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.