A Study Of Teachers' Competence In Classroom Regulation Of Emotions

The competence to regulate emotions in the classroom is an indispensable qualification for contemporary teachers in their specialization. When a teacher's cognition has been given full attention to, what should be vigorously strengthened at the same time is his or her emotion-related competence, of which the ability to regulate emotions represents the core. Hence its study is of vital importance to the further development of the theories on teachers'mentality and affection-oriented disciplining as well as to the actual teaching practice.This study aims at bringing forward a theoretical framework of teachers'competence in emotion regulation, contriving means for its evaluation, finding out its existing state of affairs, exploring into the factors that might affect it and revealing the correlation between its differences among teachers and factors that might have caused these differences, examinating the possibility and the usefulness that improve teacher's competence in classroom regulation of emotions in the teaching. Through series of empirical researches, it has arrived at the following conclusions:1. Structurally speaking, teachers'competence in emotional regulation is multi-level and multi-dimensional. Viewed from the objects of emotional regulation, it mainly consists of teachers'regulation of their own emotions, that of the individual and that of the class as a whole; from the point of view of the nature of emotions, each of the above three can be further considered in both positive and negative terms.2. Teachers'Competence in Classroom Regulation of Emotions questionnaire in the study is made of six sub-questionnaires. By means of factor analysis , Three sub-questionnaires on teachers'competence in classroom regulation of positive emotions consists of 2 dimensions of the arousing and maintaining of positive emotions, while three sub-questionnaires on teachers'competence in classroom regulation of negative emotions consists of 2 dimensions of the repressing and casting off of negative emotions. These questionnaires are of good credibility and validity. Consequently they can be counted as means of evaluating teachers'competence in emotion regulation.3. According to the study, teachers'competence in emotion regulation is generally above average. Teachers exhibit higher competence in dealing with positive feelings than in dealing with negative ones; in regulating their own feelings, they do not perform as well as in regulating those of the students. Along with the growth of teacher's age and years of teaching, teacher's competence in classroom regulation of emotions assumes rising.4. Factors affecting teachers'competence in emotion regulation are many. There are significant differences among sex, age, years of teaching, the courses taught, types of school. In terms of regionality, teachers in Shanghai show higher competence than those in Beijing; in terms of sex, the questionnaires on teachers'regulation of their own positive emotions and the questionnaire on the regulation of students'negative emotions indicate that female teachers are more competent that the male ones, no significant differences have been shown in the other four; with regard to age, differences among teachers are significant in all sub-questionnaires, with teachers in the age span from twenty-one to thirty in particular; in terms of years of teaching, differences are chiefly among those who have been teaching for one to five years and those who have been teachers for more than twenty years; in terms of the courses taught, except for the fact that there is not much difference in the regulation of their own positive and negative feelings between the science teachers and art teachers, there exists a very significant difference in their abilities to regulate the emotions of both the individual students and the class as a whole, art teachers are much more efficient; in terms of school types, teachers show little difference in the regulation of their own positive emotions, their negative emotions and the students'negative emotions, but there are dramatic differences in the regulation of the positive emotions of individual students and both the positive and negative emotions of the whole class, mainly between junior middle school teachers and senior middle school teachers.5. The study also indicates that in the mind of the teachers, the factor that influences teaching most is a teacher's sense of responsibility; his confidence in teaching, his concept of education, his stress from work and his linguistic ability comes in succession, stepping down in importance. Whether a teacher has received training in emotion regulation is the last on the list. Relevant studies have shown that a teacher's competence in emotion regulation there is markedly correlated with his personality, his sense of efficacy, his job satisfaction and his regulation strategy. A teacher's personality, sense of efficacy, his job satisfaction and regulation strategy have a strong predictive effect on his competence in emotion regulation in the classroom.6. The qustionnaires further indicates that a teacher's competence in emotion regulation in classroom is related to his teaching achievement. The higher the former, the greater the latter. The experiment on the relationship between the mood state in class and the teaching effect indicates that a teacher's mood state in class is significantly related to his or her competence in emotion regulation. There is significant difference in teaching effect when a teacher is in normal emotion state and negative mood state. The experiment on the strategy in classroom regulation of emotions shows that, if properly and effectively employed, strategies in classroom regulation of emotions can stir up emotions of a teacher and students and improve the achivements of the students'study.