As discussed in section 1.2.1, a person’s concern in a situation would become the main dispositional antecedent for eliciting emotions, and under the context of education, a teacher’s specific concern for a situation would be heavily shaped by beliefs, identities and goals that are held by him/her by that time (Schutz, Cross, Hong & Osbon 2007). In the section below, the details of how these three factors work as antecedents in affecting teachers’ emotions are discussed.
Teacher belief
Beliefs can be defined as people’s conscious or unconscious built-in values that shape their ways of thinking and behaving (Borg, 2001).
According to Vartuli (2005), teacher belief is the heart of teaching; as such it plays a pivotal role in guiding teachers’ teaching behaviour and mapping teachers’ emotional experiences in the classroom. (Schutz, et al., 2007; Xu, 2012; Vartuli, 2005). That is to
say, it works as standards when teachers make evaluations or judgement of situations in teaching and then makes the occasions have certain sense to the teacher (Schutz, et al., 2007).
Like all other beliefs, teachers’ beliefs have two sides. One side refers to their beliefs about the outside world and the other side involves their beliefs about their inner selves (Foley, 2001). In a teaching context, teachers’ beliefs related to the outside include their concerns about students, classrooms, and the teaching materials they have prepared (Raths, 2001). For example, a teacher may believe all students can learn in his/her class and students’ diversity in his/her classroom would be an advantage rather than an issue.
Then, teachers’ beliefs about themselves can be regarded as their self-efficacy (Bandura,1982; Henson, 2001). According to Bandura (1994), perceived self-efficacy refers to one’s beliefs about his/her ability in achieving certain goals. When it comes to teachers’ self-efficacy, it means a teacher’s evaluations of his/her competences in developing anticipated learning outcomes or performances from students (Hoy, 2000; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001, 2007). In a teaching context, there are three main efficacies that a teacher would hold in making the judgements. They are “efficacy for student engagement”, “efficacy for instructional strategies” and “efficacy for classroom
management” (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2001, p.797) According to Ohio State teacher
efficacy scale (OSTES) that was cited in Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s study (2001),
teachers efficacy for student engagement included the evaluations of the extent to which a teacher can motivate the student to learn; teacher efficacy for instructional strategies focuses on judgement of the extent to which a teacher can organise and deliver the teaching materials successfully; and teacher efficacy for classroom management refers to the assessment of the extent to which a teacher can manage students’ disruptive
As Bandura (1994) proposed, a person’s self-efficacy mainly comes from four resources. Firstly, mastery experience is a resource which usually boosts a person’s self- efficacy directly. If teachers achieve their teaching goals after hard work, their successes will make a strong ground for their belief of their competence in teaching. Secondly, social modelling indicates that a person may believe he can finish a task if he sees a peer who has similar competences as him achieve it. Thirdly, social persuasion means a person can be persuaded (by experienced people) to believe he/she has the capabilities to achieve a goal. By believing these persuasions, his/her self-confidence is enhanced. Fourthly, a person’s physical and emotional states can influence his/her perceptions on his/her
abilities as well. For instance, a bad mood (e.g. stress and depression) may make a teacher feel vulnerable in facing students’ misbehaviours in the classroom and weaken his/her beliefs about his/her capability in tackling down the difficulties.
The beliefs held by teachers may change in accordance with the changes that have happened in all of the four resources (Henson, 2001). A little change in a teachers’ life may make a change in their self-efficacy and then lead their emotional reactions into a different direction. For example, a teacher may be more confident in giving instructions with the accumulation of his/her working experiences (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, 2007). As a result, novice and experienced teachers may feel differently when facing similar classroom situations. As such, if a researcher would like to investigate what factors influence or differentiate teachers’ emotional experiences, these self-efficacy sources in a teachers’ background should be taken into account. Moreover, high level of self-efficacy assists teachers’ teaching as teachers can perform better in teaching when they believe that they have the ability to achieve their goals (Bandura, 1977). As discussed before, teachers’ self-efficacies are influenced by their emotional states/experiences in the classroom. Therefore, for improving their confidence in teaching and managing the class,
it is important to have an examination on teachers’ emotional experiences and discover how these influence work.
At last, teachers’ beliefs also make a wide influence on the following two dispositional factors.
Teachers’ identity
According to Sachs (2005), identity refers to who the people think they are. It implies certain behaviours or ways of thinking that a person performs in a specific situation (Gee, 2001). Based on this definition, teacher’s identity can be regarded as an internalised image that a teacher pictures for being a teacher (Anspal, Eisenschmidt, & Löfström, 2012). That is to say, teachers’ perceived identity impacts the way they think and the way they feel (Sachs, 2005). As Schutz et al (2007) argue, teachers’ identity and their
emotional experiences have reciprocal relationships. Their certain beliefs about their own image would persuade how they feel in a situation, in turn, how they feel about an
incident may re-shape that image of themselves. For example, a teacher who perceives him/herself as a professional authority in the class may deliberately avoid showing some emotions (e.g. anxiety) in front of his/her students and if, somehow, he or she has been triggered to show some inappropriate emotional reactions he/she may not consider him/herself to have a suitable level of professional competence. In other words, teachers’ emotional experiences not only can be reflections of their perceived identities but also can re-shape their identities (Schutz et al, 2007).
Due to this reciprocal relationship, teachers’ emotional experiences have huge potentials to restrict or extend the teachers’ beliefs of themselves in performing professionally (Zembylas, 2003). Therefore, studying teachers’ emotions has great implications in understanding teachers’ identities, which deserves a lot more attention from educational
and psychological researchers in the future studies in this combined area (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009).
Teachers’ goals
According to Ford (1992) and Schutz Crowder and White (2001), goals can be regarded as expectations; more specifically, as states that individuals in a society would like the world to be. A goal of a teacher can be formed by both the social context which the teacher lives in and personal traits (e.g. beliefs and identity) that are carried by this teacher (Schutz et al, 2001). It is a more specified dispositional antecedent and can be perceived as a core of a concern which directly relates to teachers’ expectations and emotional experiences during teaching (Schutz et al, 2007). It explains specific transactions between events that happen in the classroom and teachers’ emotional reactions to them (Schutz et al, 2007) and, just like the other cognitive relationships mentioned earlier, the influences between goals, beliefs, identities and emotions are mutual as well. It works as a reference point for directing teachers’ thought and then to specify their emotional experiences during the teaching. In turn, teachers’ particularly good or bad feelings may modify their goals for achieving a better teaching results. Based on this statement, the particular goal that teachers carry with them should be studied as a key component of dispositional antecedents, in order to get a better understanding of teachers’ emotional experiences.
All these dispositions of teachers discussed above may make an influence on teachers’ perceptions and judgements in the elicitation of teachers’ emotions. However, little research can be found on examining how teachers’ beliefs, identities, and goals can lead their emotions and to what extent these traits can make an influence.