The emotions of teachers teaching German in Chinese secondary schools

Abstract

As part of the continued effort to advocate multilingual education, China has recently included German, French, and Spanish as subjects in secondary education. Secondary teachers teaching these languages other than English (LOTEs) may confront new challenges and opportunities, potentially making their professional lives emotionally intense. We therefore take teachers teaching German in Chinese secondary schools as examples and examine their emotions, including the emotion types and the reasons behind those emotions. Using a mixed method, the study surveyed 136 Chinese German teachers nationwide, and then conducted follow-up interviews with 20 participants. The study reveals that the Chinese German teachers experienced more positive emotions than negative ones. The positive emotions were mostly associated with positive interactions in their school settings, followed by their teacher knowledge, interests, and personality, while opportunities created by the development of the German subject constituted an additional factor. Implications for how to enhance LOTE teachers’ emotional experiences are discussed. FUNDING INFORMATION. This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the Funds of the Teaching Advisory Board for German majors under the Ministry of Education in China (21DYJJ06).