Emotion labor, dissonance and emotional rewards in language classrooms

In this talk, I will draw on research that conceptualizes teacher emotions as embodied social/relational phenomena that form within institutional and cultural arrangements (Benesch, 2012, 2017; Pavlenko, 2013; Zembylas, 2005), with a view to showing that emotions are not just personal, internal feelings and necessarily specific to each individual. I will report on a study which used a mixed-method design with 30 English teachers (2-to-45 years of teaching experience with an average of 16.62 years) working in English language programs in three Higher Education Institutions in the US and three in the UK. The teachers completed a short online questionnaire in which they responded to an adaptation of Zembylas’s (2005) meta-emotion prompts, commenting briefly on how they managed their emotional experiences as language teachers. The teachers’ questionnaire responses revealed a strong alignment with positive emotions. In seeking to better understand these responses, twenty-five teachers volunteered to participate in follow-up, semi-structured interviews in which they talked about what they did to navigate the emotional texture of their professional lives.

Room L-921 Yotsuya Campus,Sophia University