摘要
Few jobs come without irritations, and foreign language instruction comes with its own particular set of frustrations which, when accumulated, can lead to stress and eventual burnout for teachers.One mechanism for reducing such frustrations is that of emotion regulation, the cognitive and behavioral strategies individuals employ to manage the emotions they experience or display. To date,no known studies have reported specifically on the in-class frustration experienced by language teachers, or on how teachers regulate their feelings of frustration. Herein, the authors discuss the experiences of seven EFL teachers at a university in Japan obtained through a series of semistructured interviews, classroom observations and corresponding stimulated-recall sessions. The authors discuss four salient thematic frustrations: student apathy, classroom silence, misbehavior in the context of relational strain, and working conditions. The results reveal that participants applied contextually-dependent emotion regulation behaviors, the success of which was often contingent on the participants’ levels of confidence and control over the stressors. Thus, participants showed more success in managing pervasive low-level stressors such as apathy and silence, and more support would be welcome to aid them to manage more debilitating stressors such as student misbehavior.The authors offer suggestions for teachers, trainers and institutions on reducing frustration.
很少有工作没有烦恼,外语教学也会有其自身特点的挫折感,这些挫折感累积起来后会让教师压力倍增,并最终感到疲惫不堪(倦怠)。减少这种挫折感的一种机制是情绪调节,这是个体对所经历或展示的情绪采取的认知和行为管理策略。到目前为止,还没有任何已知的研究专门报告语言教师所经历的课堂挫折,或教师如调节他们的挫折感。本文中,作者通过一系列半结构化访谈、课堂观察和相应的刺激回忆法活动,讨论了日本一所大学的七名EFL教师的经历。作者讨论了四个典型的易使教师感到挫败的情况:学生冷漠、课堂沉默、关系紧张背景下的不当行为和工作条件。结果显示,参与者应用依赖于情境的情绪调节行为,其成功往往取决于参与者对压力源的信心和控制水平。因此,参与者在管理常见的低级压力因素(如冷漠和沉默)方面取得了更大的成功,并且希望获得更多的支持来帮助他们管理更让人身心疲惫的压力因素,如学生的不良行为。作者为教师、培训师和教育机构提供了减少挫折感的建议。
