EMOTION MATTERS: EXPLORING THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF TEACHING

A large empirical body of literature suggests that teachers make a difference in the lives of students both academically (Pianta & Allen, 2008) and personally (McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, & Hamilton, 2003). Teachers influence students through not only their delivery of content knowledge, but also their development of optimal learning conditions and establishment of positive, pedagogical interactions in the classroom (O'Connor & McCartney, 2007). A recent line of inquiry suggests that teachers need to understand the emotional practice of their job in order to develop optimal classroom learning conditions, interact positively with students, and build authentic teacher-student relationships (Hargreaves, 1998). One approach to exploring the emotional practice of teaching involves understanding the "emotional labor" performed by teachers at work. Emotional labor is the suppression or expression of one's feelings to meet the goals of a job (Grandey, 2000). By exploring the emotional labor of teachers using a new adapted instrument, The Emotional Labor of Teaching Scale (TELTS) and sampling a large, homogenous teacher population, this study found that teaching involved emotional labor. More specifically, findings endorsed that teachers performed emotional labor on the job despite teachers not knowing the emotional display rules required in their schools. Overall, results provide implications for practice to improve how we prepare and supervise teachers