Exploring relations between teacher emotions, coping strategies, and intentions to quit: A longitudinal analysis
Section snippets
Theoretical frameworks on teacher emotions
According to Frenzel (2014) and Sutton (2005), teachers' emotions represent a multi-componential construct that encompasses cognitive, physiological, motivational, and expressive components. Therefore, emotional episodes can be characterized by not only their affective sensation (e.g., anxiety), but also by relevant cognitions (e.g., “I am afraid”), physiological changes (e.g., release of hormones), action tendencies (e.g., fight vs. flight), and expressive behaviors (e.g., body movements and
Consequences of teacher emotions
Recent studies on teacher emotions have mainly focused on three most commonly experienced emotions in classroom settings, namely enjoyment, anger, and anxiety (e.g., Frenzel, Goetz, Stephens, & Jacob, 2009; Keller, Frenzel, et al., 2014; Sutton, 2007). Enjoyment is commonly identified as the most common positive emotion (Frenzel, 2014; Frenzel, Goetz, Stephens, & Jacob, 2009; Keller, Chang, et al., 2014) and anxiety and anger are usually argued to be the most common negative emotions (Frenzel,
Coping with emotions: the teaching context
Coping is defined as "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person" (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; p. 141). As such, coping is a broad term that encompasses a range of strategies that individuals use to effectively manage their emotions. Moreover, whereas coping and emotion regulation are often used synonymously to refer to strategies to deal with emotional situations, they
Teachers' emotions and coping strategies
Although teachers' emotions and the coping strategies that they use to deal with emotional encounters are both important antecedents of their psychological well-being and behavior, these two concepts have to date remained largely independent of one another. For example, just as the teacher emotion literature rarely examines the role of coping strategies, the teacher coping literature typically does not tend to differentiate between specific (discrete) types of emotions (e.g., anxiety vs.
The current study
The current exploratory short-term longitudinal study aimed to address the research gap concerning the causal relations between teachers' discrete emotions and the coping strategies that they use to deal with emotions. This study also investigated the influences of teachers' trait emotions and coping strategies on their intentions to quit the teaching profession or to leave their current school. Results from the current study thus contribute to existing literature by addressing an important gap
Participants
Participants included 1086 Canadian practicing teachers (female: 81.3%; Caucasian: 94.6%). Time 1 participants reported a mean age of 42 years (SD = 9.13), averaged 15 years (SD = 7.86) of teaching experience, and taught at primary schools (Grades 1–6; 43.6%), secondary schools (Grades 7–12: 44.9%), or across multiple education levels (e.g., primary and secondary: 9.6%). Most teacher participants held either a bachelor's degree (61.4%) or a master's degree (29.3%). Independent sample t-tests
Preliminary analyses
Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) conducted for each of the scales showed acceptable model fit for each of the scales assessed (emotions: CFI = 0.953, TLI = 0.942, RMSEA = 0.044, SRMR = 0.043; coping strategies: CFI = 0.955, TLI = 0.915, RMSEA = 0.039, SRMR = 0.037; quitting intentions: CFI = 0.963, TLI = 0.941, RMSEA = 0.068, SRMR = 0.046). A comprehensive CFA analysis including all study variables across both time points similarly demonstrated acceptable fit (CFI = 0.937, TLI = 0.924,
Discussion
The current study aimed to study and address an important gap concerning the predictive relations between teachers' coping strategies, trait emotions, and their intentions to quit the teaching profession/leave their current school. We summarize our study findings below based on each of the hypotheses.
Acknowledgements
The study was supported by an Insight Development Grant (Ref.: 767-2013-1099) and a Doctoral Fellowship (Ref.: 767-2016-1604) from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as grants from the Education University of Hong Kong (Ref.: RG 74/2018-2019R; RG 92/2018-2019R).
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