Teacher’s Affect 1

Running Head: TEACHER’S AFFECT

Teachers’ Affect: Effects

By

Suzanne Boudreau

Submitted to Somtawin Witaedsuksa Huaymongkhon School

While conducting research projects in the past, ethical approval

was obtained for the research topic and all participants signed letters

of informed consent. These steps were not available, so I chose to

do a literature review, followed by recommendations for the future.

A great deal of time and effort is invested trying to ensure

teachers are following the curriculum laid out by a school. Lesson

plans are written, notes are made regarding the response of

students, and tests are given to ensure the material was learned.

The effect a teacher’s affect and class management style has on their

classroom is something that isn’t recorded or accounted for in official

records. It is the contention of this author that teacher affect has

more than a transitory influence upon a class and deserves a

prominent place within the professional development plan of every

school.

Children spend many of their waking hours in the company of

their teachers. Teachers spend those hours actively trying to transfer

their knowledge to their young wards. Even without an intention to

make it so, many researchers point to the important influence a

teacher’s emotions have on students during the learning process.

The effect of negative deactivating emotions from teachers was

found by Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, and Perry (2002) to have a negative toll

in the classroom, but positive activating emotions had a positive

effect on student learning. Hopelessness and boredom are both

considered negative deactivating emotions, while positive activating

emotions include joy, hope, and pride. The effect is so pronounced;

many researchers label the emotions of a teacher as contagious to

their students (Becker et al., 2014). The strongest transfer effect

comes from the “emotion of joy, followed by anger, and then anxiety

to a lesser degree” (Rodrigo-Ruiz, 2016, p. 74). While examining the

results obtained in different studies, Sutton and Wheatley (2003)

came to the conclusion that students could develop the harmful

emotions of guilt, anguish, shame, and inferiority as a result of

teachers yelling.
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Morris et al. (2013) studied the effects of preschool teachers’

emotions and found them to directly influence the emotional

competence of their students and their emotional understanding.

They proposed that “early childhood teachers act as emotion

socialization agents for the children in their care by modelling

emotions, responding either supportively or punitively to children’s

expressions of emotions, and engaging in direct instruction regarding

emotional experience” (Morris et al., 2013, p.979). These three

influences on emotional skills are labelled modelling, contingent

responding, and direct teaching. Modelling refers to an adults’

emotional expression and how it implicitly teaches children which

emotions are acceptable, and demonstrates for children that certain

situations will and should evoke particular emotions. Contingent

responding refers to responses that either encourage or discourage

children’s emotional expression. Much research has been conducted

to investigate the effects of parental contingent responding upon

children’s emotion knowledge and social competence, but not of

teachers’. Teaching refers to adults deliberately trying to instruct

children on how to understand the causes of emotions and develop

ways to express them in socially appropriate ways. While at

Somtawin Witaedsuksa Huaymongkhon School, I often saw examples

of contingent responding being used to discourage the expression of

sadness, frustration, and anger. Rather than using the moment to

model or directly teach alternatives, students were usually loudly

admonished and told they needed to be placed in a lower class if

they didn’t stop.

The preschool years are an influential time in a child’s

development. Morris et al. (2013) determined that too many

negative emotions from the teacher (specifically anger) may

interfere with students’ ability to process emotional information.

Sutton and Wheatley (2003) found a positive correlation between a

teachers’ use of aggressive techniques and student disruption and

level of misbehaviour. It has also been found that students whose

teachers expressed a larger amount of negative emotions are

reported to exhibit fewer positive pro social behaviours later.

Negative emotions expressed by a teacher do not uniformly

produce negative effects in the classroom. They still have a role to

play and can produce positive effects. After examining the results of

many studies, Rodrigo-Ruiz (2016) drew attention to situations

where the student must be corrected. In these instances, negative

emotions (such as anger) can cause positive effects. Students

perceive the teachers’ negative emotions as evidence the teacher is

confident in the capabilities of the students and is angry they didn’t

apply more effort. However, this type of situation may only account

for a small portion of the angry outbursts on any given day and

should not be used as an excuse for frequently yelling at those in our

care.

Verbally abusing students has been recognized as an act of

professional misconduct by The Ontario College of Teachers since

1997. Teachers in North America and most other areas of the world

are trained on the negative effects it commonly has on students.

Most people would agree that angrily yelling at young learners may

quiet them in the short term, but fails to have any positive long term
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effects. Children are not internalizing any self-regulating skills to use

for the future. Instead, they are being taught to fear an individual

and dread the verbal outbursts being directed at them.

Due to the direct effect a teachers’ emotions have been shown

to have on students, it is not surprising that emotional competence

training has been suggested for its inclusion in teacher preparation

programs. I propose this is an area that should be included in

ongoing professional development opportunities for all teachers.

Even the calmest, most supportive teacher could benefit from

additional skills and techniques to use with students. Like everyone,

teachers have both good and bad days. Even within the same class

they can show both good and bad behaviours. As Hogan et al. (2019)

pointed out, a teacher was actually recorded “verbally and

emotionally abusing a kindergarten student during the same year she

was named Teacher of the Year by her school” (p. 158). What a

teacher sees as a momentary lapse of judgement, could become a

life-long source of trauma for a student. The need for training to

help teachers “deal effectively with issues of personal frustration and

classroom discipline” (Hogan et al., 2019) cannot be stressed

enough. School administrators must also be held account to ensure

they properly supervise and work with teachers to ensure they are

not acting improperly. As Hogan et al. (2019) point out, “while a

teacher may get a second chance at teaching, or get a second career,

each student is only given one childhood” (p. 159).

References

Becker, E.S., Goetz, T., Morger, V., & Rallenucci, J. (2014). The

Importance of Teachers' Emotions and Instructional Behavior for

Their Students' Emotions. An experience sampling analysis. Teaching

and Teacher Education, 43, 15–26.

Hogan, T., Ricci, C., & Ryan, T. G. (2019). Respecting Students:

Abusive Classroom Teacher Verbal Behaviour. Journal of Pedagogical

Research, 3(3), 151-165.

Morris, C.A.S., Denham, S.A., Bassett, H.H., &Curby, T.W.

(2013). Relations among Teachers’ Emotion Socialization Beliefs and

Practices, and Preschoolers’ Emotional Competence. Early Education

and Development, 24(7), 979–999.

Pekrun, R., Goetz, T., Titz, W., & Perry, R. P. (2002). Academic

Emotions in Students’ Self Regulated Learning and Achievement: A

Program of Qualitative and Quantitative Research. Journal of

Educational Psychology, 37, 91–106.

Rodrigo-Ruiz, D. (2016). Effect of Teachers’ Emotions on Their

Students: Some Evidence. Journal of Education & Social Policy, 3(4),

73-79.

Sutton, R.E., & Wheatley, K.F. (2003). Teachers’ Emotions and

Teaching: A Review of the Literature and Directions for Future

Research. Educational Psychology Review, 15(4), 327–358.