From anxiety to enthusiasm: emotional patterns among student teachers

Abstract

Studying to become a teacher is a highly emotional experience. Nevertheless, little is known about emotional patterns and emotional change. The aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of student teachers’ academic emotions by exploring patterns of emotions experienced in emotionally loaded episodes. A total of 19 primary school student teachers were interviewed. The qualitative content analysis revealed five different emotional patterns: positive, negative, ascending, descending and changing. Most of the emotional patterns were positive or changing in nature. Yet all the emotional patterns were highly focused on studying and learning. Moreover, the patterns were experienced equally in short, medium-length and long episodes. Our study showed that emotional patterns were triggered by various task-related elements of teacher education: most commonly, fulfilled or unfilled expectations, sufficient or insufficient abilities, and experiences of social support received or not received.