Teacher emotions in the classroom and their implications for students

Abstract

The present contribution provides a conceptualization of teacher emotions rooted in appraisal theory and draws on several complementary theoretical perspectives to create a conceptual framework for understanding the teacher emotion–student outcome link based on three psychological mechanisms: (1) direct transmission effects between teacher and student emotions, (2) mediated effects via teachers’ instructional and relational teaching behaviors, and (3) recursive effects back from student outcomes on teacher emotions, both directly and indirectly via teachers’ appraisals of student outcomes and their correspondingly adapted teaching behaviors. We then present a tour d’horizon of empirical evidence from this field of research, highlighting valence-congruent links in which positive emotions relate to desirable outcomes and negative emotions to undesirable outcomes, but also valence-incongruent links. Last, we identify two key challenges for teacher emotion impact research and suggest three directions for future research that focus on measurement, research design, and an extended scope considering emotion regulation.

Notes

1 Of note, teacher enthusiasm has been viewed from different perspectives, with some researchers considering it as a behavioral variable describing a particularly energetic and motivating way of delivering instruction, while others consider it as an internal experience of enjoyment and passion about the topics taught, and/or the activity of teaching itself. The interested reader is referred to Keller et al. (2016) for an integrated perspective across those views.

2 It is worth noting that reported effect sizes do vary by methodological approach, as could be expected: They are larger for single source studies and smaller for studies employing separate sources for teacher emotions and student outcomes. Clearly, though, the observed effects in single-source studies cannot be fully explained by methodological artifacts.

3 Martin (2006) and Banerjee et al. (2017) are two notable exceptions. Martin (2006) reported small effects of gender on teacher-perceived student motivation/teacher enjoyment links, but no moderation by years of experience. Banerjee et al. (2017) reported stronger links between teacher positive emotional experiences and young student mathematics performance trajectories in schools whose cultures were characterized by a strong teacher professional community and teacher collaboration.