Teachers dealing with learners’ achievement – what do their emotions tell us?

Abstract

Hargreaves (1998, 2004) has clarified the multiple ways in which teaching, including assessment, is an emotional practice. In this article I present one facet of teachers’ emotions in relation to assessment, namely, their emotions towards the quality of achievement produced by their learners. The data comes from teachers who were committed to their profession, talking in focus groups about the range of emotions they experience in relation to various ‘objects’ (Nussbaum, 2001) within their assessment practice. The descriptive analysis of their common emotions illustrates how teachers are on an emotional rollercoaster in response to the ‘object’ of learners’ achievement, with positive emotions in response to strong, and negative emotions in response to weak achievement. It also illustrates how teachers see themselves and their effort reflected both in strong, and in weak learner achievement. Turner’s (2007, p.99–100) principle that “individuals will make attributions about the cause of their emotional experiences”, with positive emotional arousal tending towards self-attributions and negative emotional arousal tending towards external attributions, makes this self-attribution of committed teachers for not only strong but also weak learner achievement a significant finding.