A two-wave panel study on teachers' emotions and emotional-labour strategies

Development and psychometric evaluation of the Nursing Teacher Emotional Labor Scale

BACKGROUND

Nursing teachers, as a group with high emotional labor, report heightened levels of negative emotions and burnout. Focusing on the emotional labor of nursing teachers is essential for improving their emotional well-being and job satisfaction. However, there is a lack of assessment tools specifically tailored to the emotional labor of nursing teachers. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a scale for assessing nursing teachers' emotional labor and to examine its psychometric properties.

METHODS

The Nursing Teacher Emotional Labor Scale was developed in three phases. First, the scale's dimensions and items were formulated based on concept analysis, qualitative research and a review of existing literature, followed by expert evaluation and a pretest. The second phase involved item analysis and exploratory factor analysis to evaluate the items and explore the scale's factor structure. The third phase included testing for reliability and validity. Reliability was determined by internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Content validity, criterion-related validity, convergent and discriminant validity were employed to evaluate the validity.

RESULTS

The final version of the scale comprised 20 items across four dimensions. The I-CVI for all items ranged from 0.857 to 1.000, and the S-CVI was 0.993. Convergent and discriminant validity results indicated that the average variance extracted for each dimension exceeded 0.5, the composite reliability values surpassed 0.7, and the square root of the average variance extracted values was greater than their respective correlation coefficients. The principal component analysis identified four factors accounting for 70.962% of the total variance. The fit indices from the confirmatory factor analysis met the criteria. The scale demonstrated good internal consistency, with a Cronbach's α coefficient of 0.907 and a test-retest reliability of 0.865.

CONCLUSION

The Nursing Teacher Emotional Labor Scale has satisfactory reliability and validity. It serves as an effective tool for nursing teachers to evaluate their emotional labor levels within the context of nursing education. Additionally, it offers a valuable metric for nursing education administrators to develop interventions aimed at enhancing the emotional well-being of teachers.

Associations between capacity of cognitive control and sleep quality: a two-wave longitudinal study

This longitudinal study explored the impact of the upper limit of cognitive control on the sleep quality of high school students. We collected data in two waves to examine four main variables: capacity of cognitive control (CCC), trait mindfulness, emotional distress and sleep quality. At the first time point (T1), trait mindfulness and emotional distress were measured by rating scales, and the CCC was evaluated by revised backward masking majority function task. Sleep quality was rated 5 months later (T2). The results indicated that: (1) the CCC was negatively correlated with trait mindfulness, and trait mindfulness was negatively correlated with emotional stress; (2) there was no simple mediation of either trait mindfulness or emotional distress in the relationship between CCC and sleep quality; (3) instead, the CCC was associated with poor sleep quality in a sequential mediation through trait mindfulness and then emotional stress. The research highlights the importance of trait mindfulness and emotional distress for addressing sleep problems in adolescents.

The relationships between teachers' emotional labor and display rules, trait emotions, exhaustion, and classroom emotional climate

Introduction

Emotions are an integral part of education, and the way teachers manage their emotions is crucial to educational success. This study focuses on teachers' emotional labor in secondary school classrooms and examined the relationships between emotional labor strategies and display rules, trait emotions, emotional exhaustion, and classroom emotional climate.

Methods

In the study, 496 secondary school teachers (386 female) aged 21-59 years (mean age = 37.61 ± 8.87 years) completed five self-reported questionnaires. Data were analyzed using structural equation model in AMOS.

Results

The results showed that (1) display rules provide positive situations to deep acting and the expression of naturally felt emotions and mediate teachers' positive emotions and strategies; (2) positive trait emotions increase the expression of naturally felt emotions and negative trait emotions increase surface acting; (3) surface acting results in emotional exhaustion and has an adverse impact on classroom emotional climate; and (4) deep acting and the expression of naturally felt emotions positively affect classroom emotional climate.

Discussion

These findings revealed that deep acting and the expression of naturally felt emotions are positively related to positive emotions and the classroom setting, whereas surface acting plays a negative role in the emotional states of individuals and the classroom. The study gives the centrality of teacher emotions in the teaching and learning process, clarifies some antecedents and consequences related to emotional labor strategies in a classroom setting, and provides some ideas to optimize educational outcomes. The five variables presented in the study are good examples that can contribute to protecting teachers' wellbeing and improving the psychosociological environment.

Assessing Emotions of Teaching Assistants in Inclusive Education

Although there are an increasing number of studies on assessing teacher emotions in mainstream education, there is a lack of appropriate measurement tools to evaluate the emotions of teaching assistants (TAs) who need to take care of students with a range of special educational needs (SEN). This study tested the generalizability of the 24-item teacher emotion inventory (TEI), among 204 TAs from 122 secondary schools with inclusive education in Hong Kong. We conducted both confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch analysis to test the within-network validity of the TEI. For the between-network validity, we examined the relationships between TAs' emotions and their attitude toward inclusive education. The Rasch analysis supported the scale's dimensionality and item fit statistics. The CFA supported the five-factor solution of the TEI. The results also showed statistically significant correlations between positive emotions (joy and love) and TAs' attitudes toward inclusive education. TAs' negative emotions (anxiety, anger, and stress) appeared to be negatively correlated with their attitude toward inclusive education. The results supported that TEI is a useful tool to assess the emotions of TAs that play a pivotal role in assisting both school teachers and SEN students, who are more likely to face increased emotional challenges than those not needing to educate SEN students. Implications of this study to enrich the current scope of research on understanding teacher emotions across educational levels and settings are discussed.

Teachers' Emotions and Self-Efficacy: A Test of Reciprocal Relations

Previous research has suggested that higher levels of teachers’ self-efficacy (TSE) tend to be positively related to positive teachers’ emotions (e.g., joy, pride) and negatively to negative teachers” emotions (e.g., anger, anxiety). However, these studies predominately relied on cross-sectional design and therefore were unable to test the reciprocal relations between the two constructs. Based on the propositions of social-cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997), TSE may be viewed as an antecedent or as a consequence of emotions. More specifically, TSE may shape emotions since it directs teachers’ attentional, appraisal, and regulatory processes, while emotions may shape TSE since they act as a source of information about teachers’ performance in a given task (i.e., emotions can serve as a filter that determines which efficacy information is seen as salient and how it is interpreted). To test these assumptions, an initial sample of 3010 Croatian teachers (82% female) participated in a longitudinal study based on a full panel design with three measurement points and time lags of approximately 6 months. Teachers taught at different educational levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and secondary schools) and had on average 15.30 years (SD = 10.50) of teaching experience. They completed self-report measures that assessed their self-efficacy beliefs and six discrete emotions experienced in relation to teaching and students – joy, pride, love, anger, hopelessness, and exhaustion. An autoregressive cross-lagged analysis showed that teachers’ emotions and TSE are indeed related to each other. However, the direction of this association is not bidirectional as was suggested by theoretical assumptions; instead, it is asymmetrical – higher levels of TSE beliefs predicted higher levels of positive emotions of joy and pride, while higher levels of teachers’ negative emotions of anger, exhaustion, and hopelessness predicted lower levels of teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs.

Positivity Ratio and Well-Being Among Teachers. The Mediating Role of Work Engagement

Previous studies indicated that the balance of positive to negative affect (i.e., positivity ratio) is associated with subjective well-being and flourishing in the general population. Moreover, a positivity ratio of 2.9 is considered a critical value discriminating between flourishing and non-flourishing individuals. To date, however, there is limited research on the positivity ratio on samples of teachers. The present study aimed to investigate whether the positivity ratio affects work engagement and well-being among teachers. Based on the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 2001) and work engagement model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007), we predicted that positivity ratio (the ratio between positive and negative emotions) experienced by teachers would increase their work engagement, which in turn would positively affect their well-being. A sample of 1,335 teachers (762 women and 573 men) from Romania participated in the study. Results revealed that work engagement mediated the relationship between positivity ratio and well-being. Specifically, teachers with a higher ratio of positive to negative emotions reported more engagement (dedication, absorption, and vigor) and in consequence higher levels of subjective well-being (autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, self-acceptance, positive relations with others and purpose in life). Also, when investigating the positivity ratio according to participants’ well-being, we found a mean of positivity ratio of 2.84 for the group of teachers with high levels of well-being, validating the proposed critical positivity ratio of 2.9. These findings support the importance of addressing positive emotions and positivity ratio in prevention and intervention programs with teachers.