10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Learn to Acting: Emotional Labor of Student Teachers in Teaching Practicum in China
Yuqing Liu
Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, China, People's Republic of
Presenting Author: Liu, Yuqing
The purpose of this study is to investigate the emotional experience of student teachers in teaching practicum by means of qualitative research, to construct a theoretical model of student teachers' emotional labor during educational practicum by applying grounded theory, to clarify the motivation, process, influencing factors, and main effects of student teachers' emotional labor during educational practicum, to explore the significance of emotional labor for student teachers' career choices, and to put forward suggestions to promote the professional development of student teachers.
This study responds to four main questions:
(1) What are the motivations for student teachers’ emotional labor in teaching practicum?
(2) What are the manifestations and strategies of student teachers’ emotional labor in teaching practicum?
(3) What are the influencing factors of student teachers’ emotional labor in teaching practicum?
(4) How to enhance the professional development of student teachers in their emotional ability?
Objective
This study aims to constructs a theorical model, and provides a theoretical framework of student teachers in teaching practicum.
To propose suggestions for student teachers to use emotional labor and improve their emotional regulation ability;
To explore the emotional factors of student teachers’ sense of efficacy and promote their professional development.
Perspectives or theoretical framework
Emotional labor is a “third kind of labor” that is different from mental and physical labor, which requires one to induce or suppress feeling in order to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others. And it is defined by Hochschild as the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display. Teachers have frequent interpersonal interactions with students, colleagues, parents, etc., and need to manage their feelings in order to display emotions that are consistent with public expectations and the educational system.
In China, student teachers, as future teachers, are required to take part in a three-month teaching practicum before they can be certified as teachers. Student teachers learn how to be a teacher through teaching practicum, of which emotional labor is a significant part.
In the sociological perspective, the general mechanism of emotional labor tends to extend Hochschild's argument for emotional labor. Grandey argues that the general mechanism of emotional labor is a model that encompasses the situational cues, the emotional regulation process, and the long-term consequences, and it is one of the theoretical frameworks that is currently being widely used. This study combines Hochschild's classification of the characteristics of emotional laborers and Grandey's proposed framework of general mechanisms of emotional labor, with the overall framework consisting of three parts: motivation, process, and consequence.
In the motivation part, Grandey's proposed model of emotional labor in which the motivation of emotional labor is considered to be composed of many emotional events with various emotional rules, is the situational cues of emotional labor. This study believes that emotional adjustment is a dynamic process. According to Hochschild's classification, there are three types of teachers' emotions: the emotion of need, the emotion of feeling, and the emotion of performance. The motivation of emotional labor comes from the conflict between the three types of emotions.
This study divides the emotion regulation process into two parts: performance and strategy. In terms of the performance, Hochschild argues that there are two main ways of performing emotional labor: surface acting and deep acting. According to Grandey, the strategies were divided into antecedent-focused emotion regulation and response-focused emotion regulation according to the time of emotion occurrence.
In terms of consequence, the short-term effects were explored because the short duration of the teaching practicum made it difficult to obtain long-term consequence.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedMethodology or Methods
The empirical material reported on here is drawn from a study into student teachers in China, engaged 8 student teachers in formal and informal interviews and included field observation. The present article represents this empirical material, comprising interviews undertaken in a school in east China. Specifically, the interest was in emotional experience of student teachers.
The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 2 hours. The objectives of each interview were to explore the emotional labor of student teachers, whether as articulated by the student teachers themselves or as seen by another.
The author, a former student teacher, has participated in the whole process of teaching practicum and conducted observation as an insider. In the teaching practicum, the student teachers’ behavior in interacting with different subjects such as teachers and students was observed. In terms of research ethics, the researcher ensured that all subjects were aware of the intention and form of the study, and that the process of carrying out and recording was carried out in which the subjects were always aware of the researcher’s working methods.
Meanwhile, the lesson is an important context for the emotional labor of the student teachers, and it was difficult for them to describe in detail the behavior and body language verbally in the interviews. Therefore, this study collected lessons’ videos recorded by student teachers.
Research Instruments or Sources Used
Drawing on in-depth interviews, this study obtained first-hand information. Based on grounded theory, NVivo 12 was used to analyzed the empirical material in the sequence of Opening coding, Axial coding and Selective coding. Pre-interviews were first conducted with two student teachers, and the outline of the interviews was further refined in accordance with the interviews. Then, a further seven student teachers were interviewed, and at the end of coding, two more student teachers were interviewed to verify theoretical saturation.
For field observation and video analysis, an observation outline was developed, which was categorized into five sections: teacher discourse, facial expressions, body languages, student feedback, and observer conjecture.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsConclusion 1 (in response to question 1):
The motivation is the fluctuation caused by the imbalance of the emotion of need, feeling, and performance. The discrepancy between the emotion of feeling and need is emotional dissonance, which is caused by the gap between inside and outside; the discrepancy between the emotion of feeling and performance is emotional disguise, which is teaching strategy; and the discrepancy between the emotion of performance and need is emotional deviation, which is displaying emotions that do not meet the requirements.
Conclusion 2 (in response to question 2):
The performance of student teachers’ emotional labor is surface acting, deep acting, and natural behaviors. The strategies of emotional labor of student teachers were able to be consistent with the motivations. The strategies were categorized into antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies and response-focused emotion regulation. Antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategy is a pre-judgement of the situation, and is a reflection of the accumulation of experience by the student teachers; Response-focused emotion regulation strategy is a common way of reacting promptly to emotional fluctuations.
Conclusion 3 (in response to questions 3 and 4):
The influencing factors of student teachers emotional labor mainly include individual, organizational, and socio-cultural factors. Fei Xiaotong believes that the micro network relationship between people is full of egoistic spirit of “self” as the center of “the differential mode of association”, like a stone dropped into the water to launch the ripples, the more you push the thinner. The Chinese context emphasizes that society is a flat network of relationships. Student teachers are learning how to deal with the “relationships” in the educational field, and how to play the “teacher's role” as defined by social norms. Student teachers’ emotional labor is shaped by their exploration of relationships, in which they exercise subjectivity to create and grasp relationships.
ReferencesHochschild A R.. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling[M]. Berkely, CA: University of California Press,1983:6-7.
Grandey A A.. Emotion regulation in the workplace: a new way to conceptualize emotional labor.[J]. Journal of occupational health psychology, 2000, 5(1) : 95-110.
Grandey A A. & Melloy R C.. The state of the heart: Emotional labor as emotion regulation reviewed and revised.[J]. Journal of occupational health psychology, 2017, 22(3) : 407-422.
Fei Xiaotong. Native soil, The Foundations of Chinese Society [M]. Beijing: Peking University Press,2016:37-45.
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Pre-service Teachers' Reflections in Practice Placement: Balancing Pedagogy and Subject Didactic
Silje Hølland, Cecilie Pedersen Dalland, Dragana Surkalovic, Øyvind Thormodsæter
OsloMet, Norway
Presenting Author: Hølland, Silje;
Dalland, Cecilie Pedersen
This study examines the characteristics of pre-service teachers’ (PST) reflection logs throughout practice placement (PP) in year one and four of their initial teacher education. More specifically, we investigate the themes, topics, knowledge, and skills that PST focus on in their logs, and what language is used to describe these elements. The reflection logs are written at the end of each week of PP and contain PST’s reflections on their own development during that week, as well as areas to focus on during the following week(s). The focus points for reflection are given by the PST’s practice teacher, and are addressed in guidance sessions during PP.
The following research questions guide our investigation.
1) What language do pre-service teachers use to reflect over learning and development in practice placement?
2) What themes, topics, knowledge and skills do pre-service teachers focus on in their reflection logs?
- To what extent are general pedagogy and subject didactics represented in the reflections? What is the ratio between the two?
- To what extent do the logs bridge theory and practice? How is the campus-based learning incorporated in the practice placement reflections?
3) What are the similarities and differences between reflections at years one and four?
The Norwegian initial teacher education system for primary and lower secondary teacher education (compulsive education) promotes a holistic teaching and learning approach. This comprehensive system is structured into two distinct five-year master's programs, preparing teachers for either grades 1-7 (pupils’ ages 6-12) or grades 5-10 (pupils’ ages 10-16). Both study programs encompass a blend of subject knowledge, pedagogical skills, subject didactics, research literacy, and professional ethics. Our study focusses on the grade 5-10 training program. Teachers in this program are typically subject specialists, as the complexity of subjects increases at these grades. They are expected to possess a deeper understanding of a smaller selection of subjects (Skagen & Elstad, 2023).
An integral part of these programs is in-school PP under the supervision of experienced practice teachers, providing PSTs with practical experience (110 days divided into 5-6 weeks per year in the first 4 years of studies). The aim of such integration is to link in-school PP and campus-based learning, bridging the gap between theory and practice (Allen & Wright, 2014). PSTs write reflective logs during their practice placement, documenting their experiences, reflections and learning process. These logs, used by practice teachers for feedback, are also potential research resources. They provide insights into individual PSTs' growth, challenges, teaching methods, and the application of theoretical knowledge. Comparing logs across PSTs can identify patterns and differences in experiences and reflections and the development of their teacher identity and professional competencies.
The theoretical framework for analysing PST logs includes Teacher Cognition, Teacher Professional Knowledge, and Aristotle's phronesis, techne, and episteme:
- Teacher cognition explores the cognitive aspects of teaching, focusing on how teachers’ thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions shape their classroom actions (Borg, 2003).
- Teacher Professional Knowledge encompasses the essential knowledge for effective teaching, including content, pedagogical, and pedagogical content knowledge (Gess-Newsome, 2015).
- Aristotle’s phronesis (practical wisdom) guides moral and ethical action, techne relates to craft or skill, and episteme signifies evidence-based scientific knowledge. In teacher education, episteme represents the theoretical and factual knowledge acquired by PST (Lea, 2021).
The reflective logs provide a rich source of data for exploring these dimensions. This comprehensive approach allows for a deep understanding of the processes involved in becoming a teacher. The reflective logs can reveal how PSTs are applying their professional knowledge in real-world teaching situations, and how this knowledge evolves over time.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study is a two-pronged document analysis of PST reflection logs consisting of a content analysis and a collocation analysis.
Participants and data sets
The participants are PSTs in years one and four of their five-year teacher training. The first-year PSTs (estimated N=20) all have English as a second language as their subject, while the fourth-year PSTs (estimated N=50) have 14 different subjects. In addition, all PSTs have pedagogy as a subject. Each PST writes one reflection log per week, giving an estimated data set of up to 800 logs (5 logs per PST in first year and 6 in fourth).
Analytical approaches
First, we conduct a collocation analysis where various word combinations are extracted from the reflection logs, including clusters, N-grams and collocations based on Mutual Information, t-score and Log-Likelihood, using the AntConc software (Anthony, n.d.). The purpose of this analysis is to identify recurring, similar formulations in the texts. Combining measures that include statistical significance (Log-Likelihood and t-score) and effect size (MI-score) ensures that we extract both frequent word combinations and rarer ones that may nevertheless be strong predictors of central text features.
Second, the collocation analysis is used as a starting point for a content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004) which allows us to study the meanings of a text and its relation to the context in which it is written (Gheyle & Jacobs, 2017). The purpose is to identify the themes, topics, knowledge, and skills that are prominent in the logs. The unit of analysis is the entire log, where words/word clusters are thematised and categorised according to their focus area (pedagogy, subject, subject didactics etc.). Our content analysis is mainly qualitative, seeking to identify what the PSTs focus on and how they relate this to their professional development in the context of PP. Thus, this two-pronged approach allows for a seamless combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses.
Anonymity/ethics
The study complies with data protection legislation as assessed by the Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research. No sensitive data is gathered, and the texts are anonymised after collection. References to the material and the analysis of the data is conducted without referencing any identifiable informant information.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThis is a planned study, as data collection is carried out March- April 2024, thus the following is a description of expected outcomes.
The combination of the content analysis and collocation analysis will give us insight into the characteristics and thematic content of the texts. Furthermore, they will provide opportunities to understand the context of PP. First, we expect to be able to pinpoint if and how the logs’ content balances between pedagogy and subject didactics, i.e., do the PST focus on both pedagogical skills such as classroom management, teacher-student relationship, planning etc, and subject didactics such as choice of teaching materials, subject content, learning aims, subject-specific assessment etc. As both pedagogy and subject didactics are equally central in the study program, the expectation is that they will feature equally in PP reflections. At the same time, research shows (Amdal & Willbergh, 2020) that newly-educated teachers find the non-subject related aspects of the profession, such as classroom management and teacher-student relationships, more challenging, which would suggest that they would take up more space in their PP reflections.
Second, the analysis will give insight into how PSTs and their practice teachers connect theory (campus curriculum) and practice. These findings will further our understanding as teacher educators of the link between campus and school learning arenas. Such connections are vital for the PSTs professional development and learning during their teacher education (Allen & Wright, 2014). Fragmentation and lack of coherence across sites of learning and forms of knowledge has long been pointed out in research on teacher education in Norway (Hammerness, 2006; Hermansen, 2020). Together these findings will serve to give valuable knowledge about how to improve coherence in teacher education with a focus on a specific tool used in PP, the reflection log.
ReferencesAllen, J. M., & Wright, S. E. (2014). Integrating theory and practice in the pre-service teacher education practicum. Teachers and teaching, 20(2), 136-151. https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2013.848568
Amdal, I. I., & Willbergh, I. (2020). Det produktive praksissjokket: Nyutdannede læreres fortellinger om lærer-elev-forholdet i overgangen fra lærerutdanning til lærerarbeid [The productive transition into teaching: Novice teachers’ narratives of the teacher-pupil relationship]. Acta Didactica Norden, 14(3). https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.8421
Anthony, L. (n.d.). AntConc software. https://www.laurenceanthony.net/software/antconc/
Borg, S. (2003). Teacher cognition in language teaching: A review of research on what language teachers think, know, believe, and do. Language teaching, 36(2), 81-109. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444803001903
Gess-Newsome, J. (2015). A model of teacher professional knowledge and skill including PCK: Results of the thinking from the PCK summit. In A. Berry, P. Friedrichsen, & J. Loughran (Eds.), Re-examining pedagogical content knowledge in science education (pp. 28-42). Routledge Press.
Gheyle, N., & Jacobs, T. (2017). Content Analysis: a short overview. Internal research note, 10. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33689.31841
Hammerness, K. (2006). From coherence in theory to coherence in practice. Teachers College Record, 108(7), 1241-1265. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00692.x
Hermansen, H. (2020). Knowledge discourses and coherence in professional education. Professions and Professionalism, 10(2), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.3713
Krippendorff, K. (2019). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071878781
Lea, K. (2021). Hva må en kyndig lærer kunne? [What makes a competent teacher?] In L. T. Hilt & L. P. S. Torjussen (Eds.), Grunnspørsmål i pedagogikken [Core issues in pedagogy]. (1. utgave. ed., pp. 319-341). Fagbokforlaget.
Skagen, K., & Elstad, E. (2023). Teacher Education in Norway. In E. Elstad (Ed.), Teacher Education in the Nordic Region: Challenges and Opportunities (pp. 175-193). Springer International Publishing Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-26051-3
10. Teacher Education Research
Paper
Thinking with a Bookcase – Diffracting Student Teachers’ Reflections
Alexandra Nordström1, Charlotta Hilli2, Jenny Byman&Renlund1, Sofia Jusslin2, Heidi Höglund2, Katrina Åkerholm2
1University of Helsinki, Finland; 2Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Presenting Author: Nordström, Alexandra
In this study, we think with theory and adopt a diffractive lens in engaging with student teachers' reflections. The focus is on exploring glowing moments in student teachers' reflective texts, recognising becoming as an ongoing, dynamic process that goes beyond static definition (Massumi, 1992; Rubin, 2022). By asking what might be produced if student teachers embrace the material dimension, particularly a bookcase and children's literature, the research seeks to reimagine teacher education as relational, material, and affective. The following questions took shape during the study: What can thinking-with diffraction and student teachers’ reflections on the bookcase produce and enable in teacher education? What difference did the literature make for the students’ teacher-becoming?
The empirical material for this study comprises reflections from early childhood education student teachers enrolled in the blended course "Children’s Literature and Drama" at a university in Finland. We approach the empirical material as diffractive engagements in practice (Murris, 2021) presented as companions for thinking, seeing, and feeling with rather than as representational examples (Vintimilla et al., 2021). The study employs non-representational and postqualitative methodologies to explore the transformative potential of reflections and relationality in teacher training. By approaching reflections diffractively, we discuss the impact of the course on students' reflective practices and explore speculative avenues such as diffractive didactics in teacher education.
The study delves into what might be produced when student teachers reflect on literature, including the theoretical course literature and children’s literature, and practice during a course. We became intrigued by how student teachers engaged with an assignment analysing children's books in the early childhood education centres where they worked. These reflections were part of a blended course designed to accommodate students working full or part-time as early childhood education teachers. As the student teachers interacted with the bookcase, they diffracted their previous professional experiences, highlighting elements in the course that influenced their becoming as teachers, such as literature and spaces for reading.
The inquiry began with a focus on the empirical material—student course reflections. We identified events that made a difference by actively prompting student teachers to consider changes in their practice. Often rooted in humanist assumptions, reflections are commonplace in teacher education, offering students opportunities to engage with personal and professional experiences. However, we argue that such reflections frequently neglect or underestimate the impact of material-discursive dimensions.
Further, this research calls for re-evaluating teacher education practices by incorporating diffractive perspectives and emphasising the material-discursive dimensions that significantly influence the transformative learning experiences of student teachers. The study encourages educators to consider the broader implications of diffractive didactics and to explore the potential of embracing material relations and entanglements in teacher education alongside human relations.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study adopts a post-qualitative and non-representational approach, aligning with the principles of thinking-with research materials, theories, and collaborative discussions to reimagine teacher education (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Murris, 2021; Vannini, 2015). Thinking with the concept of diffraction, we study the transformative potential of student teachers' reflections. Here, diffraction allows us to pay attention to delicate details and differences that matter rather than focusing on coding, categorising, or comparing (Jackson & Mazzei, 2013; Murris & Bozalek, 2019).
Diffraction, an optical metaphor introduced by Donna Haraway and developed by Karen Barad (Geerts, 2019), serves as the theoretical framework. For Haraway, diffraction is about making a (material) difference in the world by paying attention to how differences and power materialize. Barad further situated the researcher and research materials in an intimate co-existence by suggesting they are created through one another. To Geerts (2019) diffraction offers ways to reimagine higher education without falling back on either nostalgic humanist assumptions that exclude Otherness and ignore the material realities of students or neoliberal discourses that instrumentalise education and make students actors on a global market, profit-focused, ready to self-develop and forever deemed to prove their worth.
Similarly, Taylor (2019) sees diffraction as respecting the relationality of humans and non-humans by offering a holistic approach to the purpose of higher education, fostering creative and meaningful engagements with the knowledge that makes a difference to students. Diffraction invites materialities into the discussion about the purpose of higher education, specifically teacher education. In that sense, diffraction is an approach that constantly moves between ontological, epistemological, and ethico-political implications of humans and non-humans co-existing side by side and together, creating differences that matter (Geerts, 2019).
We carefully read the reflective texts multiple times, attending to words, ideas, and thoughts that 'glow' (MacLure, 2013). We also embraced the notion that our ideas about and orientations towards research were inevitably present alongside—and with—us in this process. The non-representational methodology creates opportunities to encounter empirical material as dynamic, fragmented and entangled in unexpected and remarkable ways (Barad, 2007; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010). By thinking through and engaging with glowing moments, the focus is on the relational and material becoming rather than separate pieces of data (Sheridan et al., 2020).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn this study of students' reflections, we embraced a diffractive lens to understand the dynamic, ongoing process of becoming teachers. We aim to reimagine teacher education as a relational, material, and affective endeavour, focusing on the glowing moments in reflective texts and the influence of literature on the teacher-becoming process.
The diffractive engagements and glowing moments discussed in the study offer a potentially novel perspective for thinking, seeing, and feeling with the empirical material rather than relying on representational and prescriptive examples. This shift in perspective allowed us to explore the transformative potential of reflections and delve into speculative realms, contemplating diffractive didactics in teacher education.
The study's empirical material, drawn from reflections of early childhood education student teachers, provides insights into the impact of literature on their development as teachers. Here, we emphasise the empirical material's dynamic, fragmented, performative, and entangled nature (Vannini,2015). The assignment involving the analysis of children's books in early childhood education became a diffractive lens through which students could reconsider their previous professional experiences and imagine new ways of reading-with the children rather than to the children. For example, the student teachers sometimes created new relational and material teaching practices involving book-talks, drama (puppets, role-playing, props, scenery) and dramatic effects (sounds, visual prompts, music) connected to the children’s embodied sensations and affects. The bookcase assignment inspired the students to reimagine the spaces for reading-with children and they considered different places indoors (floors, tents, sleeping bags) and outdoors (hammocks, the forest) and unscheduled reading-with sessions that followed the children’s sense of time and spatial choices.
By attending to delicate details and differences that matter, the study encourages educators to consider the creative and transformative potential of reflective practices. Through the student teachers' reflections, the bookcase, literature, children, and teachers become reimagined differently through multiple material-discursive entwinements.
ReferencesBarad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke university Press.
Geerts, E. (2019). Re-vitalizing the American feminist-philosophical classroom: Transformative academic experimentations with diffractive pedagogies. Posthumanism and higher education: Reimagining pedagogy, practice and research, 123-140.
Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International journal of qualitative studies in education, 23(5), 525-542.
Jackson, A. & Mazzei, L. (2013). Plugging one text into another: Thinking with theory in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry 19(4): 261–271.
MacLure, M. (2013). The wonder of data. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 13(4), 228-232.
Massumi, B. (1992). A User's Guide To Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Murris, K. (ed.) (2021). Navigating the Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Terrain across Disciplines: An Introductory Guide. New York: Routledge. 2021.
Murris, K. & Bozalek, V. (2019). Diffracting diffractive readings of texts as methodology: Some propositions. Educational Philosophy and Theory 51(14): 1504–1517.
Rubin, J. C. (2022). “We felt that electricity”: writing-as-becoming in a high school writing class. Literacy, https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12306.
Sheridan, M. P., Lemieux, A., Do Nascimento, A., & Arnseth, H. C. (2020). Intra‐active entanglements: What posthuman and new materialist frameworks can offer the learning sciences. British journal of educational technology, 51(4), 1277-1291.
Taylor, C. A. (2019). Diffracting the curriculum: Putting “new” material feminism to work to reconfigure knowledge-making practices in undergraduate higher education. In Theory and method in higher education research (pp. 37-52). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Vannini, P. (Ed.). (2015). Non-representational methodologies: Re-envisioning research. Routledge.
Vintimilla, CD, Pacini-Ketchabaw, V., & Land, N. (2021). Manifesting living knowledges: A pedagogists’ working manifesto. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy: 1–10. Epub ahead of print. https://doi.org/10.1080/15505170.2021.1955051.
|
