Conference Agenda

Teaching in higher education is not only a cognitive and pedagogical process, but also an emotionally demanding activity for teachers. Teaching involves continuous interaction with students, pedagogical decision-making, and responsibility for supporting learning in often complex and uncertain situations. These demands give rise to a range of emotional experiences that are integral to teaching practice. Among these emotions, anxiety is closely linked to stress and represents one of its key negative manifestations (Kyriacou, 2001). Previous research has shown that university teachers experience relatively high levels of stress and anxiety compared to many other professional groups (Kinman et al., 2006). Despite this, anxiety has received limited empirical attention in research on higher education teaching. Some research indicates that teaching strategies, particularly those used in evaluation situations, are associated with higher anxiety among academics (Houlihan et al., 2009). However, there is still a lack of understanding of how teachers’ everyday teaching processes and pedagogical practices are related to anxiety in higher education teaching. Addressing this gap is essential for developing pedagogical practices that support both high-quality teaching and teachers’ emotional well-being.

In the present study, pedagogical practices are investigated through the approaches to teaching framework, which conceptualises teaching as a combination of teachers’ intentions and strategies (Trigwell & Prosser, 2004). Within this framework, teaching has traditionally been described in terms of learning-focused and content-focused orientations. Recent research has operationalised these orientations into four distinct but interrelated dimensions of teaching approaches: interactive, transmissive, organised, and unreflective (Parpala & Postareff, 2021; Postareff et al., 2024).

The interactive approach emphasises dialogue, discussion, and the active engagement of students in constructing understanding. The transmissive approach focuses on the clear presentation and delivery of content, with the teacher positioned as the primary source of knowledge. The organised approach highlights careful planning, systematic preparation, and structured teaching. In contrast, the unreflective approach reflects limited pedagogical awareness, including difficulties in understanding how students learn and how teaching can support learning (Postareff et al., 2024).

However, these four dimensions do not fully capture how teachers actively support students’ deep approach to learning, such as helping students integrate ideas, link new knowledge to prior understanding, and use evidence in reasoning (see Entwistle, 2009; Uiboleht, 2019). To address this gap, the present study introduces a fifth dimension, the Constructive approach to teaching, which captures teachers’ intentional practices aimed at supporting students’ deep learning processes. This dimension aligns with constructivist learning theory and extends earlier operationalisations of learning-focused teaching.

Previous research has demonstrated that learning-focused teaching approaches are associated with more positive emotions, higher self-efficacy, and lower levels of burnout and stress among teachers (Chen, 2019; Postareff & Lindblom-Ylänne, 2011; Virtanen & Parpala, 2023). Understanding further how different pedagogical processes relate to anxiety is important, as anxiety may undermine teachers’ concentration, confidence, and long-term well-being.

The objective of the present study is therefore to examine how higher education teachers’ teaching is related to teaching-related anxiety. The study addresses the following research question: How are different teaching approaches (interactive, transmissive, organised, unreflective, and constructive) related to teachers’ anxiety in higher education teaching? By linking pedagogical processes with anxiety, the study aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of teacher well-being in HE and to inform pedagogical development practices that support both effective teaching and teacher well-being.

In recent years, anxiety and distress among academic staff regarding Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) have become increasingly visible, reflecting the detrimental effects of these evaluations on lecturers’ quality of life and their central role within contemporary regimes of institutional pressure in higher education. Empirical research demonstrates that anonymous student comments significantly increase workplace stress and negatively affect well-being, with early-career academics being particularly vulnerable (Lakeman et al., 2022). At the same time, systematic reviews show that SETs are deeply shaped by sexist, racist, and other prejudicial biases that disproportionately disadvantage women and minoritized instructors (Adams et al., 2021; Deo, 2015; Gatwiri et al., 2021; Heffernan, 2022). Despite this growing body of literature, relatively little research situates these harms within the broader structural transformations associated with neoliberalization in higher education or examines their implications for academic subjectivity.

This study addresses this gap by examining how Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) function as mechanisms of subject formation within the neoliberal academy. Drawing on the authors’ personal narratives, the study employs academic autoethnography (Ellis, 2004; Adams et al., 2015) to reflect on their experiences as lecturers in an Israeli higher education institution. This approach enables a critical examination of how neoliberal organizational shifts are lived, felt, and internalized, foregrounding the affective and embodied dimensions of evaluation regimes. The analysis is informed by scholarship on neoliberalization processes in higher education, characterized by the expansion of audit culture and measurement regimes that increasingly shape institutional ethos, organizational practices, and lecturers’ everyday working conditions (Boring et al., 2016; Hou et al., 2017; López-Castellano, 2024; Mickey et al., 2022). Within this context, SETs operate not only as tools for assessing teaching quality but also as managerial instruments that regulate conduct, distribute vulnerability, and recalibrate professional worth. Qualitative research has conceptualized SETs as a “game” that lecturers must strategically navigate, embedding them within regimes of surveillance, judgment, and anticipatory self-monitoring (Crimmins et al., 2024).

These processes are theorized through the concept of affective subjectivation (Crimmins et al., 2024; Valero et al., 2019), understood as a form of neoliberal governmentality through which academics internalize standards of productivity, performativity, and emotional regulation. Under these conditions, lecturers are compelled to perform the figure of the omnipotent, ever-productive academic subject, often at significant personal and professional cost. The authors’ autoethnographic narratives foreground these costs, illuminating how SETs shape pedagogical practices as well as self-perception, affective life, and intellectual labor.

Situated within the Israeli higher education context, the study contributes a qualitative, reflexive perspective to existing debates on evaluation, inequality, and neoliberal governance in academia. By centering lived experience and affective labor, it offers a critical rethinking of SETs as technologies that do more than measure teaching and actively shape what it feels like and what it means to be a “good” academic teacher under neoliberal conditions.

This presentation is based on broader doctoral dissertation research (Pekkarinen, 2024) that examined university teachers’ perceptions and experiences of being and developing as university teachers, and the conditions that support this development. Within this research, particular attention was given to the role of emotions and reflection, including social reflection, and their role in developing as a university teacher and in experiencing pedagogical competency. In addition, the research included exploring pedagogical training courses and educational development projects as contexts for supporting teachers’ professional growth. In this paper presentation, I will focus on the findings related to emotions, reflection, and social reflection, and on how these findings can be utilized in teacher development in practice.

In the study, emotions are examined through the Control‑Value Theory (CVT) of achievement emotions, which explains how teachers’ appraisals of control and value shape the emotions they experience in their daily teaching work. CVT conceptualizes achievement emotions as emotions related to an activity or its outcomes when evaluated against a standard of success. (Pekrun, Frenzel, Goetz, & Perry, 2007.) Teaching can be understood as a goal‑oriented activity, and teachers may therefore experience different emotions depending on how controllable and meaningful they perceive their teaching to be. In the doctoral dissertation, CVT was used as a starting point for studying individually experienced emotions. However, it was also recognized that emotions can be shared and socially examined, but they were not defined as collective (Salmela, 2012) or group-based emotions (Kessler & Hollbach, 2005; Smith & Mackie, 2016).

Reflection is seen as a cognitive, emotional, and social process through which university teachers interpret and evaluate their teaching experiences and their actions as teachers. Reflection helps teachers connect experience with understanding, link theory with practice, and understand emotionally charged situations they encounter in teaching (Schön, 1983; Boud, Keogh & Walker, 1985). In addition to individual reflection, the study emphasizes the importance of social reflection, which is understood as reflection with colleagues and peers. Social reflection involves sharing experiences, discussing interpretations, and constructing meaning together in dialogue, and has been shown to support professional learning, the development of teacher identity, and the interpretation of emotions related to teaching also in previous research (Mezirow, 2000; Roxå & Mårtensson, 2009; Mälkki, 2011). Individual reflection allows teachers to express and examine their own experiences, while social reflection provides opportunities to examine their own experiences against those of others.

In recent years, the diversity of the student population in higher education settings has increased and is becoming widely recognized. Social surveys indicate that student bodies at German universities are becoming increasingly diverse (Kroher et al., 2023; Middendorf et al., 2017). According to these surveys, approximately 24% of students have disabilities, around 12% have caregiving responsibilities, 17% have a migrant background, and about 15% are international students. This development affects the entire European higher education (HE) landscape, as reflected within the EU educational policy context: Social and societal challenges must be addressed by “ensuring that higher education is inclusive, open to talent from all backgrounds [...]” (EU agenda for HE, 2017).

The concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has been identified as a promising approach to addressing the diverse requirements and learning needs of students in HE (Cumming & Rose, 2022; Reardon et al., 2021; Schütt & Peschke, 2024). UDL originates from the universal design movement of the 1970s, which initially focused on accessibility in architecture. The goal was to design buildings and environments that are usable by all people in the long term, without the need for special adaptations for specific groups (Fisseler & Markmann, 2012). These universal principles have since been transferred to education, where they aim to ensure access to learning processes for all students despite individual differences. By reducing barriers to learning, UDL benefits all learners (Fisseler & Markmann, 2012).

The overarching aim of UDL is to design teaching and learning environments to be inclusive from the outset, thereby achieving the best possible fit for a diverse student population. At the same time, this proactive approach reduces the need for individual accommodations such as disadvantage compensation (Fornauf & Dangora Erickson, 2020; Peschke & Schütt, 2024). Learner agency plays a central role within this framework. UDL is commonly operationalized through three core principles: (1) designing multiple means of engagement, (2) designing multiple means of representation, and (3) designing multiple means of action and expression (CAST, 2024).

In Germany, experience with UDL in higher education remains limited. To date, its application has largely been confined to educational studies and teacher education at selected universities (Bartz et al., 2018; Schütt & Degenhardt, 2020). Against this backdrop, the project “UD[L]ehre: More Universal Design for Learning in Teaching”, funded by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education Teaching (Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre), aims to strengthen teaching at the University of Hamburg. The project actively supports lecturers from all disciplines in designing courses based on UDL principles in order to reduce barriers. To this end, information and advisory services are being developed, and financial resources are provided for the implementation of concrete teaching concepts. Through collaboration with various institutional stakeholders and lecturers, the project seeks to establish UDL at the University of Hamburg on a long-term basis. A key foundation for this endeavor is the systematic review and synthesis of theoretical and empirical literature on UDL, which serves to inform and support evidence-based practical implementation.