The emotional dimension of teaching in a group of Portuguese teachers

Abstract

The study of emotions within educational contexts congregates various perspectives, strategies and levels, and requires multidisciplinary approaches to clarify the impact of the emotional dimension of teachers in the classroom. This study aims at understanding through a multidisciplinary approach how teachers manage their emotions within the pedagogical objectives and in which classroom settings they experience emotions regarded as positive or negative. A detailed analysis of the answers of eight Portuguese teachers to an open-ended interview revealed that positive emotions were experienced in classroom contexts whereas negative emotions refer to meso and macro contexts. However, the description and understanding of emotions is centred in two basic categories: happiness and sadness. According to this data, the lack of discrimination of the teachers’ emotional states points to the need of training in this area, namely in what concerns the ability to discriminate and recognise emotions and situations that trigger them.