Teachers’ Selection of Emotional Acting Strategies in Pursuit of Classroom Goals

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Classroom Management as Care, Relationships, Emotions, and Aggression

Abstract

A surge of recent research has sought to understand teachers’ emotional practice, with interest hinged on the potential of supporting teachers in this endeavor for their own benefit as well as the benefit of their students. One strand of this research explores teachers’ performance of emotional labor, which has traditionally comprised the manufactured expression and/or suppression and adjustment of emotions in response to professional expectations and organizational goals. We asked teachers (N=74) describe and rationalize emotional acting instances. To provide a framework around which to organize future research, we present a conceptual model of teachers’ emotional labor that describes how teachers identify situationally relevant goals such as effective classroom management and select emotional acting strategies to reach them.

Authors

• Christy Suzanne Galletta Horner, University of Pittsburgh

• Elizabeth Levine Brown, George Mason University

• Mary Margaret Kerr, University of Pittsburgh

• Christina Scanlon, University of Pittsburgh