Prioritizing teacher emotions: shifting teacher training to a digital environment.

Abstract

This paper is in response to the manuscript entitled, “Success, failure and emotions: Examining the relationship between performance feedback and emotions in diagnostic reasoning,” (Jarrell, Harley, Lajoie, & Naismith, Educational Technology & Research Development, 65, 1263–1284: 2017) from a K-12 teacher and administrator educational perspective. Jarrell et al.’s (Educational Technology & Research Development, 65, 1263–1284: 2017) findings indicate a strong relationship between outcome emotions and performance tasks: highest performing medical students had the most positive emotions. The authors suggested that medical students who fail and experience negative emotions could experience a loss of confidence and lead to dropping out of medical school. These results can be applied to teachers and administrators in K-12 settings as they make the shift to digital learning by including emotional assessments into the new digital learning platforms in order to address areas of emotional stress and teacher burnout before leading to attrition. This perspective makes suggestions of ways Jarrell et al.’s (Educational Technology & Research Development, 65, 1263–1284: 2017) findings could be a starting place for educational stakeholders to prioritize teachers’ emotional well-being and offer an opportunity to provide intervention support in order to increase teacher self-efficacy in the shift to digital and possibly reduce teacher burnout.