A two-wave panel study on teachers' emotions and emotional-labour strategies.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the reciprocal relations between discrete emotions that teachers typically experience while teaching and interacting with students (i.e., joy, love, anger, and hopelessness) and emotional labour strategies (i.e., deep acting and two forms of surface acting-hiding feelings and faking emotions) over time. To address these research aims, two-wave panel design and cross-lagged structural equation modeling were implemented. An initial sample of 2,022 teachers filled in questionnaires with a time lag of 6months. The results showed that teachers' emotions and emotional labour are related to each other over time. Love positively predicted deep acting and anger positively predicted hiding feelings and faking emotion over time. The opposite direction of association was also established-deep acting positively predicted joy, whereas hiding feelings positively predicted hopelessness. The results highlight the importance of taking a discrete approach to emotions and triadic approach to emotional labour when examining their reciprocal relations and may have important practical implications in promoting teachers' emotional well-being.