Teachers’ Emotion Regulation: Implications for Classroom Conflict Management

Abstract

It has been postulated that emotions play essential roles in conflict situations and that excessive expression of emotions or inappropriate display can reduce the capacity to manage conflict. However, there is a lack of research that relates teachers’ emotion-regulation ability to managing conflict. To bridge this gap, this pilot study aimed to examine the relationships between teachers’ emotion-regulation ability and conflict management strategies used in the classroom. The sample consisted of 878 teachers (61% women) working in Portuguese schools, which completed an application of Mayer and Salovey’s emotional intelligence model and Rahim’s model of conflict management. Using the structural equation modeling, findings revealed that the teachers who tend to show a greater ability to regulate emotions use mainly integrating and compromising strategies to manage classroom conflicts more frequently than other strategies. In conclusion, it is necessary to create a curriculum in the pre-service teachers’ education programs that includes emotional education, so that they can acquire emotional regulation skills, due to their importance in classroom conflict management.