Early Career Mathematics and Science Teachers’ Emotional Experiences, and Emerging Teacher Identities

• In Event: Motivation and Emotion in Context: Exploring the Influence of Culture and Context on Teachers’ Lives

Abstract

Purpose. This study investigates how beginning science and mathematics teachers at schools that serve minorities and English Language Learners (ELLs) experience and talk about classroom emotions. Our aim is to understand how new teachers’ motivation and 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). These estimates are even higher in schools that serve minorities and ELLs (Jacob, 2007). Researchers have suggested that one explanation for this exodus is the emotional nature of the teaching profession (e.g., Schutz & Zembylas, 2009). They suggest that teaching involves considerable emotional labor, which involves the effort, planning, and control teachers need to express “appropriate” emotions. Emotional labor has been associated with job dissatisfaction, health symptoms and emotional exhaustion, which are key components of professional burnout.
From our perspective, beginning teachers’ emotional experiences and emotional labor associated with those experiences are intimately related to their emerging teacher identities. For example, when teachers experience unpleasant emotions, those emotions have the potential to threaten their emerging identities by challenging their existing goals and beliefs.
Participants and methods. We conducted two semi-structured interviews with 11 beginning teachers. The interviews were conducted at beginning to the end of their first year. 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 relate to the social-historical contextual factors that influenced our beginning teachers’ emotional experiences such as: (a) the impact of teachers’ transitional experiences during their first year, (b) the influence of mentoring and leadership, and (c) their response to accountability pressures. Each of these factors influenced - and was influenced by - the new teachers’ emerging identities. One example experience was that of Ms. Miller who stated:
“The school district called me, on Wednesday and said, “Can you come interview?” I said yes and they interviewed me Wednesday. I was hired on a Thursday and I was thrown to the wolves on Friday. I went into a class where I didn’t have a book or computer or the curriculum guide or even an idea as to what I was supposed to be teaching. They said, “There’s your classroom!” I cried every day.”
Ms. Miller’s “challenging” entry into teaching set in motion a series of emotionally exhaustive experiences causing Ms. Miller to eventually doubt her teaching efficacy and question her motivation to continue in the profession.
Significance. Excessive teacher turnover is costly to society, schools, and most importantly to students. Given the demands on new 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 beginning teachers in high poverty schools talk about their 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

• Kimberly Bilica, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Kelly A. Rodgers, City University of New York

• Walt Hudson, The University of Texas - San Antonio

• Jamie McKenzie Davis, The University of Texas - San Antonio