The Role of Emotions in Effective, Meaningful Practices: A Self-study on Emotionally-informed Teaching

Abstract

This three-paper self-study dissertation explored the process of becoming a teacher with a focus on the emotional dimensions of teaching. Becoming a teacher is a complex, emotionally demanding process (Kelchtermans & Deketelaere, 2016) and teachers’ emotions impact student achievement, motivation, and well-being (Bălănescu, 2019). While emotional practices have been explored in pre-service teachers, teacher educators, and experienced teachers it is rarely studied in early career teachers outside of teacher education programs. Self-study uses self as a mechanism to gain insight into ideas important in classrooms such as emotions and teaching (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009). As I entered a teaching career without and outside of formal teacher education, I initiated a self-study on my first three years of classroom teaching to create windows of comprehension into the role of emotions in teaching and becoming a teacher. Each study explored different aspects of emotional teaching practices and used different methods but wove together to create an intimate, complex story on emotionally-informed teaching in my first years in the classroom. The first study served as a prelude to the dissertation by providing familiarity with myself as the storyteller and main character, an understanding of the context, and an idea of becoming my aspired teacher self. As a standalone study I used qualitative analysis and narrative inquiry to explore critical reflections on bridges between theories and my first semester of teaching experiences (Fall semester 2021). Pivotal reflections led to proposing emotionally-informed teaching as a way of viewing teachers’ usage of emotional knowledge to support student learning and well-being. This catalyzed the second study that looked outside of myself to learn emotionally-informed approaches from veteran teachers to improve my practice. In the second study, I conducted observations of five veteran teachers teaching to explore how emotionally-informed teaching can explain effective teaching practices. Using a blended analysis process, I uncovered six emotionally-informed approaches that these teachers employed in their effective teaching practices: offering engaged, supportive one-on-one interactions and instructions, modeling acceptance of failure and ways to overcome challenges, acknowledging student effort and providing emotive feedback, creating safe space for students to explore emotional topics, modeling constructive emotional responses to curriculum, and providing life-relevant education. In the third study, I used reflective field notes, video recordings of my third year of teaching, and findings from Study 2 to see the ways I have achieved my aspired emotionally-informed practice. I also traced the influences on how I developed this teaching practice and which experiences with students made me feel success as a teacher. In the final chapter, I considered how teaching is a perpetual process of becoming (Ovens et al., 2016) and how this dissertation’s findings can provide critical insights for supporting early career teachers.