Relationality in language teacher emotion regulation: Regulating emotions through, with and for others

Abstract

Although previous research has shown that teaching is replete with emotion (Zembylas, 2004) and that emotion regulation should be viewed as a key teacher competence (Brackett, Palomera, Mojsa-Kaja, Reyes, & Salovey, 2010; Gkonou & Mercer, 2017), there is still much that we do not know about how such regulation is performed in teachers’ day-to-day teaching practice. In this article, we explore the nature of emotion regulation among 50 language teachers working in four national settings, namely the US, the UK, Norway and Germany. In-depth, individual semi-structured interviews with the participating teachers, which were coded and analysed thematically, revealed the following three key themes: a) emotion regulation has strong potential to mediate stronger connections with students; b) emotion regulation is a highly collaborative and relational process as it often takes place together with others or through the help of others; and c) emotion regulation is not only performed together with others but also for others. We discuss these findings in light of recent calls to attend to collaborative processes in language education which have strong potential to lead to healthy and adaptive interpersonal relationships (Gkonou, 2022; Mercer, 2016).