Research On Emotional Labor Strategies Of Junior High School English Student Teachers

The complexity of teaching often requires teachers to learn to adjust their emotions and maintain a good attitude.With the rise of emotional labor research,teachers’ emotional labor and its impact on teaching activities and teachers’ professional development have received more attention.Student teachers have special identity and relatively insufficient teaching experience.Compared with in-service teachers,their emotional labor in the process of educational internships is more complex.However,through reading domestic and foreign literature,it is found that the research on the emotional labor of student teachers has not yet aroused widespread concern.Therefore,this study takes junior high school EFL(English as a foreign language)student teachers as the research objects,aiming to explore their emotional labor strategies in the process of teaching internships,with a view to answering:(1)What are the connotation elements of junior high school EFL student teachers’ emotional labor strategies?(2)How to use emotional labor strategies by junior high school EFL student teachers?This research adopts mixed method to explore research issues.First of all,in view of research question 1,the researcher focuses on analyzing the emotional journals recorded by 10 junior high school EFL student teachers during their education practicum,and compares them with the existing domestic and foreign literature.Finally,the researcher establishes the emotional labor strategy dimension of junior high school EFL student teachers.In view of research question 2,this study adopts the questionnaire method,and the questionnaire is the Emotional Labor Strategy Questionnaire for English Practitioners.The questionnaire is based on the Emotional Labor Strategy Questionnaire for EFL Student Teachers,which was adjusted and adapted by Zhu Shenhai(2020),a Chinese scholar.240 questionnaires were randomly distributed to junior high school EFL student teachers.The data were collected and analyzed with SPSS software,with the purpose of testing the current situation of the use of emotional labor strategies by junior high school EFL student teachers.The research finds that the connotation elements of the emotional labor strategy of junior high school EFL student teachers include four dimensions: surface acting,deep acting and natural acting and deliberate dissonance acting.The surface acting includes three sub strategies: hiding,restraining and pretending;the deep acting includes three sub strategies: attentional deployment,cognitive change and separating;and the natural acting includes two sub strategies: releasing and outpouring.The research findings are highly similar to Yin’s(2015)opinion on the emotional labor strategies used by Chinese teachers in classroom teaching.In addition,this study also found that the surface acting strategy of “hiding”,which distinguishes restraining and pretending,tends to the neutral state of external emotional expression.The use of emotional labor strategies of junior high school EFL student teachers is as follows:(1)In the use of emotional labor strategies of junior high school EFL student teachers,deep actings are used most,followed by surface actings and natural actings.(2)Specifically,the frequency of emotional labor strategies used by junior high school EFL student teachers from high to low is attentional deployment,separating,restraining,cognitive change,pretending,releasing,outpouring,hiding and deliberate dissonance acting;(3)In terms of gender,types and locations of internship schools,there is no significant difference in the use of emotional labor strategies;As far as internship time is concerned,there are significant differences between junior high school EFL student teachers with different length of internship in the surface acting the attentional deployment,and separating in the deep acting and the natural acting and deliberate dissonance acting.Based on the above findings,the researcher,from the perspective of student teachers,internship schools and universities,puts forward the following suggestions to improve the use of emotional labor strategies of junior high school EFL student teachers:(1)student teachers should have a relevant understanding of teachers’ emotional labor strategies before education practicum and pay attention to the developmen of their emotional ability;(2)The internship schools should provide emotional support for the student teachers as much as possible,such as creating a internship community composed of student teachers,psychological teachers and subject guidance teachers;(3)Before education practicum,colleges and universities can carry out emotional ability training for student teachers in the form of scenario simulation,and develop emotional operation manuals for education practicum;At the same time,relevant courses can also be offered to improve the emotional expression ability of student teachers.This study also has certain limitations,such as the possibility of data homogeneity due to a single sample size.Therefore,future research can consider the principles of sample diversity and differentiation,and collect emotional journals written by EFL student teachers from different school backgrounds.Moreover,due to the lack of experience and limited time,researchers have not been able to explore and evaluate the results of the use of emotional labor strategies by junior high school EFL student teachers.In future research,case study methods can be used to explore the results of different emotional labor strategies used by student teachers.