Emotion Regulation Strategies of Kindergarten ESL Teachers in Japan: An Interview-Based Survey
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| Title: | Emotion Regulation Strategies of Kindergarten ESL Teachers in Japan: An Interview-Based Survey |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Littleton, Adam |
| Source: | Language Learning Journal. 2021 49(2):203-218. |
| Availability: | Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 16 |
| Publication Date: | 2021 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Education Level: | Early Childhood Education Elementary Education Kindergarten Primary Education |
| Descriptors: | Self Control, Language Teachers, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, English (Second Language), Foreign Countries, Kindergarten, Videoconferencing, Teacher Attitudes, Teaching Methods, Stress Variables, Student Behavior, Behavior Problems, Metacognition, Parent School Relationship, Physical Activities, Educational Practices, Individual Differences, Classroom Techniques |
| Geographic Terms: | Japan |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09571736.2018.1542020 |
| ISSN: | 0957-1736 |
| Abstract: | This study explored how kindergarten ESL teachers in Japan make use of emotion regulation strategies, as proposed by Gross, in their work. Four teachers at a single dispatch company in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture were interviewed via Skype about the emotion regulation strategies they used in the workplace. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded, with special attention given to the cognitive processes involved in emotion regulation. Analysis revealed prominent themes common among teachers, as well as individual variation, though all teachers employed a process corresponding to Gross' modal model. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for further research follow. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2021 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1292271 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwG6tvv_NpvrWzhPBKwRYBezAAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDF8jv5w1wad4VkUxOwIBEICBmwuFGcLw-rfs5IqwOn_9ghlA_VJ_QUlpUtYVioWYlZslCbQ6Lmb7dPZMsv-Z4hou98pTd-aKgPikWeSWDohMhR0bQqdpf3e3wVAuIDaRAqwKPj5yVKqeNcuZ-T4mc4WhgSX2BHEUY7NU9zxBI8A_TvCuoyV-Koye64uzm3Z6Vzkg69EFb9xBPNUWlsccQ2XzVT8IfFp2ramRTdpz Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0149596512;sdq01apr.21;2021Apr03.03:09;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0149596512-1">Emotion regulation strategies of kindergarten ESL teachers in Japan: an interview-based survey </title> <p>This study explored how kindergarten ESL teachers in Japan make use of emotion regulation strategies, as proposed by Gross, in their work. Four teachers at a single dispatch company in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture were interviewed via Skype about the emotion regulation strategies they used in the workplace. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded, with special attention given to the cognitive processes involved in emotion regulation. Analysis revealed prominent themes common among teachers, as well as individual variation, though all teachers employed a process corresponding to Gross' modal model. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for further research follow.</p> <p>Keywords: Teacher emotions; emotion regulation; cognition</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-2">Introduction</hd> <p>Teaching is, by its nature, an emotionally demanding vocation. Brackett et al. ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref1">1</reflink>]: 415) state that 'teaching is an emotional practice ... ', and Jiang et al. ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref2">12</reflink>]: 22–23), claim further that 'generally, teachers' emotions are crucial factors in education'. While many of the emotions associated with teaching are positive, the high levels of stress found in the profession are well attested in the literature. Citing Kyriacou and Sutcliffe, Brackett et al. ([<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref3">1</reflink>]: 406) contend: 'Teaching is one of the most stressful occupations'. Geving ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref4">6</reflink>]: 624) concurs that 'stress in the teaching profession is prevalent', and Falout ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref5">5</reflink>]: 28) asserts that 'compared with other professions, teachers across various countries, school contexts, and subject fields exhibit higher levels of psychosomatic symptoms' (e.g. Jin et al. [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref6">13</reflink>]; Kieschke and Schaarschmidt [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref7">15</reflink>]). All this paints a picture of a profession which places unique and not infrequently severe emotional demands upon its practitioners.</p> <p>These emotions do not concern only the teachers themselves; they are of utmost importance to student-teacher relationships and have a direct bearing on learning outcomes. Jiang et al. ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref8">12</reflink>]: 22) insist that 'teachers' emotions play a crucial role in students' learning and teacher-student relationships. Grayson and Alvarez ([<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref9">7</reflink>]: 1349) warn that 'teacher stress levels exert a significant contribution to the psychological climate within the school'. Add to such considerations the obvious professional concerns of teachers, including the endemic phenomena of attrition and burnout, and it becomes clear that these high emotional stakes and their consequences are in serious need of attention. Yet, despite the clear relevance of teachers' emotions to their work, there is still only a relatively small body of research devoted to the subject. Jiang et al. ([<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref10">12</reflink>]: 23), in their own study, attest that 'investigation into teachers' emotion regulation is in urgent need'.</p> <p>Of particular interest to both researchers and practitioners is the process of how teachers' emotions are regulated. This paper will investigate the emotion regulation strategies (ERS) of four kindergarten ESL teachers at a single teaching company in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. Through Skype interviews, the teachers responded to questions about the emotions they encountered in the workplace and the strategies they employed to regulate them. By analysing the responses they offered, I hope here to shed light on how these teachers make use of ERS in their work, and to gain a better understanding of the cognitive processes involved in their use of ERS.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-3">Methodology</hd> <p></p> <hd id="AN0149596512-4">Intellectual underpinnings</hd> <p>Much of the literature on emotion regulation strategies takes its cues from the work of J.J. Gross. Gross himself defined ERS as 'the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience these emotions' (Gross [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref11">8</reflink>]: 275). He adds: 'Emotion regulatory processes may be automatic or controlled, conscious or unconscious, and may have their effects at one or more points in the emotion generative process' (Gross [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref12">8</reflink>]: 275). Gross posited a four-step model, termed the 'modal model' according to which ERS are put to use (Gross and Thompson [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref13">11</reflink>]). The model's four steps are: (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref14">1</reflink>) Situation, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref15">2</reflink>) Attention, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref16">3</reflink>) Appraisal, and (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref17">4</reflink>) Response.</p> <p>Gross' model affords a number of advantages to the researcher. Firstly, it furnishes a detailed understanding of the process of emotion regulation. By making use of the model, practitioners can divide events they experience into coherent phases and pinpoint with precision the phase at which emotions arose and at which point regulation strategies were employed. In shedding light on what might otherwise be an obscure process, the model thus gives the teacher and the researcher more knowledge of the mechanisms of emotion regulation, and therefore more insight into them.</p> <p>In dividing emotion regulation into situation, attention, appraisal and response, Gross' model also allows regulation strategies to be categorised according to the phase of the process in which they occur. This further description of emotion regulation, called the process model (Gross and Thompson [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref18">11</reflink>]), is an outgrowth of the modal model, and gives researchers a more detailed taxonomy of emotion regulation strategies. Strategies correspond to phases of the modal model: situation (situation selection, situation modification), attention (attention deployment), appraisal (cognitive change) and response (response modulation). Strategies may also be divided into preventative, or antecedent-focused (those which occur before a situation) and responsive, or response-focused (those which occur afterward).</p> <p>Researchers have used this model to investigate the strategies teachers employ (e.g. Sutton [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref19">17</reflink>]). They have also used the model to gauge the effectiveness of these strategies (Jiang et al. [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref20">12</reflink>]). This latter study found antecedent-focused strategies to be more effective than response-focused strategies, a key distinction for which Gross' model allows and which has important implications for teachers. Others (Brackett et al. [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref21">1</reflink>]) have used Gross' conception of emotion regulation as part of their investigations into job satisfaction among teachers, finding emotion regulation ability to be positively correlated with job satisfaction.</p> <p>Further, as I will argue in the Discussion section below, a four-phase process corresponding closely to Gross' model was observed inductively in the responses of each of the teachers to my interview questions. Despite the large degree of individual variation that the interviewees exhibited in their emotion regulation strategies, each of their responses could be shown to correspond to a four-step process, with the phases correlating closely with the situation, attention, appraisal and response process outlined in Gross' model. Implications for the use of Gross' model in this case, and for future research, along with critical considerations of the model's limitations, will be presented in the Discussion section below.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-5">Interviews</hd> <p>In order to shed light on the cognitive processes which unfold during teachers' use of ERS, I interviewed four colleagues about their preferred strategies. The interview contained six questions designed to elicit detailed responses from teachers. The questions were as follows:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> Which positive emotions do you typically feel at work?</item> <p></p> <item> Which negative emotions do you typically feel at work?</item> <p></p> <item> In what situations do you feel most [prominent positive emotion named by interviewee]? In which do you feel most [prominent negative emotion named by interviewee]?</item> <p></p> <item> Try to describe your thought process when you experience [negative emotion] in class. How about [positive emotion]?</item> <p></p> <item> Describe your actions when you experience [negative emotion].</item> <p></p> <item> Can you name a time in the past two weeks when you experienced [negative emotion]? How about [positive emotion]? Try to recall what the context was, how you felt, and how you dealt with the situation.</item> </ulist> <p>The interview is widely regarded as well-suited to qualitative forms of research. As DeMarrais and Tisdale ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref22">4</reflink>]: 115), who used qualitative interviews in a survey of anger, argue:</p> <p>Qualitative research methods have the potential to elicit rich descriptions of emotional experiences, particularly if the research is about a topic that is important to the participants in the study. The open-ended nature of these methods makes possible the emotional involvement of both participants and researchers.</p> <p>Given both the prominence of the interview as a research tool and the elusive and internal nature of emotions as phenomena, it became evident to me early on that interviews, with the possibility to ask follow-up questions, establish empathy and rapport between researcher and participant, and offer, quite literally, a human face to the interaction, would afford the best chance of eliciting detailed and meaningful data. However, logistical constraints meant that opportunities for face-to-face interviews were rare; to overcome this obstacle, interviews took place via Skype. I was relieved to read that others (Deakin and Wakefield [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref23">3</reflink>]; Sullivan [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref24">16</reflink>]) had successfully used Skype to conduct qualitative interviews and had found no shortcomings in it as compared with traditional face-to-face interviews. Indeed, certain advantages, such as flexibility in scheduling and diminished financial costs of meeting participants were even noted (Deakin and Wakefield [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref25">3</reflink>]: 5). My own experience bore these findings out, and Skype proved a highly useful and convenient tool.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-6">Participants</hd> <p>I interviewed four colleagues employed at my company, a dispatch company based in Sendai, Japan, which sends native-speaking English teachers to teach lessons at client schools. This business model is common in Japan, where English language education is often handled by private companies, particularly cram schools, or 塾 (<emph>juku</emph>), as well as evening English schools, called 英会話 (<emph>eikaiwa</emph>).</p> <p>These colleagues were chosen after having responded to an in-person request for research volunteers. Responses were followed up via e-mail and dates and times set for Skype interviews. All were native-speaking ESL teachers, like me, dispatched daily to Japanese kindergartens. There were two men and two women; three were American, and one came from the UK. All had been with the company for two years or less. Each teacher was, to some extent, responsible for teaching large kindergarten classes (called 'in-class') during the morning, and <emph>eikaiwa</emph>-style private lessons (known as 'after-class') in the afternoon/evening, though the ratio of each varied according to the teacher. Each teacher had a unique schedule, as the needs of client schools varied. Three of the teachers were dispatched to various schools on various days (and sometimes on the same day, commuting to a different school mornings and evenings) while one teacher was permanently based at a single school. All taught the same basic curriculum involving a set of vocabulary and conversation targets to be studied each month. All four colleagues were based in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture.</p> <p>In the interests of anonymity, I have assigned a pseudonyms to each teacher. In some cases, interview quotations have been abbreviated in the body of this paper, in some cases to remove superfluous response cues (such as 'mm hm'), and in others to focus on the portion of the teacher's response salient to the discussion.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-7">Procedure</hd> <p>Three of the interviews lasted approximately 20 minutes, while the fourth lasted less than 15. I recorded each interview on an IC recorder, and took handwritten notes during the process. Having finished, I then transcribed the recordings using word processing software.</p> <p>Transcripts were then analysed using thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke delineate as follows six discrete phases of thematic analysis:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> The researcher familiarises him or herself with the data</item> <p></p> <item> Initial codes are generated</item> <p></p> <item> Themes are sought</item> <p></p> <item> Themes are reviewed</item> <p></p> <item> Themes are defined and named, and</item> <p></p> <item> A report is produced.</item> </ulist> <p>Despite the orderliness of this model, the authors are quick to point out the organic and inductive nature of thematic analysis. Though they theoretically relegate the production of a report to the final phase, in reality, they acknowledge (Braun and Clarke [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref26">2</reflink>]: 86) that 'writing is an integral part of analysis, not something that takes place at the end, as it does with statistical analyses. Therefore, writing should begin in phase one, with the jotting down of ideas and potential coding schemes, and continue right through the entire coding/analysis process'. Indeed, in my own case, the notes which I took during the interviews served as important guideposts during my later, more detailed analysis, and I referred to them as I began transcription.</p> <p>Having completed these steps, I then began to make notes in the margins of the transcripts using word processing software, marking them with initial codes and looking for potential themes, which had already begun to suggest themselves from my several sets of handwritten notes. Each of these sets of codes and themes was reviewed, and continued to evolve as I planned my report.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-8">Results</hd> <p>Each of the interviewees was asked the same set of six questions (see Methodology above). The process of interviewing, however, is not necessarily linear. Often a teacher would answer a certain question before it was asked, for example, describing specific contextual factors that brought about certain emotions or relating specific incidents and providing abundant details unprompted. All of this was in keeping with Josselson's ([<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref27">14</reflink>]) insistence that interview subjects are the best narrators of their own stories, and that the interviewer need prompt them as little as possible.</p> <p>Thus, in the discussion below, responses are organised, not necessarily linearly according to the order in which the questions were put to the subjects, but according instead to the bundles of themes that arose following the transcription and coding processes. In the subsequent discussion section, the observations generated during the thematic analysis will be used to demonstrate that teacher's apparently heterogeneous responses can in fact be understood in terms of a predictive process described by Gross' modal model.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-9">Thematic group 1: negative emotions</hd> <p>In reality, the teachers in this study spoke at length about the positive emotions they associated with their work. Feelings of happiness, youthfulness, excitement, and a fondness for their students all emerged as themes. However, though positive emotions are a very important factor in these teachers' work, they are much less likely to require regulation than are negative emotions. I will thus begin the discussion of the survey results by recounting teachers' reports of the negative emotions they experienced in their work. Here, as with positive emotions, there was a large degree of overlap among teachers, allowing for the emergence of prominent themes.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-10">Stress</hd> <p>Three teachers explicitly mentioned 'stress' among their prominent negative emotions.Susan:So just ... Kind of stressed to keep things ... in control?Amy:Like, if the students are just going, like ... crazy. Standing up, or not listening, or laughing or, you know, not paying attention ... Like, that's definitely a time, uh, where I start to feel stress ... Interviewer:Stressed ... Amy:Like, I have ... Yeah, stressed ... And, not able to ... When I don't ... When I feel like I don't have control ... Interviewer:Now, how about negative emotions? Which negative emotions do you usually associate with work?John:Um. [Pause.] I would say "anger." [Pause.] And "stress." Those being the main two emotions that I feel at work sometimes.</p> <p>Note that both Susan and Amy mentioned 'control', or more specifically a lack of it, as giving rise to their stress; this and other themes which arose as contextual factors triggering negative emotions will be treated below. For now, it is worth noting that stress was cited by three of the four teachers as a major negative emotion they faced in their work, something consistent with the literature on ESL and on the teaching profession generally.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-11">Mental exhaustion</hd> <p>Two teachers hinted at exhaustion in their discussion of negative emotions, with both of them stating explicitly that this exhaustion included a mental facet. Susan cited 'tiredness' – physical, emotional and mental.Interviewer:What negative emotions do you feel at work? [Pause]Susan:Um ... Negative ... [Pause.] Um ... Like ... tiredness ... ? ... I guess, from the physicality. So tiredness ... ... Physically, I mean, physically—for sure. Um, but then also, in a way, emotionally, or, um, you know, mentally from having to ... You know, it's important to keep their attention, being like, <emph>genki</emph> ... [a Japanese word meaning 'healthy', 'upbeat' and 'energetic'.]Ray, similarly, made mention of 'mental fatigue'.</p> <p>Interviewer:</p> <p>Are there any negative emotions that you typically feel at work?</p> <p>Ray:</p> <p>[pause] ... Fatigue. [Laughs.]</p> <p>Interviewer:</p> <p>[Laughs.]</p> <p>Ray:</p> <p>Is that an emotion?</p> <p>Interviewer:</p> <p>[Laughs.] Yes, it can be.</p> <p>Ray:</p> <p>I ... Yeah, mental fatigue, I guess, in some aspects.</p> <p>Here, we can see a corollary to the 'excitement' mentioned by certain teachers when discussing positive emotions; while the upbeat and highly energetic TPR lessons that teachers were encouraged to deliver can bring about positive emotions for both teachers and students, they also inevitably lead to a drain in both physical and mental energy.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-12">Individual variation: boredom and the unexpected</hd> <p>There was also some individual variation attested among negative emotions. Ray, perhaps due to his unique situation among the interviewees in being assigned to a single kindergarten for the entirety of his workday, was the only teacher to mention boredom<bold>.</bold>Ray:Although ... Negative emotion, uh ... [Pause.] Boredom. [Laughs.]Interviewer:Boredom.Ray:Again, that's my situation at [name of Ray's kindergarten], 'cause I'm there from, like, 7:40 in the morning ... [Pause.] And, like ... Yeah, and I don't, like, leave at all ... I don't have English [in the mornings], so a lot of times, I'll just feel, like, worthless ... Just ... ... 'What am I doing?' ... I'm just, like, 'There's nothing to do right now'.Though Ray was the only teacher to explicitly name boredom, there was a high degree of uniformity in the responses of the other teachers, with all naming stress among the negative emotions they associated with their work. This would seem to reaffirm many of the claims about endemic stress found in the ESL literature.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-13">Thematic group 2: contextual triggers for emotions</hd> <p>As several of the responses above illustrate, teachers often began speaking of the triggers for their positive and negative emotions unprompted when discussing the emotions themselves. They were eventually invited explicitly to speak in greater detail about the contexts and circumstances giving rise to these emotions.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-14">Student misbehaviour</hd> <p>As they had when invited to speak of their positive emotions, all of the teachers in the survey spoke at length about the sources of this positivity: the students. Their bond with the children they teach was cited by all four teachers as a source of many positive feelings, from happiness and joy, to feelings of fulfilment, youthfulness, and fondness. It would be misleading, and doing a great disservice to these teachers, to suggest that their teaching environment was a source of endless negativity. On the contrary, they tended to emphasise the positive, with John claiming that excitement and happiness accounted for 95% of his day. However, perhaps unsurprisingly, the same students with whom teachers bonded so warmly were also frequent sources of stress. And since it is negative emotions that are more often subject to regulation, I'll focus below on the contextual triggers that tended to bring these negative emotions to the fore.</p> <p>Several teachers (Susan, Amy, and John) tied their feelings of stress to a perceived lack of control over classroom discipline:Susan:So, I feel most stressed when there is a mother ... It's usually mother. ... But, a parent there. And, um ... their child ... is ... misbehaving ... In some way ... ... So just ... Kind of stressed to keep things ... in control?Amy:Like, if the students are just going, like ... crazy. Standing up, or not listening, or laughing or, you know, not paying attention ... Like, that's definitely a time, uh, where I start to feel stress ... Interviewer:Stressed ... Amy:Like, I have ... Yeah, stressed ... And, not able to ... When I don't ... When I feel like I don't have control ...</p> <p>John, though he did not explicitly mention 'control', suggested, like Amy, that it was the students' 'not listening' that was the contextual trigger giving rise to his feelings of stress:John: ... when kids don't listen. They're making the job more difficult than it needs to be.</p> <p>Amy additionally attributed this misbehaviour to an inability on the part of the teacher to 'reach' students:Amy:There's those times and those lessons when they're in another world, and you can't reach them. ... So, for me, that's stressful ... In each of these cases, though teachers occasionally diverged in their descriptions of the emotions that arose and the ways that they articulated them, student misbehavior was a trigger giving rise to negative emotions, most especially to stress. Thus, while the children were so frequently mentioned in connection with positive emotions, they were, perhaps unsurprisingly, also potentially sources of stress.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-15">The language barrier as a source of negative emotions</hd> <p>Prominent among teachers' answers when discussing their triggers for negative emotions was the language barrier they faced at work. Three teachers specifically mentioned experiencing negative emotions as a result of difficulties with the language, either in their interactions with students or with other staff at their schools.Susan:So, I guess, like, typical pressure that you'd feel to, like, at any job that you want to do your job well ... Except, with five-year-olds, or three-year-olds ... That don't speak English. [Laughs]Ray:I guess, frustration, about not just being able to say it in Japanese ... ... Just the frustration sometimes of the language barrier ... John:So, like, if a teacher comes up, and like, out of nowhere just suddenly asks me to do something. You know, and they're speaking only Japanese to me. And maybe I'm not sure if I understand what they're talking about. Like, that can cause the negative emotions for me.</p> <p>Though teachers used a number of words to describe their emotional states when dealing with the language barrier, all cited it as a contextual factor giving rise to negative emotions.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-16">Observation by parents or other teachers as a trigger for negative emotions</hd> <p>Susan and Ray both identified the presence of Japanese teachers or parents of students as a source of negative emotions. For Susan, this was most marked when parents of students observed her classes and students misbehaved.Susan:Um ... we let the parents come in whenever they want ... So, I feel most stressed when there is a mother ... It's usually mother. ... But, a parent there. And, um ... their child ... is ... misbehaving ... ? In some way ... Susan:You know, 'cause the stressor is the parent being there, so ... The 'being observed'.</p> <p>Ray cited as a contextual trigger for negative emotions the presence of other teachers as well as parents, stating that their presence hindered his willingness to take risks.Ray:The biggest thing is ... like, if it's not going well, like, I start to think, like 'Shit, this teacher, or this parent, is like, 'What is this guy doing?' Like, 'This class sucks'. ... Then, so then, I'm like, well ... I don't want to, like, take a risk. Like, if I'm alone, by myself, I'll take a risk to try to, like, spice things up. But I'll, just, like, really embarrass myself ... ... Do something stupid and make the kids laugh. And like, I won't ... You know, I'll take a risk, and, like, even if the kids don't like it, then I'm just like, 'Ok, whatever', you know ... I don't like ... Like, it's harder for me to take those risks in front of parents or teachers ...</p> <p>If lessons are not perceived to be enjoyable, on the one hand, and as at least nominally educational, on the other, there is always the possibility that parents will withdraw their students (and thus their fees). Too many such withdrawals would be a threat the company's income<emph>,</emph> and could potentially have dire consequences for a teacher's employment there. Thus it is perhaps unsurprising that the presence of parents (and their potential disapproval) emerged as a theme in teachers' responses.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-17">Thematic group 3: the cognitive process</hd> <p>In asking teachers to relate their thoughts as they dealt with emotions in the classroom, I was attempting to explicitly answer the 'how' of emotion regulation. Conscious thought, however, represents only part of the picture. Gross himself ([<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref28">8</reflink>]: 275) stated: '[e]motion regulatory processes may be automatic or controlled, conscious or unconscious, and may have their effects at one or more points in the emotion generative process'. While this research set out with the aim of shedding light on the cognitive processes associated with emotion regulation, not all emotion regulation is, in the end, cognitive; nor is it necessarily conscious. Indeed, even those elements of ERS which are explicitly cognitive may not necessarily lend themselves to easy or straightforward articulation. Emotions are a subtle and elusive subject, and teachers' responses to questions about their cognitive processes revealed this fact as much as anything else.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-18">Non-cognitive responses: delayed reflection and feeling</hd> <p>Some teachers experienced difficulty either in recalling or in verbally articulating the thoughts associated with the onset of emotion and emotion regulation. Ray and Amy, in particular, seemed to struggle to articulate their thought processes. The primary reason for this was likely that they did not conceive of their emotion regulation in a cognitive way. When pressed, both explicitly denied a role for discursive thought during moments of classroom stress. Ray stated that he saved reflection for after class.Ray:Like, I don't really reflect on it too much until it's all over.While 'reflection' is a specialist term distinct from cognition and thought, Ray emphasised that his emotion regulation strategy involved delaying scrutiny of his emotions until after the fact:</p> <p>Ray:</p> <p>... don't show the emotion during class and then reflect on it afterwards.</p> <p>... Yeah. Not while it's happening.</p> <p>Amy also denied a role for thought in the heat of the moment, emphasising instead the role of feeling.Amy:I mean, it's actually less about thinking, and more—for me, personally—it's just, like, a feeling. Kind of just an omnipresent, like, takeover, where I'm just like, '[Takes a deep breath] Oh my gosh, there's nothing I can do!'Amy:So, yeah. So, I guess as far as, like, thought process goes, like, I am aware of when the stress is happening, I'm like, 'Wow, I'm pretty stressed right now'.Interviewer:[Laughs.]Amy:But there's like nothing I can do to talk myself out of the stress in a thinking way.</p> <p>When pressed, and offered the alternative of cognition versus instinct, Amy chose the latter:Interviewer:So, I guess, what I'm kind of trying to figure out is the moment where the thought does kick in. And where you're like, 'Ok, this is how I deal with this'.Amy:Mm hm.Interviewer:Or, is it still ... Are you still kind of riding on instinct from that point forward?Amy:Hm, interesting. Ok, um, I guess it's instinct. [Laughs.] I think that makes more sense.</p> <p>Though her choice of the term 'instinct' was prompted by my own suggestion, Amy clarified this, unprompted, describing the strength of her emotional rapport with the students, though she then reverted to her own preferred articulation of 'feeling':Amy:Like, yeah, it's definitely an instinct thing, because I'm always, like, trying to feel out the class.Interviewer:Mm hm.Amy:Like, basically, what they are feeling, I'm feeling. If they're going crazy, I have to go crazy.The responses of Ray and Amy illustrate both the diversity of ERS and of the ways teachers conceive of them. While the research question hoped to shed light on cognition, Amy and Ray's responses were highly illuminating in their own right, and very much in keeping with the variety of ERS envisioned by Gross' model.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-19">Changing the situation</hd> <p>Ray and Amy, despite their reluctance to acknowledge cognition as a factor in their emotion management, were both nonetheless able to articulate a quite similar (and conscious) strategy which both used when faced with classroom stressors, in the heat of the moment; both named 'change the situation' as a classroom management strategy, and one which cropped up in the process of their discussions of the cognitive process.Ray:Just try to change the situation, I guess ... ... distract myself or ... just change. Don't keep doing whatever is upsetting me, or anything.Amy:So, usually what just happens is, 'Ok, I'm going to move around, if this feels good I'm going to make them do gestures, or I'm going to do ... ' Like, change. Like, change the ... The atmosphere?Interviewer:Mm hm.Amy:I have to change it up a little bit to see if that changes the feeling for them and for me, I guess.</p> <p>Ray also described this philosophy in other terms:Ray:Like, just, 'Salvage it and move on'. Yeah, I think 'move on' is the biggest thing.Ray:Yeah, yeah. Just change ... Like, for the <emph>nensho taiken</emph> [demonstration lesson for three-year-old students] it was just 'move on, just try to change it'.</p> <p>While Ray and Amy described their approaches to change with their own personal variations (Ray referred specifically to 'the situation' and 'whatever is upsetting me', while Amy characteristically continued to emphasise 'feeling' as the object of the change), nonetheless, both spoke of a conscious intent to change the classroom environment as a strategy to address sources of stress, an important emotion regulation strategy.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-20">Repression</hd> <p>Ray and John both spoke of repressing negative emotions. Repression is a term which often carries negative connotations, and multiple studies have found drawbacks to repression as an emotion regulation strategy (Gross and John [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref29">10</reflink>]; Jiang et al. [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref30">12</reflink>]). Nonetheless, both Ray and John, in the course of their responses, mentioned conscious efforts at repressing negative emotions. Ray's recollection of repression was also accompanied by a description of dissimulation:Ray:In the moment ... especially, like, in front of the kids, you can never show negative emotion yourself ... ... So, like, even if I felt something during class, like, the most important thing is to not show that. You know? Never show ... And that's kind of like the hardest thing. Yeah, it's ... You have to just act happy, even if you're not.</p> <p>John was even more straightforward, using the word 'repression', though the process he described differed in important ways from that outlined by Ray. His own strategy seemed to be characterised by a genuine effort to change or replace the underlying emotions, rather than simply simulate positive ones:Interviewer:What do you do when you feel stressed or angry? What do you with that emotion?John:Uh, I ... I kind of, like, repress it. Like, I push it down. Inside of me.John:And, I kind of push it down, and just kind of, you know. [Pause.] Just put on a smile. Or bring the happy emotion up, out; push the negative one down. And kind of just keep it there. And just, you know, be as positive as possible.While John's mention of 'putt[ing] on a smile' may suggest, like Ray's response, a certain dissimulation, it's clear that John's efforts go further than the mere 'masking' of negative emotions. His attempts to 'bring out' the happy emotion and to 'be as positive as possible' (and not merely to appear so) suggest a genuineness – or at the very least, an attempt at genuineness. All this suggests that John's understanding of 'repression' is complex, and allows for the presence of multiple emotions, including sincerely felt positive emotions.</p> <p>John was also able to articulate the thoughts and rationale that informed this process:Interviewer:So, I'm wondering how that works. Like, is there a thought process associated with that?John:Yes. Like ... Like, I've ... In the past, it would have been a thing where I just, kind of, just followed whichever emotion was there. But it's, like it's taken practice to kind of think about it. You can ... Like, when you notice that your mood is changing, as it's happening, you kind of have to take that few extra seconds and say, 'No, this is wrong. This isn't the time for that. Let's put that away. Now, let's be more positive'. 'Cause, you know, an interaction where you're going in negatively will end negatively. An interaction where you're going in positively has a better chance of coming out positively.</p> <p>Regardless of these important differences, both Ray and John claimed to make conscious efforts to repress negative emotions in the classroom. Though studies (Gross and John [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref31">10</reflink>]; Jiang et al. [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref32">12</reflink>]) have shown repression to be a regulation strategy with certain drawbacks, it is nonetheless a common one for many teachers, and the responses of Ray and John provided important insights into the rationales and processes that inform such strategies, as well as their utility in effecting positive outcomes.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-21">A deep breath</hd> <p>Two of the teachers in the survey mentioned taking deep breaths to deal with the onset of negative emotions. Amy mentioned breathing as an ERS, and did so multiple times:Amy:So, um, after that feeling comes, I guess the thought process is: 'Ok, so first I need to breathe ... 'Interviewer:[Laughs.]Amy:Like, my management strategy ... Interviewer:That's the management strategy there, mm hm ... Amy:Yeah, so the breathing strategy.Amy:So, like, sometimes, it involves taking a deep breath and trying to get one student's attention.Amy:... And to calm myself down, by just, like, breathing for a second and trying to focus on, like, the kids that are paying attention.</p> <p>John described a classroom situation in which a student's behaviour acted as a potential trigger for negative emotions. In this description, John's act of taking a deep breath served as the moment he decided to reassess the situation and seek a positive solution, rather than let the negative emotion take control.John:' ... I'm just going to explode at him. I can feel it'. And he comes up again. And I'm just like, [exhales]. Kind of just, like, inside of me, breathing out and, 'Ok'. Like, 'Just take him back and sit him down'.Interestingly, both Amy and John also used a sharp intake of breath to describe the onset of negative emotions. This nonverbal and deeply physical characterisation of an attack of stress contrasts with the 'breathing out', and apparent accompanying release of tension that it implies. Both John and Amy stated that these moments of pausing for a breath allowed them to pivot to more positive emotions and effect favourable outcomes in class.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-22">Individual variation: acts of imagination</hd> <p>Susan offered a unique and very conscious strategy to help resolve the stress of being observed by students' parents: she imagined that the parents weren't present.Susan:I try to do what I think would be right if Mom wasn't there. ... So I try to pretend the moms aren't there ...</p> <p>Though this use of imagination was unique to Susan's response, it shows an excellent example of a deliberate act of cognition. For Susan, this emotion regulation strategy was very much a conscious effort.</p> <p>In the end, while I had hoped (and was ultimately, to some extent, able) to shed light on the cognitive processes associated with ERS, teachers varied in the extent to which they conceived of emotion regulation as cognition. While John was quite forthright and articulate about his thoughts, and Susan was able to describe the role imagination played in her own emotion regulation, Ray and Amy preferred to describe their strategies in terms of actions and feelings, though both did give important clues as to their mental states at these times. This is actually quite consistent with Gross' model; ERS need not be conscious, and can be employed at any phase along the continuum of the modal model. For the purposes of this investigation, however, the only way to discover these processes was to ask about them, and this required articulation on the part of the respondents. Though it was not always easy or intuitive for them to grant this access, their cooperation yielded precious insights, and is appreciated.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-23">Thematic group 4: actions</hd> <p>After describing their thoughts (or in some cases, feelings) teachers were invited specifically to speak about the actions they would take to address negative emotions that arose in the course of their work. The actions taken by teachers proved to be highly diverse. Nonetheless, there were, as always, certain recognisable themes which emerged from teachers' responses, though the actions employed by multiple teachers were, in this case, outnumbered by those actions attesting to individual variation.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-24">Use of students' L1</hd> <p>Amy and Ray both described using students' L1, in this case Japanese, in order to correct disruptive behaviour.Susan:So, I make eye contact with the child. And I make sure that they're looking at me. ... And, um, if I have to—right, they speak Japanese? So, I will say a few words to them in Japanese ... ... if it is so serious that they need to be told, like ... ... in Japanese ... Susan:... and I stopped everything, and I moved one of them near me ... And I told them, 'no', like, 'This is not okay ... ' ... I did that in Japanese, like '<emph>dame da yo</emph> [That's not allowed]!'</p> <p>Ray, while discussing anxiety about when Japanese use was appropriate, stated that in certain situations connected with student discipline, he felt it was warranted:Ray:Knowing when is appropriate to try to use the Japanese. ... Like, when it's absolutely necessary, 'cause you ... You know ... Obviously, I'm not ... I really shouldn't ... But I definitely think there's some times when I should. [Pause.] You know, if it's ... The kids are doing something dangerous, or if, like, a kid punches another kid in the face.</p> <p>In addition to discipline, Ray also mentioned using L1 in order to cheer up students who were upset:Ray:Like, what I'll do with a kid if they're crying or something, or upset, like, I'll ... [Pause.] And I'll do this in Japanese sometimes, like if they're, you know, trying to stop a kid from wailing ... Just, like, ask them, 'What'd you have for breakfast?' Like, 'What'd you have for lunch?' Just like, try, just something completely unrelated.Use of students' L1 was thus viewed both as a disciplinary tactic and a way to change the general mood in the classroom from negative to positive.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-25">Movement</hd> <p>Ray and Amy, in their previous responses about cognition, had already mentioned a strategy of changing the situation in order to address the sources of stress in the classroom. They put this ethos into action, often, by getting the students physically active. Both mentioned a favourite song that they used to accomplish this. In Ray's case, this was in response to a class he felt was displaying too little enthusiasm:Ray:[Pause.] I mean, that class was kind of a mix anyway. Like, half of them were super into it and half weren't ... They were basically babies still. ... But after I did 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes', like, that was towards the end anyway. Yeah, that got them up and moving, so that was good. And then just finished off.Amy:Try to change it up, whether it's, you know, the content, or whether we need to, quite literally, you know, move from one target language to the next ... ... Or, if we need to move around. Usually that's ... ... a really good thing. I notice, for me, and for the kids. [Laughs.]Amy:Like, if they're going crazy and they don't want to sit nicely, and, you know, look at cards. Then, having everyone stand up and, like, jumping around, doing 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes ... ' ... or something like that. Just, like ... Even if 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' isn't on the curriculum for that month, I'd bring it in, 'cause they just love it ... ... And it helps regroup everybody again.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-26">Individual variation: Body language, separating students, speaking quietly, incentives, posit...</hd> <p>In speaking about their actions, teachers drew from a wide array of personal strategies meant to address a variety of different classroom situations. Thus, the responses they offered attested to a great degree of individual variation. Susan, in addressing misbehaving students, emphasised the importance of body language:Susan:So, I make eye contact with the child. And I make sure that they're looking at me.Susan:I'll do the action, like duh duh duh duh duh! [Demonstrates finger wagging] Or ... ... The hitty thing, like do the hit. [Demonstrates a simulated strike.] 'Not ok'. ... And, like, use a serious face.</p> <p>Susan also mentioned physically separating troublesome students:Susan:We stopped, and then I separated the two kids, like, move the chair. [Laughs.] 'You're going on this end and you're going on this end'. Because they were ... They're the most ... outgoing of all the kids ...</p> <p>Susan also used body language to lighten the mood after such disciplinary measures:Susan:Kind of, 'Let's continue with what we were doing'. And ... I'll usually, like, you know, give them a '<emph>tachi</emph>' [a high-five; Japanese coinage from the English 'touch'] at the end so they're not, like, depressed.</p> <p>Amy, when contending with a group of rowdy students, used a quiet voice in an effort to quiet the classroom:Amy:If I'm calm, if I speak calmly, I'll be like, 'Ok, everyone'. Like, I'll speak quietly, so they ... Like, they'll have to be quiet, too, I guess. And then they can hear ...</p> <p>Amy also spoke of encouraging positive behaviour through incentives:Amy:So, I often try to use this new incentive where I give them points. If they do a good job or if they listen. And so, I was like, 'Okay, everyone, let's sit down'. And, maybe, like, one of them sat down, and I was like, 'Oh, [student's name]', like, 'Good job! One point!' ... So, I get out the clipboard and put one point.</p> <p>John, in order to overcome stress brought on by struggles with the language barrier, gave himself encouragement through positive self-talk:John:I'm like, 'Ok. Let's just forget that, let's just smile. Be ... Be confident in yourself'. You know. 'Be positive about this and just ... ' You know. 'You're sure about ... You know what they're saying, you know you can do this', and just went with it. You know?Interviewer:Be confident ... John:... Pushed that stressed feeling that I could feel inside of me and just pushed it away. 'Let's do this!' You know. 'Let's be confident, let's be happy'. Just go straight with it.John also mentioned a situation in which he appealed directly to the homeroom teacher for help with a troublesome student:John:And I just was like, 'Right, he's not listening to me'. So I just told the teacher, I was like 'Look, he's not doing what I told him to do. Can you have a word with him, please?' And she was like, 'Yeah. Of course'. Takes him aside. You know. Talks to him about something. I continue, then he comes back in and he's completely fine.The actions teachers took to deal with sources of negative emotion bore witness to a high degree of diversity; each teacher dealt with situations, often quite similar situations such as disruptive students, in very different ways. These strategies illustrate the extent to which the teacher's personality, preferences, and experiences come into play in the dynamic and very human environment of the classroom. While some themes, such as L1 use, were discernible, the diversity of solutions that the teachers offered was testament to the creativity that their profession demands.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-27">Discussion</hd> <p>The above analysis furnishes us with some generalisable themes on how this group of kindergarten ESL teachers uses emotion regulation in the classroom. It also provides abundant details about how individual teachers engage in emotion regulation as a process. Yet, while the commonalities represented by the themes are perhaps insightful in their own right, and the details of individual emotion regulation strategies can be rich and nuanced, the former, on the face of it, can seem arbitrary, and the latter to have little in common. I had hoped at the outset of the study to be able to provide a systematic answer to the question of how this group of teachers uses ERS in their work. A closer look at the data reveals, I believe, that such a systematic answer is indeed possible.</p> <p>It became apparent during my initial analysis of interview transcripts that, though teachers had divergent ways of evaluating, deliberating, and acting on emotional stimuli, yet precisely this process of evaluation, deliberation, and action remained uniform across teachers. I realised that the process I was observing contained, in each case, these basic steps, though it often took on various expressions in its particulars. I thus made a tentative sketch of a 4-part model developed inductively from transcript data and interview notes:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> '1. Situation (kid misbehaves)</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Evaluation (what kind of problem is it and how serious is it?)</item> <p></p> <item> 3. Deliberation (what strategy would be best to apply within the given situation and context?)</item> <p></p> <item> 4. Action (teacher acts)'</item> <p></p> <item> (personal notes, July 2<sups>nd</sups>, 2016)</item> </ulist> <p>In fact, four-step conceptual models of cognition are not rare. Indeed, the researcher interested in emotion regulation need look no further than Gross himself for a very similar conceptualisation. As discussed earlier, nested within Gross' larger process model of emotion regulation is the modal model, the concise, four-step formulation that attempts to describe the process by which ERS are put to use, comprising Situation, Appraisal, Attention and Response. Though not identical to my own inductive proposal, Gross' model was similar enough that it described quite well the process I had observed emerging from my own teachers' responses. This confirmed to me that ERS could indeed be described in terms of a succinct, consistent, and generalisable pattern. Gross, as the progenitor of the theory of emotion regulation that had given impetus to my study, provided me with a model that, in addition to being consistent with my own tentative observations, represented a fully developed and methodologically coherent means by which to orient the disparate data generated by my interview respondents. I will thus attempt to demonstrate that my research question – how do kindergarten ESL teachers in Japan use emotion regulation strategies in their work? – can be answered in a systematic and internally consistent way; namely, by the four phases of Gross' model.</p> <p>In a brief summary of the modal model, Gross ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref33">9</reflink>]) states: 'This sequence begins with a psychologically relevant situation, which is often external and hence physically verifiable'. For each of the teachers in my study, emotions were brought on by external stimuli. In Susan's case, these stimuli came in the form of student misbehaviour in the presence of their mothers. For Ray, this could take the form of a lack of assigned tasks, a sudden need to use Japanese, or a group of unenthusiastic students. Amy, like Susan, cited 'wild' student behaviour and the resulting lack of control as her primary stressors. John, too, mentioned students who 'don't listen', as well as unexpected situations and difficulty using students' L1. Each situation was, consistent with Gross' characterisation, 'external and physically verifiable'.</p> <p>The next phase in the model is 'attention', as the subject becomes aware of these external stimuli. This can take many forms, as attested to by Gross' terse treatment of this step of the process: 'This situation is attended to in various ways ... ' (Gross [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref34">9</reflink>]). The teachers described the moment they became aware of potential problems:Susan:They were getting, just too excited, and, like, one of them, like pushed another one ... Ray:... the kids were just, like, so, like, dead. ... There was just something off.Amy:So, I guess, yeah, about two weeks ago, all craziness went loose ... John:... we're in the middle of an English class, and a kid is, like, constantly coming up to me, coming up to me. I'm getting the kids to kind of sit back by their seats, and this one kid is just coming over to me, again and again and again ... In each case, teachers bring their attention to bear on the external stimuli that have triggered an emotional reaction. Their descriptions give us a window onto that process, and provide subtle hints of their attitudes towards it.</p> <p>The next stage is 'appraisal'. Gross writes that appraisals 'constitute the individual's assessment of – among other things – the situation's familiarity, valence, and value relevance' (Gross [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref35">9</reflink>]). There are many different ways to appraise or evaluate a potentially negative situation and its emotional consequences for the individual. Perhaps Ray did this most succinctly:Ray:Shit, I must really look bad right now.</p> <p>But each teacher had his or her own distinct method of and criteria for appraisal. Susan articulated a very clearly defined principle according to which she could evaluate a situation and then determine a proper course of action:Susan:If I were a parent, would I want this to happen? And to me, my answer to that is, 'No, I would not'.</p> <p>Amy, though she was able to articulate a mental appraisal, emphasised that her primary means of gauging the situation in the classroom was through her emotional rapport with the students:Amy:Um. So, yeah. So, I guess as far as, like, thought process goes, like, I am aware of when the stress is happening, I'm like, 'Wow, I'm pretty stressed right now'.... But there's like nothing I can do to talk myself out of the stress in a thinking way.... So, usually what just happens is, 'Ok, I'm going to move around, if this feels good I'm going to make them do gestures, or I'm going to do ... ' Like, change. Like, change the ... The atmosphere?... I have to change it up a little bit to see if that changes the feeling for them and for me, I guess.</p> <p>John was quite specific in describing what he called his 'reassessment' of a stressful situation:John:So, kind of ... Like, it was the fifth or sixth time he'd done it ... And I just kind of stopped and put him back, and I could feel myself, like, 'If he does this again, like ... ' ' ... I'm just going to explode at him. I can feel it'. And he comes up again. And I'm just like, [exhales]. Kind of just, like, inside of me, breathing out and, 'Ok'. Like, 'Just take him back and sit him down'. And I just was like, 'Right, he's not listening to me'.</p> <p>John then described his conscious decision to subdue his own emotions and refer the problem to the homeroom teacher:John:'Right. Let's reassess this situation and let's not keep it in my hands, where, you know, who knows what I'm going to do ... '</p> <p>The last phase of the model is 'response'. Gross says of this last phase that</p> <p>the emotional responses generated by appraisals are thought to involve changes in experiential, behavioral, and physiological response systems. It is important to keep in mind that these responses often change the situation that gave rise to the response in the first place. (Gross [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref36">9</reflink>])</p> <p>In other words, a response can be either internal, such as the conscious repression of negative emotions described by Ray and John, or external, such as the steps each teacher took to address the situations which gave rise to their negative emotional states. Susan, having decided from her appraisal that action was warranted, used L1 to discipline her students and then physically separated them. Ray, having repressed his frustration at students' perceived lack of enthusiasm, pressed forward with his lesson plan, determined to reflect later. Amy experimented with classroom management techniques such as point incentives or actively changed the activity to better suit the mood of the students. John sought the assistance of the homeroom teacher, who addressed the problem of the student who would not listen.</p> <p>In each case, the teachers, faced with (<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref37">1</reflink>) an external situation, (<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref38">2</reflink>) brought their attention to bear on it, (<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref39">3</reflink>) made an appraisal, and (<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref40">4</reflink>) determined a course of action which then altered the situation in favour of a desirable outcome. Though each situation and its associated emotions were distinct, as each classroom event will invariably be, yet all conform, in their fundamentals, to Gross' model. This has important implications, I believe, for teachers' practice and their understanding of their own practice as part of professional reflection.</p> <p>As an example, the model could assist teachers in reflecting critically on their own practice. In their reflection, teachers can correlate their responses to classroom events to the different phases of the model, breaking down the process into coherent phases and their analysable components, rather than conceiving of them as a nebulous and potentially 'hidden' process over which they have little control (or not scrutinising them at all). Teachers and their colleagues or supervisors could then reflect upon which discrete phase of the process led to problematic (or beneficial) outcomes in the classroom and identify ways to circumvent negative outcomes or actively cultivate positive ones.</p> <p>John's case is illustrative of the utility of such reflection. His story of emotion regulation in the classroom, in which he reflected on his emotional state and the potential outcomes of his reactions, provides anecdotal support for the role of reflection in emotion regulation. He also summarised the rationale underpinning his reaction.</p> <p>Cause, you know, an interaction where you're going in negatively will end negatively. An interaction where you're going in positively has a better chance of coming out positively.</p> <p>John's actions were not based on any systematic or methodological framework, but on a teacher's experience. If teachers were to view such situations not only through the lens of their experience, but also through the lens of a framework such as the modal model, it could provide still more clarity, and further opportunities to head off negative outcomes and encourage positive ones. In such cases, the use of a systematic model, buttressed by theory, yet simple enough to be deployed in demanding situations like John's, could make the likelihood of positive outcomes like the one in John's story all the more likely, and bolster teachers' confidence to cope with such situations.</p> <p>Granted, the modal model, like any schema of cognitive processes, is bound to have its limitations. In emphasising four steps, the model could, if misapplied, de-emphasise or obscure other affective aspects. It risks a certain degree of ambiguity – at precisely which phase of the model do certain events belong, and might some belong in more than one? It is, by necessity, somewhat arbitrary – why 4 steps and not 3, or 10? Surely the events in teachers' emotion regulation process could be made to conform to some other model. But these problems, real as they may be, do not diminish the model's utility as a means of shedding light on the crucial but too often obscure process of emotion regulation. The simplicity, rigour, versatility, and comprehensiveness that it affords ensure that it is a potentially powerful tool for any teachers looking to better understand the fundamentally important role of affect in their practice.</p> <hd id="AN0149596512-28">Conclusions</hd> <p>This study, informed by interviews conducted with four kindergarten ESL teachers at a single dispatch company in Japan, has sought to shed light on the ways kindergarten ESL teachers use emotion regulation strategies in their work. Findings revealed both a diversity in the emotions and strategies reported, as well as certain recognisable patterns within teachers' responses. Triggers for negative emotions were varied, ranging from boredom arising due to a lack of assigned tasks to frustration at having to deal with unexpected situations. However, disciplining rambunctious students, overcoming the language barrier, and self-consciousness during observations by students' parents or other teachers all emerged as themes in teachers' responses.</p> <p>Although responses allowed for a wide range of emotion regulation strategies and reflected diversity in the ways in which teachers conceived of and articulated these strategies, all teachers' responses could be shown to correspond to the four phases of Gross' modal model. This four-phase model, though necessarily broad-based and tentative, nonetheless serves as a highly valuable tool for conceptualising the subtle and often hidden process of emotion regulation. Further research could be conducted to refine this model and enhance its applicability to the unique environment of the classroom.</p> <p>Teaching is an emotional profession. ESL, which places unique demands upon teachers, and the particular challenges faced when teaching young learners, make for a singular set of emotional ups and downs. If job satisfaction among teachers, and thus teacher-student relationships and learning outcomes, are to be nominalised, and burnout and attrition to be brought to a minimum, the study of teachers' emotions and their place in the profession calls for urgent attention.</p> <p>The joy and fulfilment that these teachers speak of is very real – but so, too, is the fatigue and the ever-present stress. In the end, this is inherent in the work. 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Social Psychology of Education 7 : 379 – 98. doi: 10.1007/s11218-004-4229-y</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By Adam Littleton</p> <p>Reported by Author</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref2"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref6"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref27"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref29"></nolink> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Emotion Regulation Strategies of Kindergarten ESL Teachers in Japan: An Interview-Based Survey – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Littleton%2C+Adam%22">Littleton, Adam</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Language+Learning+Journal%22"><i>Language Learning Journal</i></searchLink>. 2021 49(2):203-218. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Routledge. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 530 Walnut Street Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-207-0050; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 16 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2021 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research – Name: Audience Label: Education Level Group: Audnce Data: <searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Early+Childhood+Education%22">Early Childhood Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Elementary+Education%22">Elementary Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Kindergarten%22">Kindergarten</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="EL" term="%22Primary+Education%22">Primary Education</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Self+Control%22">Self Control</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Language+Teachers%22">Language Teachers</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Second+Language+Learning%22">Second Language Learning</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Second+Language+Instruction%22">Second Language Instruction</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22English+%28Second+Language%29%22">English (Second Language)</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Kindergarten%22">Kindergarten</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Videoconferencing%22">Videoconferencing</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teacher+Attitudes%22">Teacher Attitudes</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Teaching+Methods%22">Teaching Methods</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Stress+Variables%22">Stress Variables</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Student+Behavior%22">Student Behavior</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Behavior+Problems%22">Behavior Problems</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Metacognition%22">Metacognition</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Parent+School+Relationship%22">Parent School Relationship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Physical+Activities%22">Physical Activities</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Practices%22">Educational Practices</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Individual+Differences%22">Individual Differences</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Classroom+Techniques%22">Classroom Techniques</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Geographic Terms Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Japan%22">Japan</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1080/09571736.2018.1542020 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0957-1736 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: This study explored how kindergarten ESL teachers in Japan make use of emotion regulation strategies, as proposed by Gross, in their work. Four teachers at a single dispatch company in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture were interviewed via Skype about the emotion regulation strategies they used in the workplace. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded, with special attention given to the cognitive processes involved in emotion regulation. Analysis revealed prominent themes common among teachers, as well as individual variation, though all teachers employed a process corresponding to Gross' modal model. Implications for practitioners and suggestions for further research follow. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2021 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1292271 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1080/09571736.2018.1542020 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 16 StartPage: 203 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Self Control Type: general – SubjectFull: Language Teachers Type: general – SubjectFull: Second Language Learning Type: general – SubjectFull: Second Language Instruction Type: general – SubjectFull: English (Second Language) Type: general – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries Type: general – SubjectFull: Kindergarten Type: general – SubjectFull: Videoconferencing Type: general – SubjectFull: Teacher Attitudes Type: general – SubjectFull: Teaching Methods Type: general – SubjectFull: Stress Variables Type: general – SubjectFull: Student Behavior Type: general – SubjectFull: Behavior Problems Type: general – SubjectFull: Metacognition Type: general – SubjectFull: Parent School Relationship Type: general – SubjectFull: Physical Activities Type: general – SubjectFull: Educational Practices Type: general – SubjectFull: Individual Differences Type: general – SubjectFull: Classroom Techniques Type: general – SubjectFull: Japan Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Emotion Regulation Strategies of Kindergarten ESL Teachers in Japan: An Interview-Based Survey Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Littleton, Adam IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2021 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0957-1736 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 49 – Type: issue Value: 2 Titles: – TitleFull: Language Learning Journal Type: main |
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