Chinese Teachers’ Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies

Abstract

This study aimed to explore Chinese teachers’ emotion regulation goals and strategies used before, in, and after classroom teaching. Thirty-four teachers from elementary, middle and high schools were interviewed with semi-structure questionnaire. Chinese teachers’ goals for regulating emotions included achieving instructional goals, decreasing the negative impact of emotions on student learning, confirming the professional and ethical norms, maintaining teachers’ and students’ mental health, keeping positive emotional images, and nurturing good teacher-student relationships. Teachers used various antecedent-focused and response-focused strategies to control their emotions before, in, and after class. In general, Chinese teachers used response-modulation most frequently, followed by cognitive changes in and after classroom teaching. These findings have implications for productive delivery of education service, teacher training and policy-making.