Early-Career Mathematics and Science Teachers’ Emotion and Emerging Teacher Identities

• In Event: Thriving Teachers, Thriving Students: New Directions for Promoting Teacher Effectiveness

Abstract

Purpose. We investigated how beginning science and mathematics teachers at schools that serve students of color and English Language Learners (ELLs) experience classroom emotions. Our aim is to understand how new teachers’ emotional experiences relate to their emerging teacher identities.

Theoretical framework. A growing number of researchers suggest that teachers leave the profession at high rates during the first few years on the job (Achinstein, 2006). These estimates are even higher in schools that serve students of color and ELLs (Jacob, 2007). One explanation for this exodus is the emotional nature of the teaching profession. Teaching involves considerable emotional labor, or the effort, planning, and control teachers need to express “appropriate” emotions (Schutz & Zembylas, 2009). Emotional labor has been associated with job dissatisfaction, health symptoms and emotional exhaustion -- key components of professional burnout (Schaubroek & Jones, 2000).

Beginning teachers’ emotional labor associated with their emotional experiences are intimately related to their emerging identities. For example, when teachers experience unpleasant emotions, those emotions have the potential to threaten emerging identities by challenging existing goals and beliefs (Schutz, Cross, Hong, & Osbon, 2007).

Participants and Methods. We conducted two semi-structured interviews with 11 beginning teachers. The interviews were conducted at the beginning and towards the end of their first year of teaching. We approached our data analysis from a phenomenological perspective, (Patton, 2002) and adopted Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) grounded theory approach for data analysis.

Findings. Our findings suggest that social-historical contextual factors influenced our beginning teachers’ emotional experiences as well as their emerging teacher identities. One example of this transaction is described by Mr. Guerrero who, when talking about his students, stated:

I guess they’re in a cycle of failure. They are like ‘this is where I belong, this is where I’m going to stay, and I’m not going to change it’. ‘I don’t care if this fool comes along tries to tell me I’m the best, that I can do it.’ ‘He doesn’t know my life, he doesn’t know anything about me, or the pains I feel.’ [Starts crying] That’s the pressure I feel, I’ve always been one of these people that separates my emotions, I’ve been able to, put my emotions to the side and get on with the job. In this work, I can’t separate the two, I guess the best way to put it, is that I shift back and forth between empathy and sympathy.

Ms. Guerrero ’s efforts to reconcile his vacillations between empathy and sympathy challenged his emerging teacher identities and his goals about teaching, which eventually created doubts about his goal to continue teaching.

Significance. Excessive teacher turnover is costly to society, schools, and most importantly to students. Given the demands on new teachers, it is important to better understand the factors influencing their decisions to stay or leave. Our findings provide evidence of how beginning teachers in high poverty schools talk about their emotional experiences and the ways in which these experiences shape their emerging identities and motivation to continue teaching.

Authors

• Paul A. Schutz, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Sharon L. Nichols, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Kimberly Bilica, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Kelly A. Rodgers, City University of New York