The role of teachers’ emotion regulation in teaching effectiveness: A systematic review integrating four lines of research

Figures & data

Figure 1. Heuristic framework on the role of teachers’ emotion regulation in the quality of teacher-student interactions and student outcomes with teacher emotions and burnout as the central mediating pathways (also see Frenzel et al., 2021; Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). The top part illustrates the integrative view of emotion regulation underlying this review and the conceptual overlap between emotion regulation in the tradition of Gross, emotional labor, coping, and emotion regulation as part of emotional intelligence. Components of the framework that this review focused on are black-rimmed; parts that were not of primary interest are shaded. ¹Typically mentioned in the emotion regulation literature in the tradition of Gross, but not as a coping strategy; ²Typically mentioned as a coping strategy, but not assessed in the emotion regulation literature.

Figure 2. Assessment of teachers’ emotion regulation across lines of research. Exemplary instructions and items are taken from the tools that are printed in bold.

Figure 3. PRISMA diagram of the literature search process.

Table 1. Characteristics of the included studies depending on the line of research and the type of emotion regulation.

	Total	Line of research				Regulation strategy
		Emotion regulation	Coping	Emotional labor	EI: general ability	External	Internal	Expressive
Number of samples (k)^b	69^a	17	15^1	10	28	18^a	29^a	28^a
Year of publication (M)	2016.90	2018.47	2014.79	2018.60	2016.36	2015.41	2017.75	2018.11
Journal article (%)	64.71	64.71	78.57	80.00	53.6	76.47	60.71	70.37
Teachers
Sample Size (M)	261.36	305.29	475.00	250.30	155.18	411.94	268.55	376.68
Proportion Female (M)	75.61	87.23	68.72	69.63	74.36	73.65	79.76	77.93
Age (M)	39.46	38.53	38.75	39.57	39.91	38.71	38.44	39.03
Job Experience (M)	12.48	12.37	13.78	14.77	11.55	10.78	12.81	13.95
Students
Sample Size (M)	1591.33	4362.80	319.00	1535.00	556.67	319.00	3302.38	3686.71
Proportion Female (M)	54.76	50.71	48.30	57.00	56.41	48.30	52.81	53.37
School (%)^c
PreK – Elementary	52.17	70.59	53.33	40.00	46.43	55.56	58.62	57.14
Secondary	55.07	41.18	60.00	70.00	53.57	55.56	44.83	50.00
Tertiary	13.00	0.00	13.33	20.00	17.86	11.11	3.45	7.14
Special Education	4.35	5.88	0.00	10.00	3.57	0.00	6.90	7.14
ER Assessment
Objective tool (%)	14.49	0.00	0.00	0.00	35.71	0.00	0.00	0.00
Work-specific (%)	33.33	11.76	33.33	100.00	21.43	33.33	31.03	46.43
Correlate Assessment^d
T Questionnaire (%)	53.62	47.06	86.67	50.00	39.29	77.78	51.72	57.14
T Scenarios (%)	8.70	23.53	6.67	0.00	7.14	16.67	13.79	7.14
S Questionnaire (%)	23.19	17.65	6.67	20.00	35.71	5.56	17.24	17.86
Observation	14.49	17.65	0.00	10.00	21.43	0.00	13.79	10.71
Test / GPA	2.90	0.00	0.00	10.00	3.57	0.00	3.45	3.57
Common Method (%)	60.87	70.59	93.33	50.00	42.86	94.44	65.52	64.29

EI: emotional intelligence; T: teacher; S: student.

^a Two samples were from the same study.

^b The total sum is smaller than the sum across cells in this row because some studies used instruments from two lines of research or assessed multiple regulation strategies; the sum of the percentages does not add up to 100.00% because some studies: ^cincluded samples with different school types and ^dused multiple methods for assessing the correlat and one study did not report the rater.

Figure 4. Relations between teachers’ external emotion regulation strategies and teaching effectiveness.

Figure 5. Relations between teachers’ internal emotion regulation strategies and teaching effectiveness.

Figure 6. Relations between teachers’ expressive emotion regulation strategies and teaching effectiveness.

Table 2. Included emotion regulation strategies for each overarching type of regulation and number of studies examining these strategies in combination with each correlate.

	Emotion regulation strategies	k^a	GI	ES	CM	IS	AO	NO
External regulation	Active modification, (pro-)active coping Taking action to solve the problem	6	1	1	1	0	4	0
	(Refocus on) planning Making a plan of action	6	3	1	0	0	2	0
	Suppression of competing activities Focusing on solving the problem and putting other things aside	2	1	0	0	0	1	0
	Problem-focused coping Combination of planning and active strategies	4	0	2	0	1	0	1
	Seeking instrumental support, social problem solving Seeking someone’s advice on how to deal with the situation	8	3	0	4	0	1	0
Internal regulation	Positive refocusing Drawing attention to positive things that have nothing to do with the problem	2	0	1	0	0	1	0
	Cognitive reappraisal, positive reappraisal / reinterpretation/ reframing, emphasizing the positive Looking at positive aspects of the problem, changings one’s perspective on the situation	22	4	13	6	1	5	3
	Acceptance Accepting that the situation cannot be changed and learning to live with it	3	1	0	0	0	2	0
	Humor Joking about the situation	4	1	2	0	0	1	0
	Deep acting Trying to actually experience the emotions that one must show	7	1	4	2	2	3	0
Expressive regulation	Genuine expression of positive emotions Letting out the positive emotions one truly feels	2	0	1	0	0	1	0
	Genuine expression of negative emotions, venting of emotions, confrontive coping^b Letting out the negative emotions one truly feels	7	3	1	0	0	4	0
	Faking emotions Expressing emotions that one does not truly feel	5	0	2	1	1	4	0
	Expressive suppression, hiding emotions Not showing the emotions that one feels	18	1	11	6	2	7	2
	Surface acting Combines faking and hiding	5	1	3	1	1	1	0

^aThe total number of studies is smaller than the sum across all cells in this row because some studies assessed multiple correlates.

^b We distinguished genuine expression of positive and negative emotions because expressing positive emotions was likely to have positive relations with the correlates, whereas we expected the reverse for genuine expression of negative emotions;

GI: general interaction quality; ES: emotional support; CM: classroom management; IS: instructional support; AO: academic student outcomes; NO: nonacademic student outcomes.

Table 3. Proportion of studies finding statistically significant positive and negative relations between teachers’ emotion regulation and the correlates.

	Teacher-student interaction								Student outcomes
	General quality		Emotional support		Classroom management		Instructional support		Academic		Nonacademic
Emotion regulation	+	–	+	–	+	–	+	–	+	–	+	–
General Ability	33.3	16.7	47.1	23.5	30.0	0.0	12.5	37.5	62.5	0.0	25.0	0.0
External	100.0	0.0	50.0	0.0	60.0	20.0	100.0	0.0	40.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Internal	80.0	20.0	52.6	0.0	12.5	12.5	0.0	0.0	25.0	0.0	33.3	0.0
Expressive	0.0	40.0	21.4	42.9	0.0	71.4	0.0	66.7	20.0	20.0	0.0	100.0
Genuine positive			100.0	0.0					100.0	0.0
Genuine negative	0.0	66.7	0.0	0.0					0.0	50.0
Surface	0.0	0.0	33.3	66.7	0.0	100.0	0.0	100.0	0.0	0.0
Suppression	0.0	0.0	18.2	27.3	0.0	66.7	0.0	50.0	0.0	28.6	0.0	100.0
Faking			0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	50.0	50.0

Cells where at least 50.0% of the studies found statistically significant correlations are filled in gray; cells including at least 3 studies are printed in bold; empty cells refer to emotion regulation-correlate combinations that have not been examined in the included studies.

Frenzel, A. C., Daniels, L., & Burić, I. (2021). Teacher emotions in the classroom and their implications for students. Educational Psychologist, 56(4), 250–264. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2021.1985501

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Jennings, P. A., & Greenberg, M. T. (2009). The prosocial classroom: Teacher social and emotional competence in relation to student and classroom outcomes. Review of Educational Research, 79(1), 491–525. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654308325693

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in PsychArchives (http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.13494) along with the PRISMA protocol (https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.5374).