Principios desde el punto de vista metodológico

The last and also the most important emotional component examined in the present study was teachers’ subjective experiences of emotions. The main assumption was made based on this component and as mentioned in the beginning of section 4.6, the

assumption that Chinese and British teachers may have different emotional experiences when they see the same student misbehaviour was confirmed by the findings on teachers’ reported emotional reactions in the questionnaire. Generally speaking, Chinese teachers

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experienced higher levels of intensity of emotions than British teachers. This result may not be consistent with previous research findings, as most of them (e.g., Leu, et al., 2005; Bagozzi, Wong, & Yi, 1999) mentioned that Asian respondents are not inclined to show strong or extreme emotion like European American participants. For example, in the study done by Stipek (1998), American students reported experiencing a higher intensity of shame and guilt than Chinese students if they were i caught cheating on exams.

In terms of teachers’ emotional reactions to individual student behavioural scenarios, there were some similarities uncovered between Chinese and British teachers. First, teachers from both countries generated the highest intense feelings on the student behaviour of joking with each other and the emotion that had the highest rating in all scenarios was the same between the two countries, annoyance. Second, as Figure 4.6 illustrates, although the levels of the emotional intensity experienced by Chinese and British teachers were different, these two groups of teachers showed similar trends of emotional experiences watching the 5 student behaviour scenarios. In addition, Figure 4.6 also shows similar tendencies of each emotion felt across the 5 video scenarios between Chinese and British teachers. Since the choice of ‘no emotion reactions’ was provided on the Likert scale, if a teacher did not feel the emotion he could report as so. Therefore, as teachers from China and the UK showed similar emotional tendencies on all 6 emotions (anger, anxiety, shame, hopelessness, sadness and annoyance), it means that Chinese and British teachers had similar preferences in generating certain types of emotions when they saw the same student misbehaviours. Based on this discussion, it needs to be clarified that the differences discovered on emotional experiences between the two countries in the current research were differences in the intensity of teachers’ feelings.

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According to the results presented in section 4.5.2.2, Chinese teachers reported a significantly higher level of intensity of anxiety and shame than British teachers. This result was in line with the results from the validation study of AEQ. In that study, Frenzel et al. (2007) revealed that Chinese students experienced higher levels of anxiety and shame but lower levels of anger in comparison with German students doing mathematics. The present study also found teachers from China experience lower levels of anger than British teachers, but this difference was not as significant as the other two. These

differences may be explained to some extent by the cultural models of emotions reviewed in the literature. According to Kitayama, et al. (2006), members from a collectivist culture (e.g. Chinese culture) tend to feel more socially engaging emotions, since the priority of their social interactions is to create social harmony with other people. Under this

circumstance, their social identities are defined by others or by the group (Kitayama, et al., 2006). Therefore, when the social harmony is broken, people from this culture are prone to think it is related to their personal identities as well. Then, according to appraisal theorists (Frijda, 1986; Lazarus, 1991, 2001) if a person takes goal incongruence personally the feelings of shame and anxiety easily appear.

Furthermore, findings from the current study also confirmed one assumption, which was made in section 2.3.2.4, that international teachers may be more likely to experience anxiety in a foreign teaching context. Their anxiety was the side effect of their

uncertainties about whether they adapt their emotional reactions to the new context in an appropriate way (Mesquita et al., 1997).

Differences were discovered in the emotions of shame and anxiety which also echo a research finding revealed by Alberts,et al. (2010). They noted that international teachers from minority ethnic groups reported facing more hostile student behaviours than other

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groups (e.g. white-male teachers), as according to Lazarus (1991) and Smith and Ellsworth (1985) anxiety and shame are two of those emotions likely to appear when people perceive themselves as vulnerable.

One difference was also uncovered on emotional reactions to peculiar student misbehaviours. More specifically, compared with British teachers, Chinese teachers had significantly higher levels of negative feelings towards the student behaviour of joking

with each other. This finding was consistent with the difference discovered in teachers’

perceptions of the troublesome-ness of students joking with each other., According to Figure 4.1, this misbehaviour was included in Chinese teachers’ top 5 most troublesome student behaviours, but it was not in that of British teachers.

At last, as co-variances, the demographic characteristics of age and years of teaching

experience did not result in the differences that were discovered between Chinese and

British teachers. It means that teachers who were from these two countries, at each age (young, middle-aged, and old) or level of teaching experience are different in a similar way in experiencing emotions.

When it comes to relationships that were found in the current research, the most significant one was the relationships between the teacher’s country of birth and their emotional experiences. This result revealed that teachers’ cultural backgrounds could influence their emotional experience to a certain extent. It was also revealed that with the increase of age, teachers’ feelings of anxiety decreased for both Chinese and British teachers

In terms of the types of feelings that were reported in the open question area, some findings may illustrate teachers’ perceptions of student misbehaviour discussed in section 4.5.2. To be more precise, when seeing the video clip of a student playing on the

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phone, Chinese teachers mentioned feelings like just ignoring them and sympathy for the student. However, very negative feelings, including depression and severe annoyance were mentioned by British teachers. From this report, it can be seen this student misbehaviour annoyed British teachers more than it did Chinese teachers. This finding was consistent with the quantitative results that showed the behaviour of a student playing on the phone was listed in the top 5 most troublesome behaviours in British teachers’ view but not in Chinese teachers’ view.

In terms of seeing a student arriving late one more moderate emotion mentioned by a Chinese teacher was indifference. This teacher said she did not really care if students were late or not. This answer echoed the statistical finding that British teachers thought the behaviour of being late was significantly more troublesome than Chinese teachers thought. Another Chinese teacher said she felt disrespect when seeing the student coming late to class. This thought might be a reflection of the Chinese cultural value of gaining “face” from social interactions (Fan, 2000).

In sum, significant differences were revealed between Chinese and British teachers’ emotional reactions. Teachers from China experienced significantly higher levels of anxiety and shame than British teachers when they saw the same video clips of student behaviours. These differences can be explained in some way through the cultural models of emotions that were proposed by Kitayama, et al. (2006).