From anxiety to enthusiasm: emotional patterns among student teachers

Abstract

Studying to become a teacher is a highly emotional experience. Nevertheless, little is known about emotional patterns and emotional change. The aim of this study is to enhance the understanding of student teachers' academic emotions by exploring patterns of emotions experienced in emotionally loaded episodes. A total of 19 primary school student teachers were interviewed. The qualitative content analysis revealed five different emotional patterns: positive, negative, ascending, descending and changing. Most of the emotional patterns were positive or changing in nature. Yet all the emotional patterns were highly focused on studying and learning. Moreover, the patterns were experienced equally in short, medium-length and long episodes. Our study showed that emotional patterns were triggered by various task-related elements of teacher education: most commonly, fulfilled or unfilled expectations, sufficient or insufficient abilities, and experiences of social support received or not received.

Student teachers’ proactive strategies for avoiding study-related burnout during teacher education

“…The results suggested that study exhaustion was negatively related to cynicism towards studies. Student teachers are highly committed, motivated (see Niemi and Jakkula-Sihvonen 2011) and enthusiastic (Anttila et al 2017) in their studies, and hence are likely to invest a great deal of effort in their studies, resulting in fatigue caused by work overload, rather than cynicism towards studies. The hypothesis is also supported by prior studies suggesting that the most dedicated students usually suffer the least cynicism (Schaufeli et al 2002),…”

Student teachers’ emotional landscapes in self- and co-regulated learning

“…However, a highly motivational and emotionally activating state, such as flow, might involve experiences of anxiety as well (Litmanen et al, 2012), and mild feelings of exhaustion and anxiety are shown to be better for student teachers' learning than being completely carefree during a course (Ketonen & Lonka, 2012). Furthermore, previous studies have shown that the diversity and the tone of the emotions experienced while studying in teacher education are meaningful in terms of teacher learning as they direct the activities towards, or conversely, away from learning (Anttila et al, 2017), i.e. promote or hinder optimally regulated learning when becoming a teacher.…”

“…Altogether, positive emotions are highly beneficial in learning because they broaden students' cognitive and social activity, which promote creativity (Fredrickson, 2004;Rowe et al, 2013). However, learning and teaching sometimes involve much more than feelings of joy, interest or pride, -one also has to deal with many negative emotions, for instance anxiety and shame, that learning and studying can trigger (Anttila et al, 2016b;Anttila et al, 2017). Furthermore, experiencing negative emotions when learning may, for instance, reduce academic performance by decreasing motivation and study success (Ketonen & Lonka, 2012).…”

“…Endedijk, Vermunt, Verloop, & Brekelmans, 2012;Saariaho et al, 2016), on the emotions that student teachers experience during their learning (e.g. Anttila, Pyhältö, Soini, & Pietarinen, 2016;Anttila, Pyhältö, Soini, & Pietarinen, 2017;Timoštšuk and Ugaste, 2012), and on student teachers' emotional regulation during teacher education (Järvenoja & Järvelä, 2009). Yet, we know surprisingly little about the emotional landscape of the self-and co-regulation of learning among student teachers.…”

Novice teachers in a changing reality

“…Personal-emotional involves the transitioning from being a student to becoming a teacher, during which the novice teacher has to redesign his or her professional identity and self-efficacy (Schatz-Oppenheimer and Dvir 2014). This stage involves emotional overload of positive and negative feelings (Anttila et al 2017).…”