Emotions and social reflection in being and developing as a university teacher

Abstract

The purpose of this case study was to understand what kinds of emotions university teachers experience in teaching, how these emotions influence the way the teachers experience their pedagogical competency and being and developing as a teacher, and how they reflect on their teaching and teaching-related emotions. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with nine university teachers participating in an educational development project. Our results show that the teachers experienced positive, negative, and mixed teaching-related emotions and that these emotions influenced their experience of themselves as teachers and of their pedagogical competency. All teachers reflected on their teaching experiences, and most also shared and reflected on their teaching-related emotions with others. Social reflection can be a powerful tool in developing as a teacher, as it enables a personal evaluation and interpretation of teaching-related emotions and experiences. Higher education institutions should offer supportive environments for academic personnel, encouraging social reflection and providing opportunities for sharing teaching-related emotions. We found that an educational development project, in addition to more traditional staff training programs, can be a fruitful context for teachers’ pedagogical development, since it can provide opportunities for joint discussions on the application and development of pedagogical perspectives.

Keywords:

• emotions
• social reflection
• developing as a university teacher
• educational development
• professional development

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of the personnel and participants in the Flipped Learning Educational Development Project at The University of Eastern Finland, especially Erkko Sointu and Markku Saarelainen for their valuable support for this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This study was partially supported by funding from the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland, DigiPeda project [Grant no. OKM/199/523/2016];

Notes on contributors

Virve Pekkarinen

Pekkarinen Virve (M.A. in adult education, MBA in leadership and human resources management, B.Sc. in social sciences) is a PhD student at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Eastern Finland. Currently, she works at Laurea University of Applied Sciences as a Development manager of adaptive digital learning solutions. In addition, she has worked for over ten years as a University Pedagogical Expert and Teacher Trainer in HE context. She has published articles on university teachers’ pedagogical competency, social reflection, and emotions, as well as innovative and adaptive digital teaching and learning solutions.

Laura Hirsto

Professor, Laura Hirsto (PhD) works at the School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education at the Philosophical Faculty of University of Eastern Finland. Hirsto is leading various research and development projects related to academic and educational development, student learning and teacher learning in various contexts. Her interests are in students’ and teacher students’ learning and motivational processes, pedagogical learning analytics and in variations of effective teaching and learning environments.

Anne Nevgi

Dr. Anne Nevgi, Associate Professor (retired), is an active senior researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Helsinki. She leads a research project on emotions in assessment practices and is involved in a research project on campus learning environments. She has published several articles and books on teaching and learning in higher education, teacher identity development in higher education, emotions in assessment practices and on self-regulation in learning.