A Study Of Chinese New Teachers’ Emotional Labor

Research on the professional development of Chinese language teachers in China has been centered on the path of teacher training for Chinese language teachers,with less mention of teachers’ emotional needs for teaching.And the work of teacher has been proven to be an emotional labor.This paper is based on personal interviews with ten Chinese intern teachers who are in internships or have had teaching internships.We compiled and obtained ten interviews,coded them at three levels using Nvivo software,and summarized the factors affecting Chinese intern teachers’emotional labor.Then,through analyzing the interview data,we summarize the characteristics of Chinese intern teachers in their emotional labor.Finally,several practical suggestions are made to improve Chinese intern teachers’ emotional labor.In the actual interviews,we found that Chinese intern teachers’ emotional changes in teaching are complex,and their emotional labor is influenced by both internal and external factors.Internal factors include teachers’ personal character and ability,teachers’ self-adjustment,and teachers’ adaptation to their work.External factors include the teacher’s interpersonal relationships,the classroom effectiveness of teaching,the influence of the larger teaching environment,and the interchange of emotional resources between teachers and students.From the analysis of the above two major factors,we found that Chinese intern teachers’ emotional labor has the following characteristics:(1)Emotional rules are internalized into the teacher’s nature.Every intern teacher consciously perceives the need to display positive emotions and hide negative emotions in their teaching.Intern teachers’ strong identity led them to internalize feeling rules.(2)Emotional vulnerability.Intern teachers who encounter negative emotions in the early period of teaching tend to fall into self-doubt,putting themselves in a passive emotional position.(3)Emotional compensation ways are abundant.New teachers easily gain satisfaction and happiness from teaching,such as a positive response from a student,an encouragement or recommendation from a leader or predecessor,and therefore come to compensate for the emotional resources lost.(4)Use surface acting in the face of negative emotions and natural expression in the face of positive emotions.In classroom emergencies,new teachers usually adopt the strategy of hiding negative emotions and disguising positive emotions to solve classroom emergencies.This paper suggests ways to mitigate the negative effects of teachers’ emotional labor from both teacher and school perspectives.Chinese intern teachers can self-adjust by,for example,changing their attribution style and preparing themselves mentally.Schools can establish a work environment that values teachers’ emotions by,for example,regularly understanding new teachers’ emotional changes and establishing a collaborative relationship between new and veteran teachers to provide emotional support for new teachers.