Seeking eudaimonia: The emotions in learning to teach and to mentor

Abstract

In this chapter I explore aspects of the emotional life of beginning teachers and the experienced teachers who mentor them. First, I briefly describe the institutional context within which teachers and mentors conduct their work, a context increasingly shaped by the pressures of high-stakes student testing and punitive approaches to accountability. Drawing on the work of the late philosopher, Robert Solomon, I then describe the appraisal theory of the emotions that grounds the analysis of two cases. Various models of teacher development are described and issues associated with mentoring discussed. The cases illustrate various aspects of the connections existing among emotion, identity, self-narratives, and expectations in the lives and work of a beginning second career teacher and a new teacher mentor. © 2009 Springer-Verlag US.