UC EDEM608

Literature Review
Understanding emotional regulation in teaching

Introduction

Emotion is a fundamental mental function, along with cognition and motivation (Lazarus,

1991; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003) and central to the processes of teaching and learning (Lee et

al., 2016; Hargreaves, 1998b). The emotional aspect of teaching has gained importance in

teacher education since the 1990s (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003; Hargreaves, 1998b). In part,

this has come about through education reform (Hargreaves, 1998b; Sutton & Wheatley,

2003) and a modern approach to teaching that values holistic student development (Braun et

al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2016). Interest in the emotional regulation processes of teachers has

also grown, with the recognition that to achieve improved personal and professional

outcomes it is critical to understand the way in which emotional regulation relates to different

aspects of emotion in education (Jiang et al., 2016).

The following will consider emotional regulation in the context of the relational theory of

emotion (Lazarus, 1991). Due to the limited scope of this piece, there will be a particular

focus on appraisal theory, as central to Lazarus’ work, and goal relevance due to its principal

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role in motivating emotional regulation. Research into emotional regulation strategies and

emotional regulation in relation to teacher burnout, emotional labour and student perceptions

will be reviewed and a sense of the empirical evidence base for understanding emotional

regulation in teaching provided.

Emotional regulation and emotion theory

Emotional regulation describes the way in which individuals manage the experience and

expression of their emotions (Gross, 1998). Emotion theory, including appraisal theory and

the concept of goal relevance, help explain the background and motivation for managing

emotions. It is necessary to establish these underlying principles in order to understand

emotional regulation.

Emotion, appraisal theory and goal relevance

Lazarus (1991) put forward an influential theory of emotion that involved three categories:

antecedent variables, mediating processes and outcomes. He proposed three classes of

mediating processes, of which appraisal is one. It is central to his relational theory of emotion

as it involves an assessment of what is happening in the person-environment relationship

and the significance or personal relevance to the individual involved. Primary appraisals have

three components: goal relevance, goal congruence and type of ego involvement. Put simply,

when a situation or event is being appraised it is being evaluated in terms of perceived harm

or benefit in relation to an individual’s goals (Hargreaves, 1998a; Lazarus, 1991; Jenkins et

al., 2019). Appraisal theory explains individual differences, as different people may evaluate

and therefore respond differently to the same events and situations. This makes sense of

social and cultural roles in emotion as they influence individual beliefs, values and the way in

which events are experienced internally (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003).

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Positive or negative emotions arise in relation to whether a situation or event is evaluated to

advance or inhibit progress towards the individual’s goal(s) (Lazarus, 1991). Goals are the

motivation for emotional regulation so determining goals (in this case the goals of teachers’)

is a worthwhile exercise. Sutton (2004) explored the goals teachers have for emotional

regulation and the strategies they use to regulate their emotions. This study was conducted

in the US (Ohio) across 17 school districts that varied socio-economically, racially and

culturally. 30 teachers took part in semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that

teachers regarded emotional regulation as constant and important, particularly the regulation

of negative emotion (Sutton, 2004). Most teachers raised the concept of emotional regulation

goals before being asked about them. Sutton (2004) took this as an indication of perceived

importance, which seems a reasonable supposition. Teachers were found to regulate their

emotion in order to achieve goals of academic progress, social development, and relationship

building. Emotional regulation as a goal in itself was also reported, teachers believed

emotional regulation was part of effective teaching, something that had not been described

by previous studies (Sutton, 2004). Sutton (2004) observed the dominant white, middle class,

American mid-western belief that emotional control is desirable and beneficial was reflected

in the emotional regulation goals of teachers (Sutton, 2004).

Emotional regulation strategies

Teachers use a variety of emotional regulation strategies they believe will help reach their

emotional regulation objectives. Much of the research in this area has been influenced by

Gross’ (1998) widely accepted process model of emotional regulation (Braun et al., 2020;

Donker et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2016; O'Toole & Martin, 2019; Sutton, 2004;

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Wróbel, 2013). The Gross (1998) model is composed of antecedent-focused and

response-focused emotional regulation strategies. Antecedent-focused strategies are

situation selection, situation modification, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment,

and aim to alter emotion before it is completely generated. Response-focused strategies

modify expression after emotion is triggered. The main response-focused strategy is

suppression (Gross, 1998). Research findings have borne this model out within education,

with teachers reporting their use of emotional regulation strategies in terms of preventative

and responsive scenarios (Sutton, 2004).

In order to support teachers practically a logical line of inquiry is to discover how effective

emotional regulation strategies are in managing emotion in a positive way and how they

affect teacher wellbeing, job satisfaction and professional outcomes. Jiang et al. (2016)

conducted a self-described ‘exploratory’ study of the emotional regulation strategies reported

by four teachers and included student perception of the teachers’ emotions. 53 lower

secondary school students completed surveys and the teachers were interviewed. Results

indicated that antecedent-focused strategies were more effective than response-focused

strategies, with an emphasis on cognitive reappraisal and suppression. Cognitive reappraisal

tended to have the effect of increasing the expression of positive emotion and decreasing

negative emotion expression. Suppression of negative emotion was not found to be effective

in reducing teacher expression of negative emotions. In addition, it could impede the

expression of positive emotion, impacting the crucial teaching and learning relationship

(Jenkins et al., 2019; Jiang et al., 2016). Teachers can be said to generally be better to

employ cognitive reappraisal strategies than suppression as they tend to be more effective.

Reappraisal strategies tend to engender feelings of calm and the physiology that is

associated with that state. These are preferable to teacher wellbeing than the effects of

stressful emotions such as frustration and anger (Gross, 1998). Whether this applies more

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widely to all antecedent-focused and to what extent is yet to be assessed. There is more

material concerned with negative effects, such as teacher exhaustion and burnout which will

now be addressed.

Emotional regulation and teacher burnout

Poor understanding of emotional regulation and ineffective emotional regulation strategies

have been found to result in teacher exhaustion, burnout and ultimately, attrition (Braun et al.,

2020; Jiang et al., 2016). Therefore examining these components is essential. Research in

the Netherlands undertaken by Donker et al. (2020) focused on teacher use of cognitive

reappraisal and emotional suppression and the association of these emotional regulation

strategies with feelings of emotional exhaustion. 94 teachers in secondary schools or

secondary school teacher training (50:50 split) completed selected questionnaires targeting

emotional exhaustion, burnout, emotional regulation, and attitudes towards emotional

regulation. Other predictors measured were cognitive reappraisal, suppression, attitude to

emotional regulation, gender, teaching experience.

A significant positive relationship between suppression and emotional exhaustion was not

found, a deviation from what the authors had hypothesised and from other studies (Braun et

al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2016). An explanation for this could be that

suppression may at times be useful for teachers, particularly in conforming to display rules

and especially when workplace display rules have been internalised (Donker et al., 2020).

Another explanation could lie in the notion of goal alignment (Sutton, 2004; Sutton &

Wheatley, 2003), where the expression of negative emotion is viewed as detrimental by

teachers. In this case, suppression of negative emotion expression could align with

academic, relational and/or class management objectives for the teacher and potentially not

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contribute to exhaustion. The reported use of cognitive reappraisal correlated with less

emotional exhaustion which is more consistent with other studies (Braun et al., 2020; Jiang et

al., 2016; Lee et al., 2016; Sutton, 2004; Wróbel, 2013). An interesting point made, however,

is that the effort required in regulating emotion may generally also be a ‘cost’ in terms of

diminished potential for cognitive performance (affecting teaching quality and behaviour

management) (Donker et al., 2020).

Considerable differences in how emotional regulation strategies were associated with

emotional exhaustion were observed between teachers indicating that the benefits and costs

of emotional regulation may differ between individuals also (Donker et al., 2020). This

furthers the discussion of appraisal theory and goal relevance. If teachers have different

beliefs and goals, particularly those associated with cultural perspectives, they will plausibly

evaluate events differently and feel different emotions in response. They would then

conceivably regulate emotions differently, and the cost or benefit of that regulation will differ

(Hargreaves, 1998a; Sutton, 2004; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). A simplified example of this

would be two teachers in the same school teaching the same subject and therefore with the

same workplace display rules. Teacher A has a goal of academic achievement and Teacher

B has a goal of student engagement. The probable cost of Teacher B suppressing an

observable emotional response of effusive happiness would be higher than that of Teacher A

as it does not align with Teacher B’s goal of student engagement. This scenario is more likely

to contribute to feelings of exhaustion for Teacher B than Teacher A. Wróbel (2013) research

findings also support the ideas that ‘faking’ emotions, and also changing inner feelings for the

sake of organizational display rules may lead to negative consequences (Wróbel, 2013). It

would be of interest to investigate whether the cost is greater when Teacher B’s goals are

grounded in cultural perspectives, such as the importance placed on relationships in Pasifka

culture (Tufulasi Taleni et al., 2009). This touches on the issue of added workload on

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teachers that are not of the dominant culture in a school which could exacerbate exhaustion

(O'Toole & Martin, 2019).

“Understanding the emotions of teaching in a diverse society therefore means more than

acknowledging that good teachers are passionate, caring and enthusiastic in a universal

sense; it also means attending to and engaging with the different kinds of emotionality and

emotional expression that are considered appropriate for teachers among society's different

cultural groups—and using this to question the explicit or tacit emotional norms of teaching

and being a teacher that operate within the dominant culture and in its systems of

educational administration and leadership.” (Hargreaves, 1998a, p. 330).

In the Donker et al. (2020) study students completed questionnaires designed to elicit their

perception of student-teacher relationships. Links between relationships and teacher

outcomes, such as negative emotions and increased emotional exhaustion could then be

observed. Positive relationships with students were found to be a significant predictor of

reduced emotional exhaustion.

Emotional regulation, be it cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression involves an

expenditure of effort and may entail both benefits and costs (Donker et al., 2020). The notion

of effort implies emotional labour and introduces the overlap with emotional regulation

(Jenkins et al., 2019).

Emotional regulation and emotional labour

Hochschild (1983) pioneered the concept of emotional labour which describes the effort

involved in regulating emotional expressions and feelings according to workplace norms and

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requirements. It is useful to work towards understanding the relationship between emotional

regulation and emotional labour in the context of teaching as there is a considerable

requirement to conform to work-appropriate display rules (Donker et al., 2020; Lee et al.,

2016). Display rules are the norms that determine the regulation of emotional expressive

behaviours in different social contexts (Hochschild, 1983; Sutton, 2004). They affect the

extent to which teachers believe they need to emotionally regulate and the impact on

personal and professional outcomes. (Hochschild, 1983; Lee et al., 2016; Sutton, 2004;

Wróbel, 2013).

Inquiring into emotional regulation strategies teacher’s use and how they relate to emotional

labour, Lee et al. (2016) had a sample of 189 secondary teachers in Germany answer

questionnaires focussed on the use of emotional regulation strategies, specifically cognitive

reappraisal and suppression, the use of emotional labour strategies, and teacher experience

of emotion. The primary strategies involved in emotional labour are surface and deep acting

(Hochschild, 1983; Wróbel, 2013). In short, surface acting is the superficial regulation of

emotional expressions, both felt and unfelt, in an attempt to follow display rules and deep

acting is the regulation of inner feelings. Deep and surface acting have been linked with

cognitive reappraisal and suppression strategies of emotional regulation (Donker et al., 2020;

Wróbel, 2013). Similarly, Lee et al. (2016) found strong correlations between cognitive

reappraisal and deep acting and between suppression and surface acting also. Cognitive

reappraisal and deep acting were positively associated with positive emotions and negatively

associated with negative emotions. Conversely, suppression and surface acting were

positively associated with negative emotions and negatively associated with positive

emotions (Lee et al., 2016). However, despite these correlations, their data indicated that

emotional regulation strategies and emotional labour strategies were not fully aligned. One

explanation offered for this determination was that suppression only involves hiding felt

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emotion, as opposed to surface acting which involves hiding felt emotion as well as faking

unfelt emotion and reappraisal involves one regulatory process in comparison to deep acting

which may involve several (Lee et al., 2016). Another was that the way in which strategies

are measured is not specific enough to reveal precisely what strategies are being used. “The

findings suggest that the processes related to emotional regulation and emotional labour

strategies might be more complicated than expected, particularly when it comes to their

relationships with teachers’ experienced emotions.” (Lee et al., 2016, p. 858). Certainly, there

seems scope for much future study and analysis, not least from different cultural

perspectives.

Display rules in education tend to be comparatively strong and teachers largely accept that

they should follow them (Donker et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016). When organisational display

rules or the display rules of a specific social context are incongruent with an individual’s

internalised cultural display rules it involves greater degree of emotional labour and can result

in emotional exhaustion and burnout. African American teachers who were observed to be

more expressive in the classroom than their white counterparts (Sutton, 2004) may have also

been suppressing emotional expression in keeping with work-specific display rules over their

own cultural display rules. Individual, organisational, cultural, societal differences in how

individuals feel they need to display and regulate can result in cultural ‘gaps’. These ‘gaps’

may cause misunderstandings and even negatively affect student-teacher relationships

(Hargreaves, 1998b; Tufulasi Taleni et al., 2009). Measuring the effort required by teachers to

mitigate this is, the impacts and ways that bridging such ‘gaps’ can be supported is essential.

Improving teacher understanding of diverse cultural perspectives on emotion is a

fundamental step.

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Student perception

As the second half of the classroom equation, student voice must be included in an

endeavour to understand emotional regulation in teaching [in the discussion of emotional

regulation]. Student perception of teacher emotion (expression) affects the teacher-student

relationship and thus behaviour management and learning outcomes (Jiang et al., 2016;

Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). It has been shown that if students believe teachers care about

them improved motivation and engagement occurs (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003).

A further aspect of successful teacher emotional regulation is the impact teacher positivity

and level of life-satisfaction has on student well-being (Braun et al., 2020). Recent work has

been done that includes both teacher and student reported experience. In order to discern

the relationship between teacher emotional regulation and student wellbeing Braun et al.

(2020) included student voice in their study of 17 West Canadian urban and suburban

elementary schools. Data was collected from 15 teachers and their 320 students at three

points across the year (beginning, middle and end) using well established questionnaires

(student prosocial behaviour was reported by peers as opposed to self-report). As in other

research included in this review, teachers reported on one antecedent-focused regulation

strategy, cognitive reappraisal, and one response-focused, expressive suppression (Donker

et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016).

Findings were consistent with previous work in the field, indicating that teacher emotional

regulation and life satisfaction were positively associated with student wellbeing and

prosocial behaviours at the end of the school year. Conversely, teachers' use of expressive

suppression was associated with less positive students and fewer prosocial behaviours

(Braun et al., 2020). Teacher burnout showed an effect on students at the beginning of the

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year but not at the end, so this would seem to be established early on. The data did not

indicate burnout during the year affected student emotional distress (Braun et al., 2020).

These findings need to be augmented by further research. The proposition that improving

teacher life satisfaction results in improved student outcomes supplements the argument for

teacher training and professional development that prepares teachers for their emotional job

(Donker et al., 2020).

Limitations and opportunities for future research

A limitation that emerges in the main studies reviewed is their origin. They have been

conducted in Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, the USA and New Zealand which all

have a dominant white ‘western’ cultures. The New Zealand study does focus on Māori

perspectives but there is clearly room for much greater diversity to be added to the body of

research.

A number of studies (Braun et al., 2020; Donker et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016) have focussed

on two particular emotional regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and emotional

suppression. This provides a useful commonality for comparing different aspects of emotional

regulation, but it is also restrictive. It may be that the established questionnaires used in

many studies are limiting the research but the work involved in devising robust new tools is

prohibitive. Interviews were also used in all the main studies, but there was no

observation-based data included which would be interesting to compare.

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A number of important avenues for future research have been noted throughout this paper. In

addition, there are many other aspects of teacher emotion, modifiers (such as experience,

gender, culture, race) and other emotional regulation strategies that could be explored to

better understand emotional regulation and which specific emotional regulation strategies are

most effective in teaching.

Conclusion

Managing emotion is a constant and as a teacher, doing it effectively is critical. To understand

emotional regulation the fundamental subjectivity that is central to evaluating and responding

to emotional triggers must be appreciated. From this foundational position the present review

has explored research contributions regarding the emotional regulation strategies that

teachers use and the ways in which they positively or negatively affect personal and

professional outcomes. The data shows that positive emotions increase job satisfaction, and

have beneficial physiological consequences. Positive emotions also enhance relationships

and positive student teacher relationships were shown to improve teaching outcomes and

reduce emotional exhaustion. The empirical evidence examined consistently indicated that

cognitive appraisal and deep acting increase positive emotions and that cognitive appraisal is

effective in decreasing negative emotion. In contrast, suppression and surface acting were

associated with negative emotions and suppression was not shown to decrease negative

emotions. Further it might obstruct positive emotion. The work exploring emotional regulation

and its relationship to teacher exhaustion and emotional labour suggested cognitive appraisal

is less emotionally exhausting than suppression, which supports the conclusion of other

authors that cognitive appraisal is a more effective strategy than suppression. The only

divergent finding was that suppression doesn’t appear to significantly increase emotional

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exhaustion. Research from other cultural and student viewpoints has been considered and

although there is salient work contributed from these perspectives, there is also a clear need

for more input from these groups.

In my own role as a teacher and teacher coach and mentor the body of work reviewed here is

invaluable. I feel I am on the road to understanding emotional regulation and to being able to

be purposeful about the strategies I use in my practice. I have seen and heard a lot of talk

about wellbeing and a great variety of activities and tools provided for teachers to use but

never a professional learning session on emotion that builds emotional intelligence and

enables teachers to be adaptive and improve their wellbeing in ways tailored to themselves.

Other equally important albeit less expected understandings I have gained are about others,

especially those from cultures other than my own. The first is in relation to other teachers. I

now better appreciate the emotional labour of other teachers. I feel this will have a positive

impact on me, in that I will have greater empathy and patience, and no doubt be calmer and

happier for it. The second is in relation to my students. Understanding the effect my own

emotional regulation has on my students and their wellbeing, and ultimately of course, their

learning, is a golden key for me.

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