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Despite the idea that emotions are a key dimension for teaching and teacher development has been recognized since the mid-1990s, how teachers experience their emotions during the beginning phase remains under research (Hensley et al. 2014). Studies (e.g. Hargreaves 1998, 2000; Cowie 2011; Yin and Lee 2012) show that the workplace of teachers can be regarded as a significant immediate context for teachers to experience and express emotions, realizing emotional socialization. Schools in China, unlike other Western countries, have a long history of using institutionalized learning activities to enhance teachers’ competence. However, there has been relativity little research into their emotions in this special learning context. This study aims to address the research question ‘How did novice teachers engage in the in-service learning activities contribute to their emotional experience?’ It is hoped that the study can shed light on the process of emotional socialization of novice teachers in an institutionalized learning context.
For novice teachers, life may go beyond their imagination and present more challenges as well as frustrations. They must adjust themselves to the new role in their career. This process can also be regarded as socialization during which often emerge two types of emotions, positives ones, and negative ones. These two kinds of emotions are intertwined and interchangeable in novice teachers’ lives. How can we understand and explain teachers’ emotional experiences? There are three concepts can be used, teaching emotion (Nias, 1996), emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983), and emotional rule (Zembylas, 2005). According to the existing research, learning contains intellectual as well as emotional changes in learners. Both of them are important for novice teachers and interrelated with each other especially in the form of effective collective learning. The framework of teachers’ emotional socialization in the context of Chinese in-service learning activities is as follows. The first process includes teaching by examples and explaining in words. The second process contains intellectual and emotional impacts.
In-service learning———————Experience sharing———————Emotional experience
Figure 1. The framework of teachers’ emotional socialization
This small-scale qualitative study analyzed interview data from 15 novice teachers of two Chinese primary schools. Semi-structured interviews were used during the data collection process. The interview protocols focused on two issues: (1) experience in participating in the in-service learning activities; and (2) how these activities influenced their emotions.
Findings show that emotional experience, as a symbol, can be made meaning and internalized by novices through their interaction with the colleagues. There is often a contradictory emotional feature of being ‘supported and suppressed’ of these novice teachers. They can improve their self-confidence by gaining advice on interpersonal communication and teaching. However, they will also produce negative emotions because of the conflicts of educational ideas with other teachers. Besides, there is a potential emotional rule in the in-service learning activities: express gratefulness and hind the dissatisfaction. In this kind of learning, novice teachers absorb others’ experiences of being teachers by explanation-in-words and behaviors-in-observation which influenced their emotional experience intellectually and emotionally. Finally, they became members of their schools and realized the emotional socialization.