Teachers experience a wide range of stressors and emotional demands in the workplace. We conducted this research to determine whether there were some adjustments teachers could make to the way they routinely regulate students’ emotions that would have a beneficial impact on teachers’ wellbeing, and whether school leaders can make similar adjustments to benefit teachers. Based on our research, there are some changes school leaders can make when regulating teachers’ emotions that are likely to benefit teachers’ wellbeing.
We administered two online surveys to current primary and secondary teachers. Our aims were to determine whether the strategies teachers use to regulate students’ emotions was associated with later wellbeing among teachers, and whether the strategies school leaders use to regulate teachers’ emotions was associated with later teacher wellbeing. We also tested whether a short educational document could be used to increase teachers’ awareness of different strategies they can use to make students feel better. We had 248 teachers from four countries complete at least one of our surveys. Most teachers (79%) were from the United Kingdom.
Our research on the strategies that teachers use to regulate students’ emotions and the impact on teachers’ later wellbeing is novel. To our knowledge, no other studies have explored this association before, which means more research is needed before we can draw firm conclusions. In our study, teachers’ use of distraction to regulate students’ emotions helped teachers feel less emotionally exhausted, whereas using humour seemed to be linked to higher levels of emotional exhaustion among teachers.
We found that school leaders’ use of strategies that require more engagement with teachers’ emotions, particularly valuing (when a school leader helps a teacher feel appreciated), was linked to higher levels of teacher wellbeing than school leaders’ use of strategies that do not require engagement with teachers’ emotions, particularly suppression (when a school leader encourages a teacher to hide the expression of their emotions).
The brief educational document also showed promise. The document about extrinsic emotion regulation helped teachers increase their use of two extrinsic emotion regulation strategies: humour, and reappraisal (helping students reframe the situation causing their emotions). Teachers generally gave positive feedback about the document and suggested some ways it could be refined.
Teachers are encouraged to reflect on the strategies they tend to use to regulate students’ emotions and how using these strategies makes them feel. For example, if a teacher notices that, after a day using lots of humour to regulate students’ emotions, they feel particularly drained, they might consider trialling alternative strategies to help students feel better, such as distraction. To help teachers feel better, school leaders are encouraged to consider engaging more directly with teachers’ emotions. Using strategies such as valuing appears to benefit teachers more than strategies requiring less engagement with teachers’ emotions, such as suppression.
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