Feeling and Acting in Teaching Classrooms: A Mixed-method Analysis of EFL Teachers’ Emotional Labour Strategies and their Discrete Emotions

Abstract

Abstract Research points to the important role emotion labour strategies play in workplace and academic performance, yet few studies have examined emotion labour strategies and discrete emotions in non-Western contexts in the field of ELT. The current study extends this research base by examining EFL teachers’ emotion labor strategies and the relationship with discrete emotions of two types of EFL teachers. To this end, a sample of 120 EFL teachers teaching in different schools in Tabriz, Iran was selected from both secondary and high schools. The instruments used in this study were two questionnaires and a semi-structured interview. The results of ANOVA and regression analysis demonstrated that there was a significant positive correlation between two groups of EFL teachers’ discrete emotions and emotional labor strategies scores. Moreover, the findings indicated that between the two components of the emotional labor strategies, the secondary school teachers’ only surface acting and the high school teachers’ surface acting and deep acting components. The results of semi-structured interview from ten EFL teachers approved the results obtained from the quantitative data and showed the importance of emotions in teaching contexts. The pedagogical implications are discussed.