Pleasant Teachers' Emotion and Their Potential Influence on Emerging Teacher Identities

• In Event: 60.025 - Just Feeling Good? Relevance, Antecedents, and Consequences of Teachers' Positive Emotions

Abstract

Purpose.
We investigated how teachers talk about pleasant emotional experiences in the classroom and how those experiences influence their emerging teacher identities. Our aim was to understand how teachers’ pleasant 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 of teaching (Achinstein, 2006; Kersaint, Lewis, Potter, & Meisels, 2007). Researchers have suggested that one explanation for this exodus may be the emotional nature of the teaching profession (e.g., Schutz & Zembylas, 2009). Thus, the frustration, anger, and anxiety experienced by teachers have been associated with job dissatisfaction, health symptoms, and emotional exhaustion -- key components of job burnout (Maslach, 1982).
Frederickson and Losada (2005) argue for the importance of pleasant emotional experiences to “flourish” and provide evidence that people with a 2.9 ratio (or above) of pleasant to unpleasant emotional events tend to flourish emotionally but those below that level may not. Other scholars have also discussed the importance of pleasant emotions for teachers (Frenzel, Goetz, Lüdtke, Pekrun, & Sutton, 2009; Schutz, Nichols, & Bilica, 2014). However, we know less about how those pleasant emotions influence emerging teacher identities and interest in continuing to teach. So, when teachers experience pleasant emotions, do those experiences have the potential to strengthen their emerging teachers identities?
Participants and methods.
We conducted two semi-structured interviews with 11 beginning teachers. We approached our data analysis from a phenomenological perspective, (Moustakas, 1994; Patton, 2002) and adopted Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) grounded theory approach for data analysis.
Findings.
Our emergent findings suggest that teachers’ emotional experiences may provide some confirmation of what it means to be a “good” or “bad” teacher. For example, Mr. Smith suggested:
… I guess [emotions have] a big impact on [what it means to be a teacher], it makes me, at the end of the day I either feel like I'm being a success or a failure based on the emotions that I go through during the day. It’s definitely not, the way I feel about my success or failure as a teacher, some rational decision thing at all. It's mostly like how do I feel I did at the end of the day or that kind of thing I go through during the day so.
Thus, positive emotions tended to help to confirm our participants’ identities as “teacher.” As Ms. Gomez indicated, when she notices her students getting the information she was teaching, it made her feel “like you’re doing something right. It’s a good, good, good feeling.”
Significance.
Excessive teacher turnover is costly to society, schools, and most importantly to students. Given the demands on teachers, it is important to better understand the social, emotional, contextual factors influencing their decisions to stay or leave. Our findings provide evidence of how teachers talk about their pleasant emotional experiences and the ways in which these experiences shape their emerging teaching 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