Teacher emotions and change in literacy learning. Insights to literacy learning in the contemporary world through self-reflection of teacher emotions

Abstract

In contemporary world, there is a need to make changes to literacy practices in schools towards outside school practices based on the use of technology and its communicational affordances. In this study, I focused on the process of reflecting my own emotions as a teacher in the context of changing literacy practices in a Finnish first-grade classroom. In my self-reflection, I aimed to understand my emotions, which were mediated in a discussion between my supervisor and I concerning the practices I had implemented. The discussion led me to an emotional conflict, which mirrored my pedagogical habitus in a tension of the old and the new practices. This tension was productive as it forced me to process my emotions also in the light of literature concerning teacher emotions. I also aimed to find new insights based on my reflections that could enhance understanding of literacy learning more generally. I ended up rethinking the changes in literacy learning in the contemporary world from the perspective of 'possibilities' rather than 'need'. IntroductionWhen I reviewed our discussion, the supervisor and I even seemed to have fun during the observation as we smiled and laughed every now and then. The nature of our discussion was professional, cognitive-based, academic and research-related. Overall, the situation appeared to be quite comfortable, and nothing I said or expressed indicated competence anxiety -me to disagree, to stress, or to feel bad -although I did. I kept my thoughts and feelings inside me as [I] considered them inappropriate in the situation and for a teacher-researcher. ([A], Appendix)The quote above is an example of my self-reflection regarding my emotions after a discussion with my doctoral thesis supervisor about the new literacy practices I had implemented as a teacher-researcher in a Finnish first-grade classroom. My supervisor and I reflected upon theoretical questions involving my implementation.The new literacy practices I implemented were based on the socio-cultural perspective on learning (Vygotsky, 1978), emphasizing the process of learning with collaborative and communicative practices, and included diversified literacy practices such as the use of printed and digital literacies, playing and drama (for *

Teacher as an orchestrator of collaborative planning in learner-generated video production

“…As some teachers may experience competence anxiety fearing they might expose their incompetence to others or themselves (Hargreaves, 1994;Räisänen, 2014), we guaranteed the four teachers' anonymity by withholding demographic details and using code names and male personal pronouns in the text. We selected a few excerpts to illustrate the findings and enable the reader to evaluate our interpretations.…”