Employing Embodied Narrative to develop teachers’ relational agency in navigating emotional struggles

• In Event: Teacher Education in Comparative Perspective: Instructional Understanding, Relational Agency, and Equity

Proposal

1. Introduction
Teachers’ emotional struggles have gained growing attention for their impact on both teacher well-being and student outcomes (Hargreaves, 1998; Zembylas, 2020). These struggles often arise from unexpected classroom conflicts, strained relationships, and the tension between professional ideals and teaching realities (Cross & Yong, 2012; Guo & Kilderry, 2018; Park & Ramirez, 2022), leading to burnout and challenges in career retention (Chang, 2013; Yin et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2023; Wang & Hall, 2021). While many interventions, such as mindfulness and emotional skills programs, take an individualistic approach (Carroll et al., 2021; Garner et al., 2018; Jennings et al., 2013), they often overlook the social roots of emotional struggles, resulting in only short-term gains without lasting impact on emotional well-being (Carroll et al., 2021).
To challenge the dominant deficit perspectives on teacher emotional learning, we designed and implemented Embodied Narrative (Liu et al., 2024), a project grounded in relational methods and embodied performance. This project aims to support teachers in critically exploring their own and others’ emotions through, for and with others, envisioning and fostering more empathetic and supportive school communities.
The current study was part of the Embodied Narrative project. We analyze a heuristic case to demonstrate how Embodied Narrative supports six teachers in navigating their emotional struggles. Specifically, we ask:
How does Embodied Narrative support teachers in navigating emotional struggles?

2. Theoretical Framework
2.1 Emotions are embodied and relational
Emotions are embodied and relational experiences that are mediated by social interactions and personal enactments (Ahmed, 2004; Schutz et al., 2006; Zembylas, 2007). Traditional perspectives on emotions have often framed them as cognitive appraisals or individual psychological states (Barrett & Lindquist, 2008; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). While emotions encompass cognitive appraisals and subjective experiences, they are also deeply intertwined with bodily sensations and social relationships. In education, this perspective highlights that teacher emotions are not merely personal reactions but are co-constructed, negotiated, and expressed through relational and embodied engagements in the workplace.
2.2 Relational agency
Relational agency is a critical concept in understanding how teachers navigate emotional struggles. Unlike traditional notions of agency that emphasize individual autonomy and self-efficacy, relational agency highlights collaboration with others. Edwards et al. (2009) define relational agency as “a capacity that involves recognizing that another person may be a resource and that work needs to be done to elicit, recognize, and negotiate the use of that resource in order to align oneself in joint action on” (p. 40). In other words, a teacher with relational agency would recognize their colleagues, students, or others as valuable resources, and align their own thoughts and actions with those of others to achieve shared goals. This form of agency typically emerges within collaborative environments that emphasize shared engagement and mutual support (Edwards, 2017).

3. Methods
This study employed a case study approach (Yin, 2017; Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). We choose the Embodied Narrative intervention conducted from March to June 2022 as a case. Six teachers participated in the intervention, including Dalish, Prince, Xinxin, Tina, Tang and Xiaodun.
Tina shared her recent emotional struggles, which provide essential context for this study. In Tina’s class, a conflict arose when Hehua accused Jimin of bullying. The next day, Tina confirmed the bullying through student conversations and attempted mediation, but the meeting escalated with both families directing anger at her. Later, Hehua’s parents disrupted Tang's class, further intensifying tensions. The incident left Tina feeling helpless and emotionally drained. Also, Tang felt her dignity was challenged, Dalishi expressed anxiety and a desire to resign, Prince struggled with managing aggressive students, and Xinxin noted Hehua’s disengagement. Principal Xiaodun acknowledged frequent parent-teacher conflicts as a key source of teacher stress. This incident became the script for the teachers’ performance and inquiry that semester: Dalishi played the role of the homeroom teacher, Prince portrayed Jimin, Xinxin took on the role of Hehua, Tina played Jimin’s mother, Tang acted as Hehua’s mother, and Xiaodun portrayed Hehua’s father.
We employed a variety of data sources. First, the primary story introduced above was shared and reenacted between March and June 2022 across seven workshops and one Forum Theater. All these sessions were audio- and video-recorded. Second, we conducted one-on-one interviews with the six teachers at the end to capture their perspectives. Third, teachers contributed a variety of artifacts, including their pre-participation surveys, monologues written from the perspective of their roles, transcripts of interviews with others, and reflective journals.
All data were imported to Nvivo 12 for qualitative data analysis. We used both inductive and deductive logic when coding the data (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015; Miles et al., 2014). This approach enabled us to examine the data from both grounded and theory-driven perspectives (Timmermans & Tavory, 2022).

4. Findings
The main findings of this study are as follows:
(1) Teachers’ emotional struggles are deeply embodied, and embedded within social relationships, and can undermine their relational agency.
(2) Relational agency as an essential factor in helping teachers navigate emotional struggles. Within the Embodied Narrative, teachers’ relational agency manifested in three key ways: identifying, establishing, and leveraging new relationships; expanding understanding of emotional complexity; and coordinating and practicing more constructive and innovative action.
(3) Several unique aspects of Embodied Narrative intervention played a crucial role in supporting teachers’ relational agency development.

5. Significance
These findings emphasize the need for future teacher emotional learning interventions to move beyond deficit perspectives by treating emotional struggles as learning resources and adopting embodied and relational methods. The Embodied Narrative framework offers a reference for future practices in similar cultural contexts. In addition, just as a withering tree requires better sunlight, soil, and nutrients rather than merely pruning its branches, supporting teachers’ relational agency and well-being requires systemic, empathetic, and sustainable research and policy efforts.

Author

• Shuqin Li, Hunan Normal University