisions they made. In addition, a relationship observed between social justice concerns and the management of teacher aggravation highlight the leadership role of the teacher and suggest a link to student engagement. This exploratory study points to the need for further elaboration of the relationship among these factors to further our understanding of teacher emotions in the college classroom.

Name thesis:degree_name

M. Éd.

Level thesis:degree_level

Maîtrise

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Enseignement au collégial

Grantor dc:publisher

Université de Sherbrooke

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Hlywa, Mary A.

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Bateman, Dianne
• Clausen, Christina

• Emotion
• Emotional processing
• Teachers
• College classroom
• Interviews
• Video recording
• Emotion regulation
• Control-value theory of achievement emotions
• Feelings
• Aggravation
• Perceptions
• Goals
• Control
• Values
• Identity
• Authority
• Social justice

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11143/19717

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:usherbrooke.scholaris.ca:11143/19717