A Study On Rural Junior High School English Teachers’ Emotional Experiences And Regulation Strategies

Affected by geographical location and economic development,teachers in rural schools usually face some practical problems.Coupled with pressure from all sides,rural teachers usually experience more complex feelings.If the emotional problems cannot be adjusted in time,their professional satisfaction will be reduced,resulting in high vulnerability to burnout.To better explore the emotional experiences,influencing factors and emotion regulation strategies of rural junior high school English teachers,this study employed a qualitative research method to investigate four rural junior high school English teachers for a period of five months through interviews,classroom observations,and case materials based on the ecological dynamic systems theory.Research questions include:(1)What emotions do rural junior high school English teachers experience?(2)What are the factors affecting the rural English teachers’ emotional experiences?(3)What emotion regulation strategies have been adopted by the rural English teachers?Study results indicate the following aspects:(1)The rural junior high school English teachers experienced negative emotions at most,such as: stress,disappointment,dissatisfaction,anger,frustration,worry and confusion.The second is positive emotions,including: being moved,sense of achievement,pride,happiness,and being passionate.The last is the mixed emotions,including: love and hate,pain and happiness.(2)The influencing factors of the rural English teachers’ emotional experiences mainly include:the rural English teachers’ interaction with students,colleagues and leaders in the microsystem;the interaction between the rural school’s learning atmosphere as well as scientific research within exosystem;teaching and administration as well as evaluation and promotion system within mesosytem;implementation of educational reforms and policies as well as high expectation and traditional beliefs from society within macrosystem,while microsystem is the most important source of environmental factors affecting rural junior high school English teachers’ emotions.(3)There are two categories of emotion regulation strategies used by the rural junior high school English teachers: the first is response-focused regulation strategies,such as expression suppression,adaptation,communication,relaxation,situation selection and self-strengthening;the second is antecedent-focused regulation strategies,including lowering expectations,cognitive restructuring,shift attention and isolation.It is found that the rural junior high school English teachers adopted response-focused regulation strategies more frequently.Based on the above research results,this study provides the following implications.First of all,rural junior high school English teachers themselves should take the initiative to learn some emotion regulation strategies and flexibly apply them to adjust their emotions in teaching practice.Secondly,leaders and rural schools should provide a friendly and harmonious teaching atmosphere for rural teachers and set up some courses to popularize emotional knowledge and regulation strategies for them.Thirdly,policy makers and even the public should show respect and understanding for rural teachers,while policy makers should take the real situation of rural schools into consideration when implementing related policies so as to better promote rural teachers’ professional development.