The differences in expression of joy and anger of Vietnamese teachers and Foreign teachers in classroom. How do teachers regulate their emotions in class?

Ho Chi Minh City Open University Graduate School 97 Vo Van Tan, Dist.3, HCMC, Vietnam ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET AND REPORT MASTER in TESOL 16 Name of candidate: Bui Thi Hien Student No: 1681401110019 Email address: hienbt.168t@ou.edu.vn Name of coursework subject: Communication and Culture Title of this item of work: The differences in expression of joy and anger of Vietnamese teachers and Foreign teachers in classroom How teachers regulate their emotions in class? Name of lecturer: Ph.D Le Hoang Dung Due date: October 30th 2017 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP: I certify that the above assignment is my original work; it is based on my own research All sources used by me have been documented No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement This piece of work has not previously been submitted for assessment in this or any other subject or course at this University or elsewhere Student’s Signature…………………………… Date: October 30th 2017 Contents STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP: Introduction Literature Review .5 Methodology Participants Data collection .6 Discussion How teachers express their anger in classroom? .6 The ways teachers express joy .7 How teacher’s emotions affect students learning? How can teachers regulate their emotions in class? .8 Conclusion Appendix 1: Questions for interviews References 10 Introduction Emotion is mentioned as something involving feelings, behavioral tendencies, physiological responses (Frijda, 2000; Izard, 2007; Russell and Barrett, 1999; Schutz et al., in press; Smith, 1991) Emotion is an integral part of “classroom life” As Greenleaf (2002) suggested that emotions serve as a vehicle for enhancing or inhibiting learning The reason is that teachers’ positive emotions may contribute to create a good relationship with students, therefore supporting students’ adjustment and performance in class, encouraging their learning process and motivation, as well as their memory and creativity (Frederickson, 2004, 2005; Lamovec, 1991) In contrast, negative emotions of teachers may have a hindering effect on student’s motivation, memory and creativity (Fredrickson, 2004, 2005; Lamovec, 1991) Actually, I realize that students in my school tend to prefer learning English with foreign teachers than Vietnamese teachers After I observed many classes of foreign teachers and Vietnamese teachers, I see that the way foreign teachers express their emotion in class is very different from Vietnamese teachers They tend to control their feeling better when facing to a problem in classroom They rarely show the unpleasant emotions like anxiety, anger, frustration, disappointment, dissatisfaction, and shame clearly, so that students may feel foreign teachers are more friendly than Vietnamese teachers The aim of this study at Ket Doan primary school is to analyze the differences in the way Vietnamese teachers and Foreign teachers express their emotions in classroom, the effects of teacher’s emotions on student’s learning, and some strategies that teachers use to regulate emotions In this study, I just focus on expression of joy and anger of teachers Literature Review In the study on Teacher’s emotional expression in class published in H.U Journal of Education in 2014 by Simona Prosen, Helena Smrtnik Vitulic, and Olga Polj, emotions are categorized by complexity, dividing into basic and complex emotions They mentioned that basic emotions such as joy, anger, fear, sadness, disgust and surprise are characterized by specific brain activity patterns and facial expression (Ekman & Davidson, 1994; Plutchik, 1980) On the other hand, complex emotions appear later in development, their expression is less typical and recognition is more difficult Emotions may be showed through facial expression, tone of voice, or body posture Emotional expression is vital for the quality of entire education process through teacher-students interaction and the classroom atmosphere (Meyer & Turner, 2007; Shapiro, 2010; Sutton, Mudrey-Camino, & Knight, 2009) Teacher’s emotional expression is commonly caused by student’s learning attitude and achievement or disciplinary problems (Hosotani & ImaiMatsumura, 2011; Prosen, Smrtnik Vitulić, & Poljšak Škraban, 201 3; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003) The data of this study showed that teachers often express unpleasant emotions like anger, sadness, disappointment, or shame more often than pleasant emotions And anger is reported most frequently of all pleasant and unpleasant emotions Besides, this study also recommended that teacher should to regulate emotions in constructive way to encourage student’s development and learning In 2009, Frenzel, Götz, Stephens, and Jacob described that teacher’s emotions are impacted by student’s behavior, simultaneously, these emotions also effect on student’s emotion and perceptions, motivation, learning, academic performance, and social behavior as well In particular, emotions of teachers were contagious to the student in determining therefore their conduct (Becker et al, 2014) Teacher’s emotions affect the manner in which the teachers categorize the students, thus having repercussions of great relevance in the way in which the student perceives himself and his subsequent conduct This occurs especially with the emotion of joy, followed by anger and then anxiety to the lesser degree (Débora Rodrigo-Ruiz, 2016) Besides, spontaneous positive emotional expression in the classroom can provokes a greater interest in the subject matter and makes the student more participatory (Kimura, 2010) In other word, teacher is an important motivational generator among students because the communication of enthusiasm, enjoyment, and humor may influence students' goal orientation Learning and academic performance is one of the aspects that are affected by teacher’s emotions Beilock et al (2010) mentioned that teacher anxiety plays a vital role in the reduction of student’s performance, in contrast, teacher enthusiasm makes for more effective instruction and produces better student result Moreover, many evidences show that positive teacher emotions produce a more satisfactory discipline in the classroom Nevertheless, in the case of students who are lack of discipline, negative emotions, principally anger, may be a tool to achieve good classroom discipline and foment an atmosphere in which students focus on the lesson Teacher’s emotions also influence on student social behavior The students who perceive their teachers for the most part as projecting positive emotions are less involved in offensive actions and avoid risk behavior (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003) In the other hand, those students whose teachers expressed a larger amount of negative emotions report fewer positive social behaviors Because teacher’s emotional expression affects many on student’s development in both positive and negative sides, teachers need to adapt their emotions effectively to achieve the best result in teaching process Gross (2002) defined the emotion regulation as the ability to control the experience and expression of emotions During teaching process, teacher often face situation that may make them angry, frustrated, and sad, so that the need to find appropriate ways of regulation these emotions in the classroom In the study on Teaching teachers about Emotional Regulation in the Classroom published in Australia Journal of Teacher Education in 2011, Leanne Fried attempted to develop teacher’s understanding of emotion regulation in the classroom, and suggested some strategies to regulate emotion in classroom as well Emotion regulation strategies have been classified according to not only to the target of the strategy and psychological function but also to where they occur on the response time-line (Koole, 2009; Gross, 2001) There are many strategies that teachers may use to regulate emotion; for example, the strategies of focusing on breathing that targets body manifestations of emotion The other strategies are thinking about other thing or deliberately distracting someone Methodology Participants The participants are four English teachers at Ket Doan Primary school, concluding two Vietnamese teachers and two Foreign teachers Two foreign teachers come from American and Australia They came to Vietnam to teach English for children for from to years One Vietnamese teacher has 33 years experiences in teaching English in primary school She started her teaching career at Ket Doan primary school when English language instruction was in the initial stage of implementation in primary education Up to now, she has many experiences in teaching expertise and classroom management as well The other Vietnamese teacher has years experiences working as English teacher for young learners She taught English at language center for years before started working at Ket Doan Primary school Table 1: The information of participants Mr Liam Mr Will Nationality America Autralia Teaching years years experience Ms Phuong Vietnam 33 years Ms Thuan Vietnam years Data collection The data of this study were collected from narrative interview The interviews conducted were semi-structured with guiding questions and prompts developed beforehand During the interviews, the participants were encouraged to talk about their teaching practice including the difficulty that they meet in classroom, and the way they express their joy and anger in classroom They are also asked about the way they use to regulate emotions Discussion How teachers express their anger in classroom? All four teachers said that they find difficulty in managing classroom It is very difficult to keep children at their seat silently Some of them not concentrate on the lesson and some irrelevant things like playing toys or joking with the others sit around them In this case, teachers often feel angry and have to something to stop them But the way the teachers express their anger is various Two foreign teachers said that they sometimes just ignore and keep on the lesson, sometimes they stop talking and look at the students who make the noise or they may raise their voice to get student’s attention In contrast, Vietnamese teachers often show their anger in different way They may shout loudly to stop students talking or express their anger to force students to participate in the lesson They may also give students some punishments, for example, confiscating their toys, giving some physical punishments that mean students may have to stand up with the hands in the air or on their head Teachers may ask students to leave the seat to the corner of classroom or get out of classroom, or even give a ruler strike across the palms In this situation, students often feel that the teachers are very strict and they are scare In general, foreign teacher control their anger better and they rarely show this emotion on the face while Vietnamese teachers The ways teachers express joy Students love teachers because they are friendly, humorous and kind Actually, foreign teachers can perform better their humor and friendliness When I observe their class, I see that they often smile and express their excitement when students perform well or something interesting They not feel shy when laughing out loud Foreign teachers said that they always ready to express their joy to motivate students They often say “good”, “excellent”, “perfect” or some others encouraged words in class Obviously, students feel very happy and participate in class more actively In this case, Vietnamese teachers also well when express the emotion joy Two Vietnamese teachers said that they often praise their students for good behavior or performance They sometimes make joke with students and laugh with their students They also often show their joy in class but not be comfortable as Foreign teachers How teacher’s emotions affect students learning? Teacher’s emotions play an important role in creating classroom atmosphere If teachers express the positive emotions, the atmosphere will be more relax and comfortable Because foreign teachers can control their emotion well and always show positive emotions in classroom, students are very exciting in their class Students can freely express themselves without any blame They always are encouraged to share their opinions It is very useful to create an active learning habit for students Students also have more motivation to learn English, simply, just because they love teachers or they feel happy when learning English Mr Liam joked that sometimes he can image to become a famous person because students call his name, wave to, or huge him whenever meet him He feels very happy about it It is clear that teacher-student relationship is closed, or teacher can interact well with students In other word, we can affirm that teachers' positive emotions produce positive effects on their students Whereas Vietnamese teachers seem to be stricter, students may be under stress, thus not willing to say and share ideas It may hinder language learning process When teachers express the anger, students will be scare and ensconced themselves Ms Phuong admitted she has ever heard that some students complain their teachers are very strict, so they not dare to ask when they not understand something This is a reason of the reduction of student’s performance On the other hand, there is a limitation when teachers always show the positive emotion in class The classroom may be in a low discipline because students have too much freedom in class, especially in classes of young learners They cannot adjust their behavior without teacher’s suppression We can often see this situation in English classes of foreign teachers Mr Will said that he taught English for grade and his students often make the noise or lack of concentration on his lesson Some of students not listen to him, even play toys or run around classroom Sometimes, the class is over of his control and he feels very angry and frustrated If he does not publicly express his anger, students will not care of him In this situation, Vietnamese teachers seem to control better Ms Thuan shared that if her class was too noisy and her students did not focus on the lesson, she immediately express that she is unhappy and angry, then asking students to stop talking and pay attention or giving them some punishments Of course, her students will be nice and concentrate on the lesson, but just in a short time How can teachers regulate their emotions in class? Teacher’s emotional expression plays a vital role in learning process and harmonizing classroom atmosphere Hence, it is very important for teachers to regulate their emotional expression to enhance student’s behavior and performance Mr Liam said that when he was angry, he often be silent in one minute and take a deep breath in order to calm down Sometimes, he just ignores the misbehavior students and focus on some good students He thinks that if he stops talking and huffs with all students, it will be unfair to some good students Ms Thuan also admits that the thinking about school rules is also useful to restrict teachers from over of control emotions because the rules not allowed teachers to huff with students One more way that Ms Phuong uses is that teachers should stop teaching at that time and ask students to something else like sing a song with her or some bodily movements By that way, her students will stop neglecting learning and she also can relax herself Conclusion There are some differences in the way foreign teachers and Vietnamese teachers express their emotions, particularly joy and anger These differences may be caused by the differences in culture and the habit of experience and express emotion The differences in teacher’s emotional expression create the differences in classroom atmosphere and student’s learning outcome Many evidences show that teacher’s emotional expression impact on many aspects of students such as behavior or performance, thus influencing on learning outcome So it is important for teachers to understand the effects of emotions on student’s behavior and performance, then having appropriate ways to regulate their emotions Appendix 1: Questions for interviews Where are you from? How long have you taught English for young learners? Which difficulties you face when you teach English at primary school? Have you ever lost control in your classroom? Do you choose to publicly express your joy and anger to students or suppress your emotions in classroom? How you express your joy and anger in class? Do you think teacher’s emotions have the effects on student’s behavior and performance? How? How you regulate your emotions in the classroom? 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Conclusion There are some differences in the way foreign teachers and Vietnamese teachers express their emotions, particularly joy and anger These differences may be caused by the differences in culture... How teachers express their anger in classroom? .6 The ways teachers express joy .7 How teacher’s emotions affect students learning? How can teachers regulate their emotions