The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

440 / 2020-02-29 14:36:23

“Huddle together to get warm”: EFL teachers’ emotions and emotional labour in assessment

emotion,emotion labour,assessment practice,high school EFL teacher

Foreign Language Teacher Development > Foreign Language Teacher Development

Teachers’ daily professional work is characterized by its emotion-laden nature. Assessment, a common and crucial task embedded in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers’ professional work, also abounds with emotions and emotion labour. While the emotion-laden nature of teaching has been well-established, limited attention from both research and practice of teacher emotion has been focused on assessment, a critical component of educational success. To address this gap, this multiple case study explores teachers’ emotions and emotion labour in assessment through semi-structured interviews with three high school EFL teachers in China, who are held accountable for preparing students for Gaokao (i.e., the nationwide college entrance examination). Findings show that high school EFL teachers have experienced a wide range of discrete or mixed emotions, including positive, neutral, and negative ones. These emotions were evoked in varied assessment settings such as grading, assessment interpretation, and assessment communication. Findings also suggest that EFL teachers regulate their own emotions by employing varying strategies, ranging from regulation to resilience ones, all serving for managing emotions of themselves or others. A range of factors are found to have exerted differentiated influences on these emotions and emotion labour, including macro-contextual factors (e.g., national assessment system), meso-contextual factors (e.g., school assessment system), micro-contextual factors (e.g., students’ engagement with assessment), and personal factors (e.g., teacher personality). This paper concludes with implications for scholarship on teacher emotions and assessment, teachers’ emotional well-being, and teacher assessment literacy development.