An Exploration of Language Teacher Reflection, Emotion Labor, and Emotional Capital

Abstract

In this article the researchers explore the notion of emotional capital in relation to language teachers’ emotion labor and the role of reflection in understanding their emotional experiences. They draw on interview narratives with teachers (N = 25) working in higher education institutions in the United States and United Kingdom. During these interview conversations, the researchers elicited accounts of teachers’ emotionally charged experiences that arise as part of their ongoing, mundane teaching practice and how they respond to these situations. The researchers argue that as language teachers struggle to orient to the feeling rules of their institutions, they develop the capacity to perform the emotions that they believe are expected of them. This capacity is further shaped through their reflective practice, as both individual reflection and collaborative reflection with colleagues. The researchers thus analyze how language teachers’ accruing emotional capital, developed through emotion labor and reflective activity, can be converted into social and cultural capital. The authors also point to how language teachers’ emotional capital is entangled in power relations and thus requires careful scrutiny.

Translanguaging, Emotionality, and English as a Second Language Immigrants: Mongolian Background Women in Australia

“…One valuable means of understanding these important factors is through investigating translanguaging in different real-life scenarios of our students, because highly intense emotional expressions triggered by negative psychological and mental issues often remain masked by students in the formal situations and could well be disassociated from academic contexts such as the classroom (Dovchin, 2015(Dovchin, , 2018. Academic and institutional culture, in particular, constructs emotional rules for its participants to control their "bad" and "negative" emotions such as anger, anxiety, frustration, and vulnerability while expressing their "positive" and "legitimate" emotions such as empathy, calmness, kindness, and being carefree (Ding & De Costa, 2018;Gkonou & Miller, 2020;Wolff & De Costa 2017). Consequently, the emotionality of ESL learners can be suppressed, as they encounter constant academic pressure of speaking only English and being subjected to communicative surveillance in the classroom.…”

Language work and affect in adult language education

“…Whilst we may argue that ‘emotional labour is part and parcel of the social practice of education’ (Loh & Liew, 2016, p. 277), the field of language education specifically is complicated by the fact that the ‘lived experience of language’ (Busch, 2017) is never neutral but rather socially stratified, hierarchized and valorised. Related to emotional labour are the so‐called ‘feeling rules’ (as developed by Hochschild, 1979/83; see also Gkonou & Miller, 2020; Zembylas, 2005). These latent rules ‘are seen as the side of ideology that deals with emotion and feeling’ (Hochschild, 1979, p. 551).…”

Positive Adult Education, Learned Helplessness and the Pygmalion Effect

“…Education based on emotional intelligence is necessary for students to be able to positively use and control their emotions, with positive coping strategies for stressful situations [ 47 ] and triggers [ 48 ], improving their psychological well-being [ 49 ]; which in turn promotes a feeling of belonging to a group [ 50 , 51 , 52 ], greater personal, organisational and social success [ 53 , 54 ], with a strong positive impact on the community [ 55 ].…”