Emotional Reflexivity Research Articles

Emotion–Identity–Agency Triangle in Practicum Experience: A Pre-service Second Language Teachers Development of Critical Emotional Reflexivity

Earlier research has established that language teachers’ identity work is intertwined with emotions and called for incorporating emotions in language teacher education. Yet, there is limited research investigating how teacher education programmes pedagogize identity, emotions and agency to help pre-service teachers gain critical emotional reflexivity. To respond to this gap in the literature, we pedagogized Kayi-Aydar’s emotion–identity–agency triangle via three teacher learning activities in a critical practicum course in a pre-service English language teaching programme in Turkey: reflective emotion diary; auto-ethnography; and critical issues analysis and advocacy project. In this study, we explore a Korean pre-service language teacher's (Iris's) case to demonstrate how she navigated her emotions, identity and agency throughout the practicum course with the help of these teacher learning activities and critical, dialogical supervision in our course. At the beginning of the term, Iris expressed anxiety due to her novice non-native pre-service teacher identity. Yet, as she gained critical emotional reflexivity, Iris could reflect on her emotions critically, transform her internalized deficit view of her identity as a novice non-native pre-service teacher and perform her multicultural and multilingual identity in her emerging pedagogy. We argue that findings from this study offer evidence that when intentionally and systematically supported by second language (L2) teacher educators through the design of teacher learning activities, pre-service L2 teachers can develop critical reflexivity of their emotions and emotion labour and recruit this awareness for teacher agency even over a short period of time and in contexts of power imbalance such as pre-service practicum experience. We offer recommendations for L2 teacher educators.

“Let’s catch up at Shivaji Park”: emotively conversing on connecting and un/belonging through a public space

PurposeThis paper is based on the personal connections of the four authors to Shivaji Park, the largest public space in Mumbai. Three of the authors are childhood friends and were once long-term residents of that area. The focus of this article is Shivaji Park, anecdotally the largest park in the island city of Mumbai, with its historical connotations and its ongoing role as a relational and cultural artefact in the lives of these authors. The ongoing member status of all four authors in connection with the public space is explored despite all of them now ceasing to be locals.Design/methodology/approachThis article uses a qualitative approach utilising informal conversations between the four authors recorded on zoom as the research method. Supported by belonging and emotional reflexivity as conceptual frames, it investigates how the spatial context fosters a binding relationality, which is ongoing despite the now disparate locations of the authors.FindingsBased on a critical analysis of the recorded conversations between the authors the findings highlight that belonging/unbelonging centres around emotionally tinged representations of place.Originality/valueThe core of this paper rests in the emotional connections between the authors based on their collective memories with a public space and its surrounding areas as a focus. The use of informal conversations is crucial in teasing out nuanced aspects of data collected based on human relationalities. The paper emphasises the repercussions of ongoing changes stemming from urban progress. They incur emotional and human costs through a “culling” of connections and belongings.

Bringing emotional reflexivity and emotional regime to understanding ‘the hukou puzzle’ in contemporary China

This article examines the dialogic relationship between emotional reflexivity and emotional regime as it explores ‘the hukou puzzle’ in China. In theory, migrants in small- to medium-scale cities can transfer their hukou (household registration) to urban areas, yet are unwilling to do so in practice. Relying on six months’ ethnographic fieldwork and 60 in-depth interviews with ethnic migrant performers, this article argues that previous theorisation of the hukou puzzle neglects emotions and assumes migrants are making rational choices to maximise their profits. In reality, different emotions and feelings inform migrants’ reflexivity regarding an opaque migration regime, which highlights the crucial role of how they exercise their reflexivity in emotional and relational ways. Moreover, a neoliberal emotional regime at the Chinese societal level – which emphasises positive energy, happiness and ‘the China Dream’ – also significantly shapes migrants’ emotional reflexivity. This article points to the need to further explore the intersection between emotional reflexivity and emotional regime in relation to migration.

The words may limit our understanding: reflexive research, affect and embodied writing

Drawing on a reflexive and embodied approach, this article examines the researcher’s narrative inquiry, consisting of the conflicting feelings and messy thoughts that arose through her interviews with adults who had experienced child sexual abuse. The article highlights how embodied writing can enable access to other worlds by activating the physical senses and bringing researchers back to core bodily ways of knowing; these latter may be evoked by preconceptions, entangled discourses and social views and taboos concerning child sexual abuse. The article speaks to the emerging field of Embodied Critical Thinking and the concept of emotional reflexivity in qualitative research on sensitive, challenging and difficult topics.

‘Nothing happens here, but that’s ok’: reflexivity, immobility and staying among young people in marginalised rural locations

ABSTRACT Research and policy analysis often presumes a ‘mobility imperative’ in respect of rural youth; to ‘get on’ they have to ‘get out’. Those who stay, therefore, tend to be depicted as socially and economically deficient, backward, lacking agency and ‘left behind’. The aim of our paper is to provide a corrective to this sort of thinking. We present new, extensive, qualitative, longitudinal research conducted with fifty young men and women who have chosen to stay in rural, ‘Peripheral Denmark’. Our sample were doubly marginalised; by the lack of opportunities of their localities and by their lack of progress and achievement in their school-to-work transitions. We found that young people practised an intriguing and complex emotional reflexivity about staying. Our analysis documents their entangled feelings of ‘stuckness’ (e.g. in relation to lack of transport and services, isolation from typical youth leisure, in on-going family commitments) and of ‘stillness’ (e.g. in the serenity of nature, in family belonging and in educational support). In conclusion, we suggest that the concept of ‘reflexive stayers’ captures these young people’s lived experiences of ‘stillness’ and ‘stuckness’ and could be beneficial to future research and policy analysis on rural youth, mobility and marginalisation.

Like Water: Feeling and Negotiating Relational Complexity in School-Based Ethnographic Childhood Research in China Through the Lens of Emotional Reflexivity

Ethnography is often considered as a suitable methodological approach to explore childhoods, nevertheless, there is limited reflection on ethics in the field in the Global South educational settings, such as China. Previous China-based fieldwork studies suggest complex field relationships as a major ethical challenge. Although the issue is especially prominent in research that contests “normative” Chinese childhoods, it hasn’t been sufficiently discussed due to a culture of silence surrounding researchers’ emotions and positionality. This paper uses emotional reflexivity as a lens to revisit two Chinese female researchers’ experiences of fieldwork, respectively, with left-behind children and disabled children in Chinese primary schools. The analysis examines how we identified ourselves and negotiated complex relationships with school members and unpacks experiences of “sameness” and “otherness” and the vulnerability and creditability impacted by our fluid identities. The paper adds insights into ethical considerations of school-based ethnographic research with diverse children in the Global South.

Emotion labor in teacher collaboration: towards developing emotional reflexivity

Abstract This case study explores an English learner (EL) teacher’s lived experiences of emotions concerning teacher collaboration in the US. The analysis of the EL teacher’s weekly journals and the recordings of her bi-weekly meetings with a teacher educator demonstrates that the teacher experienced a great amount of emotion labor under the feeling rule of “being supportive.” The major sources of her emotion labor include (1) content teachers’ lack of training concerning ELs; (2) the lack of systematic administrative support; and (3) her perceived teacher identity. The analysis also shows how her emotional reflexivity developed through reflection and collaborative dialogue with her mentor on her emotional experiences, empowering her to take a more active role in building a professional partnership with content teachers. The article ends with implications for language teacher education and further studies on language teacher emotions.

Emotional reflexivity in the animal justice politics of sight: embodied moral shock and limit of the emotional repertoire

Farm occupation is a recent tactic and enacts a politics of sight, which makes visible hidden animal violence by the animal industry complex. Animal justice citizen activists (AJCAs) identify and enter farms to protest lawful violence against animals by documenting and sharing images from the inside. This article examines activists’ subjective experience of immersion in animal violence. The analysis shows that a politics of sight requires and introduces extreme, conflicting emotional demands on AJCAs, requiring a level of emotional reflexivity and negotiation that is sufficiently grasped by existing conceptions of emotional habitus and moral shock. The empirical study seeks to contribute to filling this gap. To do so, I investigated the role of emotional reflexivity during, and after, AJCAs’ bodily immersion in the context of animal violence. The latter is also at its core of an unexpected moral shock for which there is not an established emotional repertoire among AJCAs. Thus, I explored the conflictual tension and the emotional consequences that AJCAs must manage during and after immersion in animal violence.

Scrutinising gut feelings: emotional reflexive practices in Italian courts

Narratives are powerful emtional devices. They can trigger our curiosity and make us suspicious, compassionate, empathic or even horrified. In this article, I focus on how Italian judges and prosecutors navigate their gut feelings evoked by written and oral narratives told by witnesses, defendants and victims in criminal cases. Fieldwork included observations of hearings and deliberations, shadowing and interviews with judges and prosecutors, and collection of written judgments. The article shows that gut feelings are experienced as intuitive knowledge – when judges and prosecutors feel they know ‘in their heart’ or ‘inside them’ the ‘true story’ of the crime, but they also contrast this type of knowledge with the ‘objective story’ based on the evidence available in a case. The analysis indicates two main emotional practices used to manage gut feelings. First, legal encoding – the translation of lay narratives into legal categories – constitutes an emotion management strategy that legal professionals can use, individually or collectively, to distance their gut feelings, restricting interest to aspects of the story validated by the evidence. Second, gut feelings can be endorsed, rather than constricted, when they generate suspicion that something ‘hidden’ has to be found out, or curiosity of knowing more about the story than what is strictly relevant under the legal frame. Gut feelings and curiosity mostly emerged in relation to the motive behind murder cases. By showing how legal professionals use their gut feelings, the article contributes to reinforcing an understanding of emotions and emotional reflexivity as necessary for rational decisions.

Managing Organisational Change: The Role of Polyphony and Emotional Reflexivity

Despite the profound impact of polyphonic practices in helping leaders and organisational members to achieve a successful organisational change effort, many organisations are still unable to engage in excellent change communication activities. As such, the organisations will face difficulties in achieving their short and long-term goals, create more misunderstandings among employees, and diminish both employees and customers’ trusts. Previous research studies have also progressively highlighted cultural factors has been one of the influential factors that affect the communication behaviours of organisational members and leaders during change. Since research that focuses on middle managers’ polyphony practices especially those in a collectivistic society has been minimal, this research was conducted to examine how polyphonism is practiced by the studied organisation during organisational change. Using middle managers’ conversations on emotional reflexivity during change, this research was conducted to obtain a rich understanding on the studied phenomenon. Communicative Constitution of Organisations the Montreal School (CCO TMS) theory was used to guide the present research and semi-structured in-depth interviews with thirty middle managers of a Malaysian (aerospace component manufacturing) organisation were carried out. The data was analysed using thematic analysis. The data revealed polyphony are strongly enforced by the respondents and their leaders through five steps of practice: mutual recognition, mutual trust, dialogic sessions, mutual understanding, and mutual agreement. The respondents also acted as polyphonous leaders: leader and decision maker of subordinates’ interactions, and leader for ideas’ diversity. The themes also reflected the emotional reflexivity practiced by the respondents which are self-consciousness, empathy, self-control, motivation and social skills. This research helped to contribute new traits to the unique face of Malaysians’ identities. It also shows the importance in attending to middle managers’ conversations on change since middle managers’ acceptance towards change are being influenced from their emotional reflexivity and organisation’s polyphony practice.

Managing Organizational Change: The role of Middle Managers’ Stories and Emotional Reflexivity

Previous studies have increasingly emphasised on the important roles of middle managers’ emotions in ensuring successful organisational change implementation. However, earlier research rarely focuses on middle managers’ emotional reflexivity during organisational change. The lack of awareness in practicing emotional reflexivity during change can affect middle managers’ work life quality where they can experience emotional vulnerability, workplace isolation and high sense of inadequacies. Using Communicative constitution of organisations the Montreal School (CCO TMS) as the theoretical underpinning, this research was conducted to study the emotional reflexivity of middle managers in a Malaysian organisation during organisational change. A qualitative methodology using semi-structured in-depth interviews was being carried to study about the targeted phenomenon and thirty middle managers from different departments in a Malaysian manufacturing aerospace component organisation has participated in this study. The analysis of the data generated seven emotional organisational change stories which were anxious, fear, anger, grief, hope, happy and gratitude. Those stories also generated the respondents’ emotional reflexivity dimensions which were self-consciousness, self-control and motivation. This research highlights the importance of listening to middle managers’ stories because it exposes the reasons for their acceptance and resistance towards change initiatives. It also highlights the importance for middle managers to instil emotional reflexivity skills in their work life as it helps them to understand and adapt to their organisation’s change programmes effectively. Lastly, this research also contributes to the enrichment of literature in the areas of CCO TMS theory, emotional reflexivity, organisational stories, as well as organisational change.

Unforeseen emotional labour: A collaborative autoethnography exploring researcher experiences of studying Long COVID in health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

Emotional labour or emotion management describes regulation of feelings to fulfil specific job roles, discussed extensively around commercial and caring professions and more recently qualitative researchers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this was heightened due to changes in the socio-political context affecting individual circumstances and research practice, yet accounts pertaining to qualitative researchers are lacking.This paper presents a collaborative autoethnographic account of the emotional labour experiences of researchers working on a longitudinal, mixed methods study on the lived experiences of healthcare workers with Long COVID in Scotland during the pandemic. The types, intensity and impacts of the emotional labour was unforeseen at the outset, rooted in a culmination of unique factors that transpired over time: circumstances pertaining to the socio-political context; the novelty, unpredictability and devastating nature and impacts of Long COVID illness; the levels of participant distress and their unfulfilled support needs. In response, researchers engaged in a range of types of emotion management - Strategic emotion work; Emotional reflexivity; Emotion work to cope with emotive dissonance and Managing relationships. This was additionally challenging given the already difficult homeworking and lockdown climate balancing workplace and personal responsibilities, and by the necessary use of remote methods for both data-gathering and interacting with colleagues, which impeded our ability to provide and receive support. Critically, emotional labour needs to be recognised, acknowledged and formal plans put in place to support researchers across individual, research team and institutional levels, with consideration of socio-political influences at the time of study.

Feeling close, disclosing feelings – family practices and practices of intimacy in youth–parent relations across three generations in Norway

ABSTRACT In this article we aim to understand how everyday family practices and practices of intimacy are connected in the formation of emotional ties in young people’s family relationships, by examining their relationship with their parents across three generations. The analyses draw on qualitative biographical interviews conducted with women and men in intergenerational chains of 24 sons/daughters (born 1992–1993), 23 of their fathers/mothers (born 1963–1970) and 21 of their grandfathers/grandmothers (born 1931–1945). By first exploring the narratives of the joint everyday practices between young people and their parents and, second, examining the emotional reflexivity in these relational narratives, we highlight differences in young people’s relations to their parents. Contrasting the oldest (1950s) and youngest (2010s) youth generations reveals joint activities and closeness to parents in both generations, while the degree of disclosing intimacy, individualised respect and shared interests marks the co-constructive nature of the youngest’ parental relations. The middle generation’s narratives are distinctive in describing themselves and their parents as living separate lives. This article contributes to the growing field of sociological youth research on family relations and the intimate aspects of the relationships between youth and their parents.

<i>I Show Her My Feelings</i>: Young Black Men and the Doing of Love in a South African Township

Love in the lives of young black men in South Africa has received particularly limited attention in literature. Although there has been a steady increase in love scholarship in Africa, these studies have mostly focused on the love experiences of young women. In that context, studies on love often focus on the disproportionate vulnerabilities experienced by young women, such as intimate partner violence. However, this characterisation of love in South African literature has, perhaps inadvertently, promoted a narrow understanding of young black men as being violent and emotionally inept. The article moves beyond these limited conceptualisations of young black men and explores love as a productive force in their lives. Drawing on empirical findings generated from interviews with 34 young men between the ages of 16 and 21, the article shows how love and the young men’s emerging masculinities were experienced as mutually constitutive. Their negotiations of love were experienced as opportunities to resist normative masculinities, demonstrated through <i>ukushela</i> and emotional reflexivity. These young black men’s investment in their relationships suggests the progressive possibilities of love in their lives.

Reflexive Research Practice in Women’s Prison Research in Uganda

ABSTRACT Although much has been written about the centrality of reflexivity in qualitative research, the literature on researcher’s reflexivity in prison research is limited. I conducted a PhD qualitative study with a sample of 30 women convicted of murder from one female prison in Uganda. This paper demonstrates the value of reflexivity in research with respect to oppressed women. It does this by discussing what reflexivity is and at what stage of the research process reflexivity is deemed important. Most importantly, the paper discusses different forms of reflexivity that I exercised, which include personal reflexivity, feminist reflexivity, emotional reflexivity, methodological reflexivity and reflexivity on research context and participants. The paper demonstrates how these different forms of reflexivity helped in various research aspects such as the evolution of the topic that empowered women to tell their stories in a context that was without any research on women convicted of murder, in recruitment of participants, avoiding harming participants and in dealing with emotion during data collection.

Emotional reflexivity in the time of COVID-19: working-class emotional practices

We share findings from a qualitative study on emotions in Scottish working-class households during lockdown. The results challenge existing research focused on emotional capital, which often suggests that working-class people struggle to provide emotional resources to those close to them. Using the concept of emotional reflexivity we show how these household members cared for each other’s feelings, challenging deficit views of working-class emotionality. This research offers a novel understanding of working-class participants collaboratively making space for each other to feel, many favouring acts of care rather than talking. The COVID-19 lockdown, however, tended to reinforce gendered practices of emotion work, although some participants drew on emotional support beyond the household to try to mitigate this burden. The emotionally reflexive practices seen in these households suggest that sustaining more equality in emotional wellbeing relies on navigating material circumstances, is not always about verbal sharing, is often an interactional achievement, but also means resisting unrealistic expectations of intimate relationships within households as the fountainhead of all emotional succour.

How climate change is changing us. A pilot study on whether negative and positive affect towards climate change promote environmental engagement or unhealthy behaviors

One of the most urgent challenges affecting our world and its inhabitants is dealing with climate change. Community Psychology can have a significant role in encouraging environ-mentally responsible behaviors and a global sense of community. As several authors maintain to enhance eco-friendly behaviors it's pivotal to understand emotional reactions to climate change and build a planetary sense of community (Francescato, 2020). When emotions and feelings are unacknowledged or unprocessed this can contribute to inhibit climate change en-gagement (Hamilton, 2022). Our pilot research involved 25 high school students that partici-pated in a Psychological Environmental Intervention Program facilitated by environmental sci-entists and community psychologists expert in affective education. Through emotional reflex-ivity on climate change, we wanted to investigate which positive and negative emotions and feelings climate change evoked in students and how these emotions were related to negative unhealthy behaviors such as wanting to drink or smoke and positive prosocial behaviors such as participating to environmental movements.

Conceptualising participant observations in festival tourism

ABSTRACT There is still confusion on what participant observation connotes and scholars call for more studies on researchers’ roles and emotional reflexivity in tourism. This interdisciplinary research aims to unpack participant observations at festivals. Findings from literary festivals in Ireland and Italy suggest that participant observations are Holistic Research Experiences and are characterised by four elements. First, they go beyond the visual and the multisensory nature, to be holistic experiences. Second, fieldwork is emplaced since researchers are situated in the field and can feel bodily sensations and empathy, but are not fully immersed. Third, the researchers’ participation continuum does not go from complete observer to complete participant, but it goes from passive to active involvement in the festival activities. Fourth, different passive/active, intentional/unintentional encounters can take place: human, animal, space, material, and immaterial. Finally, the paper considers future areas for research.

Emotions and emotional reflexivity in undocumented migrant youth activism

Emotions play a role in drawing people into activism and are a key dimension of activist experiences. However, although researchers have examined the political significance and ethical imperative of centring the voices and leadership of migrants in migrant rights struggles, there is limited consideration of how emotions are engaged in ways that inform, facilitate and challenge migrants in sustaining their activism. Through the case of undocumented youth activism in California, I explore how undocumented young people drew on practices of emotional reflexivity to navigate the complicated emotional register produced through activism as they reflected on their participation and trajectory through the undocumented youth movement. I suggest that the cultivation of storytelling spaces, cultures and practices within undocumented youth spaces supported and enhanced young people’s opportunities and capacity for engaging in relational practices of emotional reflexivity. These relational practices of emotional reflexivity supported young people to carve out expansive, dynamic and creative modes of activism that adapted to their shifting needs, circumstances and politics, while helping them to configure practices of care within the movement.

“Learn to Conserve Your Passion and Care”: Exploring the Emotional Labor of Special-Post Teachers in Rural China

In recent decades, the growing trend of post-structuralist research on teacher emotional labor has offered a discursive lens to elucidate rural teachers’ identities and their teaching practices. To date, however, few studies have explored the emotional labor of special-post teachers in rural China. Through a post-structuralist framework, this study aimed to explore the emotional labor of special-post teachers. Ethnographic qualitative data from a rural primary school in northern China showed that special-post teachers experienced various emotional conflicts embedded in multiple discourses. As teaching experience increases, special-post teachers obtain agentive emotional and practical responses to lighten their negative emotional burden for work. The findings suggested that the role overload and conflicts of special-post teachers were especially prominent in the social context of the urban–rural dichotomy. Emotional reflexivity and vulnerability of special-post teachers in their identity construction as educator, professional-service-provider, and also passer-by were also discussed.