Emotional Responses Toward a New Research Policy Among Academics in a Chinese University

Abstract

Teacher emotion has received prominent attention in the field of education as they are closely related to teacher identity and teachers’ well-being. While many previous studies have taken teachers’ emotions in teaching as their research focuses, this study investigated university English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher-researchers’ emotions and emotion regulation strategies in research in the context of a new research policy. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven EFL teacher-researchers at a Chinese university which implemented China’s new research policy of breaking the “five-only,” supplemented by the analysis of narrative frames and the institutional research documents. The data revealed that university EFL teacher-researchers experienced wide-ranging and diverse emotions at the micro-level, meso-level, and macro-level of research, with different attitudes toward the new research policy. They also employed multiple strategies of antecedent-focused and response-focused approaches to regulate emotions in research. This study helps unpack the complexity of emotions experienced by university teachers in research, and also calls for the attention of stakeholders to pay to the emotions and well-being of university EFL teachers.

“My Shawshank Redemption”: A Self-Narrative Inquiry of an EFL Academic’s Emotions and Identities on Research Journey

“…According to Tran et al's (2017) study on English language teachers in Vietnam, while few academics expressed support and enthusiasm for a new institutional research policy, the majority uttered pressure and complaints about the overemphasis on research excellence in policy documents. Similarly, in Lu and Zhang's (2021) study on the emotional responses of a group of EFL academics to China's new research policy breaking the ''Five-Only'' (China's new national research policy that seeks to replace the old quantitative evaluation system's emphasis on academics' papers, educational credentials, professional titles, research awards, and honorary titles [Luo, 2020]), the majority expressed dissatisfaction with the changes brought about by the new policy, whereas only a few expressed joy and welcomed the changes. Evidence from various contexts indicates that emotion is an unavoidable part of change, and negative emotions seem to be the dominant responses among EFL academics toward the research emphasis at the socioinstitutional level, particularly in the reform period.…”

“…Yang et al (2022) found that while research performers and followers were afflicted by many negative emotions such as unhappiness and helplessness, accommodators and integrators showed a mixture of both positive and negative emotions as they responded to the culture of performativity. In addition, scholars noticed that EFL teachers demonstrated a wide range of emotional responses toward changes in institutional research policies (Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al, 2017). According to Tran et al’s (2017) study on English language teachers in Vietnam, while few academics expressed support and enthusiasm for a new institutional research policy, the majority uttered pressure and complaints about the overemphasis on research excellence in policy documents.…”

Open Access Publishing and University Researchers’ Agency Towards Reshaping the Publishing Habitus

“…Mediated by their effects on such behaviours as academic writing, the influence of publishing policies even reaches the affective aspects of researchers' professional experience. For instance, Lu and Zhang's (2021) study reveals that university researchers experienced wide-ranging and diverse emotions at various levels of research, and displayed different attitudes towards the research policy at their university. In short, publishing policies influence university researchers' publishing engagement in both behavioural and cognitive terms.…”

An ecological examination of the emotions of Chinese high school mathematics teachers in a long-term teaching improvement program

“…On the other hand, students, as the primary stakeholders that teachers face in their daily teaching, are affected not only by teacher emotions in the classroom ( Frenzel et al, 2009a ; Becker et al, 2014 ) but also have a far-reaching impact on their learning, including academic achievement ( Kunter et al, 2011 ), motivation ( Kunter et al, 2013 ), and so on. At the macro level, teachers’ emotions can influence the implementation of various educational reforms ( Hargreaves, 1998 ; Lu and Zhang, 2021 ).…”

“…Research has revealed that teacher emotions differ across disciplines and key stages in school education (such as primary, middle, high school, and university; Frenzel et al, 2009b , 2015 ). Among the available studies, research on language teachers dominates the discipline research ( Golombek and Doran, 2014 ; Chu et al, 2021 ; Heydarnejad et al, 2021 ; Sun and Yang, 2021 ; Liu et al, 2022 ), and the research on key stages is mainly focused on primary school and university teachers ( Gu, 2016 ; Chen, 2017 , 2019 ; Lu and Zhang, 2021 ), whereas high school mathematics teacher emotions have received less attention ( Martínez-Sierra et al, 2019 ; Jiang et al, 2021 ). However, the uniqueness of high school mathematics teachers in terms of their key stages and disciplines, particularly in China, where high school mathematics teachers are also under the pressure of Gaokao (the National College Entrance Examinations; Jiang et al, 2022 ), makes their professional background and emotional development unique and deserving of more in-depth and focused research.…”