Exploring Emotional Dynamics of Social Studies Discussions: A Longitudinal Analysis

• In Event: Portraits of Growth: How Novice Social Studies Teachers Develop as Discussion Facilitators

Abstract

Purpose
Facilitating classroom discussions, which constitute a core practice in social studies (Fogo, 2014), is fraught with teachers’ emotions, such as anxiety, anger, and excitement (e.g., Conrad et al., 2023). The prevalence of negative emotions may be associated with teacher beliefs that discussions are hard, and with apprehension to facilitate discussions, which are uncommon in social studies classrooms (Saye & SSIRC, 2013). Researchers often capture these emotional experiences as singular states, which may hide important changes in the teacher’s emotions over time. In this study, we pursued understanding social studies teachers’ beliefs about their own emotions, as well as about their students’ emotions during discussions, over their first three years of their teaching career.

Theoretical Framework
All components in the DSMRI are theorized to include affective value and emotion can emerge from the tensions and alignments between the role related components. Changes in content, structure, and alignment between these components are non-linear and framed by four control parameters: the domain, social context, cultural mediating means, and the person’s dispositions.

Methods
We conducted two instrumental case studies (Yin, 2018) from the larger dataset on teachers who graduated from the same social studies master’s program, completed data across three years, and represented different SSDI scores (see Paper 2): Amanda = high, Faith = low.


Data Sources
Data included recorded video stimulated recall interviews centering on recorded video segments of the teachers’ facilitating discussions, and memos where teachers reflected on decisions made during the recorded video segment.

Data Analysis
The DSMRI analysis (Kaplan & Garner, 2022) focused on participants’ salient role identity contents, structures, and processes of changes in identity contents or structures regarding beliefs about emotions.

Results
Across both cases, the teachers experienced a range of negative and positive emotions that reflected identity tensions and alignments and that formed discernible patterns of misalignment and alignments in their role identities. For example, Amanda’s positive emotions during her preservice teacher experiences reflected alignment between ontological beliefs about student participation and implicit goals for students to participate. Her negative emotions during that year reflected misaligned self-perceived efficacy and discussion facilitation action possibilities. Interestingly, this was framed within an experience of growth: “As I’m getting more comfortable with discussions, I’m struggling with ‘how much is enough?’” Faith displayed a similar pattern, with positive emotions during her preservice and first years, reflecting alignments between beliefs and goals relating to student participation: “…like even talking in the discussion made me so happy.” In their first year, both Amanda and Faith exhibited more empathy toward student emotions based on aligned beliefs and goals for students to feel comfortable.

Scholarly Significance
Our study adds to the growing empirical research on the role of emotions in teaching (e.g., Zembylas, 2011) by providing a longitudinal analysis of teacher emotions in the challenging task of discussion facilitation. Overall, we found a pattern that demonstrated teachers’ early career emotions during discussions manifested from ontological beliefs about student participation. Later, teachers’ beliefs and emotions were associated with discussion practices, quality, and student emotions–possibly highlighting role identity change.

Authors

• Joseph Eisman, Purdue University

• Timothy Patterson, Temple University

• Avi Kaplan, Temple University

• Alyssa Josselsohn, Temple University