Associations between teachers’ interpersonal behavior, physiological arousal, and lesson-focused emotions

Teachers' Heart Rate Variability and Behavioral Reactions in Aggressive Interactions: Teachers Can Downregulate Their Physiological Arousal, and Progesterone Favors Social Integrative Teacher Responses

Aggressive student behavior is considered one of the main risk factors for teacher stress. The present study investigated teachers' physiological and behavioral reactions when facing aggressive student behavior and examined which resources favor adaptive teacher reactions. The sample included 42 teachers. We assessed (a) teacher self-reports (i.e., resources, risk factors, and vital exhaustion) (b) classroom observations, (c) ambulatory assessments of teachers' heart rate and heart rate variability, and (d) teachers' progesterone concentrations in the hair. The present study focused on a subsample of ten teachers (9 females, Mage = 34.70, SD = 11.32) managing classes which were potentially very stressful as they had a high density of aggressive behavior. High levels of work satisfaction, hair progesterone, and a low level of work overload fostered social integrative teacher responses. Moreover, in 75% of the cases, teachers succeeded in downregulating their physiological reaction. Our results support the notion that teachers evaluate stressors in light of their resources. When they perceive their resources as insufficient for coping with a challenging situation, stress arises, and subsequently, they react inefficiently to aggressive behavior. Thus, teacher education could benefit from strengthening teacher resources and strategies for coping with aggressive student behavior.

Teachers' situational physiological stress and affect

Since teaching is a demanding and stressful profession, the study of teachers' physiological stress in the classroom setting is an emerging field. In cross-sectional studies self-reported stress and affect are related, but less is known about the intraindividual relations between situational physiological stress and corresponding positive and negative affect. The aim of our study was to investigate the associations between situational physiological stress (six salivary cortisol samples per day) and self-reported situational affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule four times a day) among 61 Finnish primary school teachers over two workdays. We present a novel multilevel structural equation model (MSEM) that includes cortisol, with time since awakening as a flexibly coded time-varying covariate and affect with time since cortisol measurement as a time-varying covariate. Higher levels of teachers' situational physiological stress were related to lower situational positive affect (e.g., enthusiasm) and higher negative affect (e.g., nervousness), demonstrating the acute/situational effects of stress on affect. In our discussion, we emphasize the importance of the sequence of sampling and observations for further theoretical modeling of relations between stress and affect. We also propose practical implications for improving teachers' awareness of their well-being.

The potential of biophysiology for understanding motivation, engagement and learning experiences

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Integrative models applied to human learning and performance emphasize the joint operation of biological, psychological, social, and educational processes to fully understand human functioning. Educational psychology researchers have typically emphasized psycho-educational and psycho-social factors in motivation, engagement and learning, but do not often consider the biophysiological factors.

RESULTS

This Editorial and Special Issue advances current understanding on the role of biophysiological factors and processes in students' and teachers' motivation, engagement, and learning experiences, by showcasing recent educational research that included biophysiological measures and methods.

CONCLUSIONS

As we discuss, conducting integrative biophysiological and psycho-educational research has potential to derive vital substantive, methodological, and applied insights that provide a rigorous basis for more effective educational theory, research, and practice.

When closeness is effortful: Teachers' physiological activation undermines positive effects of their closeness on student emotions

BACKGROUND

Student perceptions of teachers' interpersonal closeness positively affect their emotions. If closeness is, however, effortful for the teacher (i.e., emotional labour, signalling less genuine closeness), this may undermine these positive effects. We tested this assumption by using student reports and external observations of teacher closeness and ambulant measures of teacher heart rate, to gauge teachers' physiological effort connected to being close during class.

AIMS

We investigated the association between teachers' physiological effort connected to closeness and students' lesson-focused emotions.

SAMPLE

75 teachers and their students (N = 1645) participated during one real-life lesson.

METHODS

Teacher interpersonal closeness was continuously coded based on a video recording and teachers' heart rate was measured continuously as an indicator of physiological effort. Students reported their emotions and perception of teacher closeness at the end of the lesson.

RESULTS

Multilevel models with student emotions as DVs and students' perceptions of teacher warmth (L1 predictor) and teachers' physiological effort when being close (i.e., an intra-individual cross-correlation, L2 predictor) were tested. As expected, students reported more positive and less negative emotions when they perceived more teacher closeness. The physiological effort connected to being close was not directly associated with student emotions; however, such effort moderated the effect of perceived closeness, especially with regard to negative student emotions (i.e., cross-level interactions). The more effortful teacher closeness was, the less closeness protected students from negative emotions.

CONCLUSIONS

In line with extant research on faking enjoyment and emotional labour, students seemed to be affected when teacher closeness was physiologically effortful, and overall positive effects of teacher closeness were undermined.

The Teaching-Learning Process or the Teaching Process and the Learning Process

Education in school is conceived from the teaching-learning process where the teacher, student, and group intervene as personal components. In the first part of the article, evidence is shown that this process is not a dialectical interrelation. Later it is demonstrated that this process exists under certain conditions that are explained from the theory of subjectivity. In this explanation, the role of the personal components that teaching and learning are integrated into a process is revealed.