Intrinsic Emotion Regulation From the Teachers' Perspective: A Mixed-Methods Account of Goals, Strategies, and Correlates

• In Event: 41.026 - Show and Tell: How Teachers' Emotional Expressions Shape Student Outcomes

Abstract

Teachers experience a multitude of emotions in the classroom and these emotions do not come and go as they please, rather teachers often exert some control over them (Sutton, 2004; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015). To date, there remains considerable uncertainty in why teachers regulate their emotions, which emotion regulation strategies they actually use while in the classroom, and the relationship between these strategies and teachers’ well-being. Using the extended process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015) as a framework, we examined teachers’ emotion regulation goals (instrumental vs. targeting the emotional experience; intrinsic vs. extrinsic), strategy use (situation modification, situation selection, attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation), and the psychological correlates of two emotion regulation strategies–cognitive reappraisal and suppression–in a mixed-methods design.

Structured interviews on emotion regulation goals and strategy usage were conducted with 49 teachers. Surveys on habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and suppression in the classroom, level of burnout, teaching self-efficacy, job satisfaction and relatedness to students were filled out by 126 different teachers.

In our interviews, teachers described their emotion regulation goals and strategy use in 89 classroom scenarios. In accordance with Gross’ (2015) extended process model of emotion regulation, teachers reported regulating their emotions to attain another valued goal (n=71) or to change their emotional experience (n=54 times). Teachers predominately reported attempting to decrease negative (n=79) or increase positive (n=30) emotions, however, they also reported trying to decrease positive (n=2) and increase negative (n=3) emotions. Furthermore, when regulating their own emotions teachers frequently simultaneously endorsed an extrinsic emotion regulation goal (n=80). Thus, teachers often regulate their emotions in an attempt to regulate the emotions of their students.

Teachers described scenarios in which they used situation selection (n=11), situation modification (n=11), attentional deployment (n=16), cognitive change (n=14), and response modulation (n=40) strategies to regulate their emotions. An example of cognitive change was “…Once I learned to kidwatch and check to see that students are really working, I realized that I don't need to feel frustrated or anxious when my students are talking during work time.” An example of response modulation was “After receiving the news that I would not teach 10th grade Pre AP, I had to go to class and suppress my sadness.”

In our quantitative analyses, we concentrated on the correlates of cognitive reappraisal–a type of cognitive change, and suppression–a type of response modulation. Cognitive reappraisal was positively related to teacher well-being (depersonalization: r=-.20, p=.03; personal accomplishment: r=.38, p<.001; teaching self-efficacy: r=.39, p<.001; relatedness: r=.24, p=.02); whereas suppression was negatively related to teacher well-being (depersonalization: r=.30, p=.001; personal accomplishment: r=-.19, p=.04; emotional exhaustion: r=.25, p=.007; teaching self-efficacy: r=-.19, p=.04; job satisfaction: r=-.30, p=.001). Our results highlight that teachers frequently report using a strategy that is negatively related to their well-being and infrequently use a strategy that is positively related to their well-being. Thus, future research should concentrate on developing emotion regulation trainings for teachers so that teachers are prepared to handle the emotional arena of the classroom.

Authors

• Jamie Taxer, Stanford University

• James J Gross, Stanford University