Emotional Education Research Articles

A whole-school intervention framework for enhancing social and emotional skills in secondary schools through arts-integrated practices : Research report from the REIMAGINED project

The 21st century demands a shift towards social and emotional education (SEE). The REIMAGINED project’s report provides an intervention framework that addresses training needs, assesses students’ needs, emphasizes interactive learning, and develops a school-wide action plan. Finland, Greece, Hungary, and Italy were involved. To explore the SEE needs, 85 teachers answered the survey, and 48 educational professionals and 45 students participated in focus group interviews.

Teachers’ Emotions: Validation of the Teacher Emotions Scales in Albanian

The topic of teacher emotions has gained increasing research attention over the past years. Initial predominantly qualitative inquiry methods have been complemented by quantitative ones, and different instruments to measure teacher emotions have been developed. These instruments mainly stem from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries, and yet it is still unknown if these instruments are of universal cultural functionality. The current study aimed to validate the Teacher Emotions Scale (TES) in the low-to-middle income, Southeastern European country of Kosovo. Findings from N = 258 teachers in Kosovo provide evidence that TES-Albanian operates equivalently in terms of factor structure as the original German version of TES and the English version. Supporting the external validity of the scale, we found consistent low-to-medium relationships between the three emotions measured with the TES (enjoyment, anger, and anxiety) with other teachers’ experiential and behavioral constructs such as positive and negative affect, job satisfaction, burnout, self-efficacy, and the teacher–student relationship. Overall, we conclude that TES can effectively be translated into different languages to measure teacher emotions also in non-WEIRD cultural contexts.

ON BECOMING A PROFESSIONAL ENGLISH TEACHER

In teacher identity studies, limited attention has been generally paid to how the pre-service teachers constructed their identity by conveying various emotions in their practices. Most scholars identified the pre-service teacher's emotions during the teaching practices program. However, identifying these emotions during online teaching practices remains under-researched. Given this fact, this study probed how an English pre-service teacher’s emotions constructed his professional identity during online teaching practices. This study employed a narrative inquiry of an English pre-service teacher during online teaching practices in one of the senior high schools in Tasikmalaya, West Java, Indonesia. The data were collected from an English pre-service teacher’s reflective journals and analysed with narrative analysis (Labov, 1972). The findings revealed that the English pre-service teacher met various emotions manifested in his professional identity construction. There were five emotions experienced during online teaching practices, namely worrying, challenging, empathetic, enjoyable, and determined explored in seven critical activities of the professional practice process. During learning to teach, he could manage his negative emotions (i.e., worrying, challenging, empathetic) into positive emotions (i.e., enjoyable, determined). Therefore, his emotions experienced during online teaching practices implied that his professional identity commenced constructing in the seven activities of his professional construction process.

‘Small’ language teacher emotions between nationalism and neoliberalism

Following a critical perspective of viewing emotions as being sociopolitically constituted and ideologically driven, this study explores the emotional experiences of three female Chinese teachers teaching Thai, Vietnamese and Burmese, respectively, in light of China's reconfiguration of a nationalist project that was designed in response to neoliberal globalization. Drawing on ethnographic data that include semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, online interactions and written artifacts, findings from our study revealed that the rising status of ‘small’ languages opens up new spatial and affective imaginations for ‘small’ language teachers to capitalize on their teaching performance and enact their patriotic personae. Despite having to develop neoliberally-oriented bundles of skills, ‘small’ language teachers are subjected to the emotional regime of the academy, imposed through precarious working conditions that result in these teachers having to wrestle with structured vulnerabilities. Drawing on our findings, we argue that ‘small’ language teacher emotions are moralized as an endeavor that sustains China's nation-building process and outward engagement with the Global South. We close by emphasizing the importance of paying attention to nationalism as an important dimension for regulating language teachers' emotions in alignment with neoliberally-driven systems.

Education of the Affective Ideal in Contexts of Cultural Diversity: BIBLIOMETRIC and Thematic Analysis (2006-2021)

Emotional education has grown exponentially in the last decade, although outlining an emotional regulation from parameters of majority cultural groups that leaves aside the socialization of emotion from an affective ideal- or the expected behaviour on the emotional plane that considers cultural differences and education minority group family members. This study is to analyse research about the affective ideal in contexts of cultural diversity to contribute to it understanding in education, through a review of documents published in the Web of Sciences, Scopus, and APA PsycNet databases, in the diachronic period 2006-2021. The need for an emotional education that recognizes the affective ideal of the cultures shared in a territory is discussed. It is concluded that there is an incipient investigation of cultural mediatization on the affective ideal in contexts of sociocultural diversity, and little research in the educational plane. This should be preferred in Latin America, marked by models of monocultural emotional education models, which in culturally diverse educational settings, translates into discrimination and racism.

Emotional education for sustainable development: a curriculum analysis of teacher training in Portugal and Spain

The challenges before us indicate that the current model of societal development is creating problems for our planet, such as the climate crisis, the increase in inequalities, and the emergence of new phenomena of exclusion and social malaise. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development presents 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that define priorities for a more sustainable world. Education is one of the main ways to create a peaceful and sustainable world for the survival and prosperity of present and future generations. The literature highlights the importance of teachers’ socio-emotional skills and the promotion of socio-emotional skills in their students. The Emotional Education approach proposes a new pedagogical paradigm, in which the individual is encouraged to develop intra-and interpersonal skills, enabling them to deal creatively with their conflicts and those encountered in the environment, and increasing their self-confidence and emotional balance. These skills will contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the SDG. Based on these arguments, the study and systematization of social–emotional education is urgent. In this study, a documentary analysis was carried out of the programs of study offered as part of the degrees (undergraduate and master’s level) provided for the training of preschool and primary teachers in Portugal and Spain, with the aim of understanding whether these courses offer content relating to Emotional Education. Programs of study from 127 public and private higher education institutions across both countries were analyzed. The analysis revealed that in Portugal, despite an increase in interest in issues relating to emotional intelligence in schools, this interest is not yet reflected in the initial training of preschool and primary teachers (with only two universities, both private institutions, offering Emotional Education content). In Spain, there is already a considerable number of institutions (29) that offer Emotional Education, but this corresponds to only 30% of the universities listed. The results of this study indicate that there is still some distance to go to make Emotional Education an effective component of the curricula of future teachers and thus contribute to achievement of the SDGs.

“Most of us are not feeling well”: exploring Iranian EAP practitioners’ emotions and identities

Although theory and research on English for Academic Purposes (EAP) practitioners have grown recently, there is little documented research on their emotions and identities. This study explored the emotion of 12 Iranian EAP practitioners and their role in their identity construction. Adopting a narrative inquiry methodology, the study examined the practitioners’ emotions across the Zembylas’s (2002) three-dimensional framework of teacher emotions and their role in the practitioners’ identity construction. Data analyses revealed that while the practitioners consider recognition from students as contributive to their positive emotions and identities, sociocultural-ideological discourses and power relations negatively influence their emotions and identities. Such idiosyncrasies were viewed to create huge dissonances between the practitioners’ self-images and their professional sense-making at personal, interpersonal, and macro-structural levels. The study offers implications regarding EAP practitioners’ emotions and identities situated within sociocultural localities of EAP instruction.

Primary school teacher's emotion regulation: Impact on occupational well‐being, job burnout, and resilience

AbstractEmpirical studies have demonstrated the importance of emotion regulation for teachers' professional development. We adopted a person‐centered approach to explore primary school teachers' emotion regulation and its impact on occupational well‐being, job burnout, and resilience. To understand the potential types of emotion regulation, we conducted a survey in different primary schools. Both antecedent‐ and response‐focused emotion regulation are important strategies; previous studies revealed that the former is superior to the latter. However, there is a lack of person‐centered research on the pros and cons of such emotion regulation. 366 primary school teachers (333 female teachers; Mage = 37.30, SDage = 9.46) participated in this survey. The emotion regulation patterns were clarified based on latent profile analysis (LPA). The results revealed associations among these patterns and job burnout, occupational well‐being and resilience. LPA revealed the following: (1) three typical emotion regulation types: the low antecedent‐ and low response‐focused emotion regulation group (12%), the high antecedent‐ and low response‐focused emotion regulation group (63%), and the low antecedent‐ and high response‐focused emotion regulation group (25%). (2) The teachers in the high antecedent‐ and low response‐focused emotion regulation group had the lowest level of job burnout and the highest level of occupational well‐being. Those in the low antecedent‐ and low response‐focused emotion regulation group had the strongest psychological resilience.

Third Book Launch, Workshop and Next Steps “Follow Your Heart. The School for Multipotentialites”

The overall aim of this report is to document the experience and knowledge gained during the third book launch and the third experience of a creative and emotional education bilingual workshop based on the book Follow Your Heart: the school for multipotentialites. Continuing along the lines of the two book launches held in Shepton Mallet, UK (February 2023) and Turin, Italy (March 2023), the three authors, in collaboration with Laura Vita (McMaster graduate student collaborating with ECO_CARE for her practicum), organized a third event inviting multilingual educators working in southern France. This event was held in Marseille, France in a large, bright event space owned by Prozon, a local company that serves businesses with locally-sourced technical equipment supplies through an online digital platform.

Psychological Emotion Analysis System for Special Needs Children Based on Neural Network

With the development of modern society and the improvement of living standards, care for special needs children has been increasingly highlighted, and numerous corresponding measures such as welfare homes, special education schools, and youth care centers have emerged. Due to the lack of systematic emotional companionship, the mental health of special needs children are bound to be affected. Nowadays, emotional education, analysis, and evaluation are mostly done by psychologists and emotional analysts, and these measures are unpopular. Therefore, many researchers at home and abroad have focused on the solution of psychological issues and the psychological assessment and emotional analysis of such children in their daily lives. In this paper, a special children’s psychological emotional analysis based on neural network is proposed, where the system sends the voice information to a cloud platform through intelligent wearable devices. To ensure that the data collected are valid, a series of pretreatments such as Chinese word segmentation, de-emphasis, and so on are put into the neural network model. The model is based on the further research of transfer learning and Bi-GRU model, which can meet the needs of Chinese text sentiment analysis. The completion rate of the final model test has reached 97%, which means that it is ready for use. Finally, a web page is designed, which can evaluate and detect abnormal psychological state, and at the same time, a personal emotion database can also be established.

Editorial for the Special Edition on Social and Emotional Education

This collection of eight articles in this special edition clearly exemplifies the variety of thoughts and definitions relating to the territory of social and emotional education [...]

Becoming a safe adult for pupils: emotions as part of first-year student teachers’ narrative identities told with photographs

ABSTRACT This article focuses on first-year student teachers’ emotions as part of their narrative identities. Alongside narrative research, arts-based methods were employed. The research material consists of 36 Finnish student teachers’ autobiographical writings based on their self-chosen photographs. Narrative analysis methods were used. The key aspect in student teachers’ narrative identities was their hope of becoming safe adults as teachers for their future pupils, which were greatly shaped by their memories of care and feeling safe, by being hurt emotionally, and by joy. Via this deepened understanding of the role of emotions in student teachers’ identities, teacher educators can support student teachers to prepare for the complex teachers’ work of today.

After the Storm: Multimodality and Emotional Education

After the Storm: Multimodality and Emotional Education

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

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).

The association of perceived mattering and emotions with physical educator teacher resilience

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among teachers’ perceived mattering, their identified emotional experiences while teaching, and their self-reported teacher resilience. Perceptions of teacher mattering and teacher emotions were examined as characteristics that may directly and indirectly be associated with teacher resilience. Physical educators ( N = 379; M age = 42.44; 54% male; 46% female) participated in a cross-sectional survey. The participants had been teaching physical education (PE) for an average of 16 years, with approximately 68% holding an advanced degree. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to explore hypothesized relationships among the following variables: perceived mattering (i.e. physical education mattering, teacher mattering), teacher emotions (i.e. enjoyment, anger, anxiety), and teacher resilience. Results showed that perceptions of physical education mattering were related to perceived teacher mattering. Subsequently, teacher mattering was associated with teacher enjoyment and anxiety, which were then linked positively and negatively to resilience, respectively. No direct relationship was identified between mattering and resilience, but indirect relations via emotions were found. Thus, emotions appeared to mediate the perceived mattering-resilience relationship. Both environmental and personal variables should be considered when studying teachers’ psychosocial skills in navigating workplace contexts. Enjoyment may buffer marginality beliefs and enhance resilience in day-to-day teaching. The characteristics of having or developing resilience appear to be founded somewhat in emotional experiences which, in turn, have shown strong links with actions, beliefs, and behaviors among teachers.

Emotions, perspectives, and English language teacher identity construction: A phenomenographic‐narrative study

AbstractDespite the recent surge of interest in language teacher emotions, little research has examined the role of cognitive and social dimensions of teachers’ emotions in their identity construction. Adopting a phenomenographic‐narrative approach, the present qualitative study examined the connection between English language teachers’ perspectives, emotions, and identities. Seventeen Iranian English teachers were first presented with four emotionally charged prompts, which involved teachers with anger, sadness, fear, and happiness emotions, to examine their appraisal of the prompts. The teachers were then interviewed to explore how they made sense of the prompts relative to their own identity construction. The findings indicated that the teachers associated prompt‐related teachers’ emotions with personal–psychological, pedagogical, and institutional reasons underlying power relations and competing discourses shaping their own emotions and identities. Moreover, the teachers narrated stories that were perceived as dynamically shaping their identities through the reflective potential of such experiences. The study concludes with implications for the connection between language teachers’ cognitions and emotions, and the role of these factors in their identity construction.

Second Book Launch and Creative Bilingual Workshop “Follow Your Heart. The School for Multipotentialites”

The overall aim of this report is to document the experience gained during the second book launch and the second experience of a creative and emotional education bilingual workshop on the book Follow Your Heart: the school for multipotentialites. Continuing along the lines of the first book launch and the co-created scientific workshop in Shepton Mallet, UK, in February 2023, the authors of the book, in collaboration with the teacher Jorinde Green (LaLa Land, Torino), organized a second event targeting primary-school aged children and their families to join for an afternoon of Follow Your Heart-inspired activities, storytelling, and collaborative work on ecological and emotional education in the Space Habitat, in via Le Chiuse 66, Torino. Building off the first book launch in the UK, which was hosted by the educational farm The Good Life Projects, this second event was held in a community center and project called “Habitat” and brought together 18 children (ages 4 to 9) and their parents and/or guardians. The proceeds from the event, which were collected through book sales, were donated to Windsor Hill Wood and to Space Habitat (our host) itself, to support educational spaces that promote quality education for all. In continuity with the previous report, this report aims to share the key lessons learned from the event and promote further discussion within the field of emotional and ecological education, in line with the project ECO_CARE.

Nørrebro Park School, an Experience of Danish Primary School’s Context, Priorities, and Practices

This article reports a practical experience of the implementation of the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) project in a Danish primary school. The main purpose of the paper is to discuss the benefits, priorities, facilitators, and barriers in implementing the project, describing classroom interventions, teachers’ methodology and students' responses. The research approach is qualitative, through planning, implementation, and evaluation of first-hand SEL activities in the classroom. The participants were 25 children, aged 9 and 10 years old, from the third grade in a multicultural public school located in the district of Nørrebro, an eclectic area in the centre of Copenhagen, Denmark. The results show all the SEL activities carried out with the students, together with the teacher’s account of the student’s reactions regarding engagement and participation. We discuss the project developed by two researchers, one of them is the children’s class teacher and the other one is a Ph.D. student. For the first three months, the researchers worked together and for the last three months, the collaboration was carried out in an online format. In conclusion, the study contributes to developing research regarding field investigation experiences in the Danish system regarding social and emotional education. Furthermore, provides useful recommendations for educational professionals responsible for the application of methodology and practices to develop social and emotional competencies in a multicultural context.

SEE Me Therapeutic Playgroup: A Teaming Model to Promote Parent–Child Interactions

Therapeutic playgroups have potential to benefit families and children enrolled in early intervention. A pretest–posttest, mixed methods, sequential explanatory design was utilized to explore the effectiveness and feasibility of an 8-week SEE Me (Social Emotional Education) therapeutic playgroup delivered by a collaborative team of providers using a convenience sample of 28 parent and child dyad participants and 19 early intervention providers. Results indicated statistically significant improvements in parent efficacy and parent–child interaction (affection and responsiveness) following participation. Parents and providers highlighted the role of the parent and reported improvements in child engagement, social interaction, and skill development in successful playgroups. Play activities and objects, facilitator support, and parent capacity were rated as supports for feasible delivery; challenges included child engagement and program implementation. These results provide preliminary evidence for both the effectiveness and feasibility of providing therapeutic playgroups as part of comprehensive early intervention services.

Unpacking the Complexities of Teacher Identity: Narratives of EFL Teacher in Indonesia

The participant in this study was an English teacher who also held the position of vice principal, and the researchers investigated the complications involved in the construction of a teacher's identity for a teacher of English in Indonesia, representing the expanding number of English instructors. This study used an integrated perspective to investigate the development of English teacher identities, drawing insights from Barcelos' (2015) theory of the relationship between teacher beliefs, teacher identity, and teacher emotions. The approach of narrative inquiry was utilized for the analysis of the data. By conducting an exploration of the life histories of the participant who had learned English and gone on to become an English teacher, this study was able to capture the dynamics of how the fundamental beliefs and feelings of the focused participant interacted with one another and formed the identity of the teacher. This was accomplished by focusing on how the participants had learned English and gone on to become English teachers. To reach this goal, the life stories of individuals who had previously studied English and gone on to become English instructors were investigated.