“I felt the whole world was against me!”: a qualitative study of novice teachers’ anger expression and regulation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines how novice teachers engage with the emotion of anger in their professional work. We generated 155 Chinese teachers’ written reflections on how they felt, expressed, and regulated anger. The study revealed three findings: 1) the primary sources of the teachers’ anger were related to students; 2) the majority of teachers tended to express anger destructively; 3) some teachers lacked emotional competence to regulate anger. The intensifying emotional labour in the teaching profession, the professional prematurity of novice teachers, and the stringent emotional rules in Chinese schools jointly contributed to the identified patterns. This study generates new insights into novice teachers’ anger-related experiences, highlights the socio-cultural dimension of teacher anger, and suggests practical implications for supporting teachers in making sense of and acting on anger more consciously and effectively.