Chapter 15 - Teachers' Anger, Frustration, and Self-Regulation

Abstract

This chapter explores teacher's emotions such as anger and frustration. Frustration and anger arise from a number of sources related to thwarted goals including students' misbehavior and violation of rules, factors outside the classroom that make it difficult to teach well, uncooperative colleagues, and parents who do not follow appropriate behavior norms or are perceived as uncaring and irresponsible. Teachers also become angry when they believe that students' poor academic work is due to controllable factors, such as laziness or inattention. Many teachers report that most experience of anger and frustration are not minor, momentary feelings, but are intense, lasted more than one hour, and are associated with noticeable bodily sensations. In addition, their anger and frustration leads to changes in their classroom behaviors and coping strategies. Intrusive thoughts make it difficult for them to concentrate on what they are doing before the emotion episode, and that students are the immediate target of the anger and frustration. This indicates that the classroom impact of these negative emotions is considerably longer than the specific episodes.