Teachers’ Emotion Regulation in the Team-Taught Classroom: Insights Into Teachers’ Perspectives on How to Regulate and Communicate Emotions With Regard to the Team Teaching Partner

Abstract

An important facet of teachers’ competence is their ability to regulate their emotions in the classroom in an adaptive manner. Recently, the advantages of teacher collaboration have sparked novel educational practices, such as team teaching, where two teachers are responsible for classroom teaching. Within this setting of complex interactions, not only students but also partner teachers are additional sources of teachers’ emotions and ensuing emotion regulation strategies. How team teachers choose to regulate and communicate their emotions, triggered by their team partners, may have significant consequences for collaborative practices and teacher well-being. Based on the process model on emotion regulation and the concepts of co- and shared regulation, the present study aimed to enhance our understanding of team teachers’ perspectives on how to regulate and communicate emotions. To this end, a qualitative interview study was conducted among 30 Austrian team teachers teaching in lower secondary schools. The results of a structuring qualitative content analysis revealed that team teaching is an educational practice that requires high amounts of emotion regulation. It was shown that team teachers regularly use strategies such as attentional deployment or reappraisal to prevent the experience of negative emotions. Team teachers’ rules regarding displays of emotion stipulated that positive emotions can be authentically shown, while negative emotions must be suppressed in front of students. Engaging in discussion with the partner teacher after class is frequently used to handle negative experiences. By making use of co- and shared regulation of emotions (e.g., situation modification), teachers also exploit the potential of team teaching concerning emotional support and workload relief. Encouragement, (shared) praise, and shared humor were also considered to be useful strategies to maintain positive emotions in order to foster successful collaboration. Implications concerning adaptive emotion regulation to foster fruitful team teaching practices are discussed.

Public school teachers' occupational stress across different school types: a nationwide survey during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic in Japan

“…Meanwhile, teachers' stress levels may increase if teachers with different teaching style preferences are forced to collaborate ( 34 ). Muehlbacher et al demonstrated that team teaching is an educational practice requiring teachers to have increased emotion regulation ( 69 ). Team teachers frequently use emotion regulation techniques, such as attentional deployment and reappraisal, to minimize experiencing negative emotions.…”

“…Team teachers frequently use emotion regulation techniques, such as attentional deployment and reappraisal, to minimize experiencing negative emotions. Additionally, a positive discussion with a partner teacher after class is regularly used to address disagreements among team teachers ( 69 ). Taniguchi et al demonstrated that a postponed-solution coping strategy reduced schoolteachers' stress caused by interpersonal problems with co-workers ( 70 ).…”

Difficulties in Emotion Regulation and Communication Skills: The Mediating Role of Co-Rumination

“…This in return leads to improvement in communication skills. How-ever, considering the cruciality of communication skills in educational setting, teachers must know how to regulate and communicate their emotions, which is an essential indicator of their competence (Muehlbacher et al, 2022). Both intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation capacity are key to teachers' well-being, self-efficacy, job satisfaction (Hoffmann et al, 2020), belongingness to school (Arslan & Coşkun, 2023), and satisfying relationships with other stakeholders (Ocak-Karabay, 2019).…”

Placing students at the center: examining how teacher empathy modeling and empathy-infused student-centered learning experiences cultivate empathetic middle school classrooms and learning communities

“…M. Johnson (2022) affirmed that the "the prolonged stress of constant pandemic-driven changes in school systems has manifested for educators in three ways: burnout, moral injury, and compassion fatigue" (p. 5). Muehlbacher et al (2022) argued that teachers' ability to "effectively regulate their emotions is an important facet of their professional teacher competencies," and that for teacher to "effectively respond to and perform well during emotional classroom situations," teachers would need "to manage their emotions, as deciding to showcase one's anger, down-regulating the expression of anger, or trying to hide it entirely could have a significant impact on several outcomes (e.g., the teacher-student relationship)" (Muehlbacher et al, 2022, p. 1). Finally, Minahan (2019) offered that teachers should "learn to put students' reactions into context-and not to take them personally," and that the unpredictable emotions of students "could leave the teacher in a constant state of hyper-alertness when interacting with the student, thus result in fatigue, as the teacher is guarded and unable to predict what will happen from one moment to another" (Minahan, 2019, p. 1).…”