Emotion Regulation and Identity Negotiation: A Short Story Analysis of Finnish Language Teachers’ Emotional Experiences Teaching Pupils of Immigrant Background

Abstract

This study explores the connection between emotion regulation and teacher identity by drawing on short stories present in interviews with four Finnish language teachers working with immigrant pupils. The selected short stories focused on negative emotions and were analyzed using Barkhuizen’s (2016) proposed narrative analysis method. The findings showed that the most important emotion regulation strategy was cognitive change and that teachers redefined, strengthened, conformed or aligned their teacher identity. This study argues for emotions as essential to teachers’ sense of self as professionals and a perspective from which to view how teachers understand their professional identity.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the teachers for their time, insightful testimonies and participation in the study. Their gratitude is extended to Professor Emerita Anneli Eteläpelto for helping with two of the Finnish interviews and her support throughout the study. The authors would also like to acknowledge the contributions of the three anonymous reviewers whose observations enhanced the quality of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland under Grant number 288925 [The Role of Emotions in Agentic Learning at Work]; and the Urpo ja Maija-Liisa Harvan Rahasto under the Finnish Cultural Foundation under Grant number 00190798 [Teaching Immigrant Children: Teacher Identity Negotiation].