University language teachers’ contextually dependent uses of instrumental emotion regulation

Abstract

Emotion regulation is increasingly positioned as a skill that is developed ontogenetically across careers as language teachers come to recognise the impact that their emotional behaviour has on themselves and their classrooms. While recent research has attended to the connection between a teacher's regulation strategy choices and well-being, a broad view that recognises the full impact of emotion regulation actions on language teacher and student outcomes in highly contextualised circumstances is urgently needed. Adopting the position that emotion regulation is a motivated activity employed to achieve dynamic, contextually relevant goals, this study investigates the instrumental emotion regulation of 15 experienced non-Japanese EFL teachers at a university in Japan. Drawing on a corpus of 300,000 words obtained from 45 interviews and stimulated recall sessions, findings analysed through a complexity-informed approach demonstrate how emotion regulation strategies were employed to achieve a range of instrumental outcomes pertaining to identity projection, behavioural management, content engagement, and relational development. The data further illustrates that this emotion regulation was contextually dependent, informed by macro-level and internal factors, and that the participants' motive and strategy choices had a direct impact on their well-being.</p