The Emotion Regulation of Non-Japanese EFL Teachers at a Japanese University

This investigation reports on the emotion regulation strategies and motives of 15 non-Japanese language teachers working at a university in Japan. The study proceeded under the assumptions (a) that emotion regulation is skilfully applied by experienced teachers to achieve a range of higher-order motives, and (b) that emotion regulation decision making is afforded and constrained by sociocultural and historical contextual factors. Through a methodology informed by grounded theory and complex dynamic systems theory, over 300,000 words of testimony were obtained from 15 semi-structured interviews, 30 classroom observations, and 30 stimulated recall sessions. The results show that the participants employed emotion regulation strategies continually to achieve a diverse range of motives pertaining to well-being, classroom relationships, effective instruction, and identity performance. The success and adaptability of the regulation was complexly wed to the contextual factors lying underneath the participants’ decisions. Such factors included the teachers’ personal histories, the strength of teacher-student relationships, institutional pressures, and sociocultural norms. The study discusses numerous contextually dependent tensions that the participants faced in relation to their emotion regulation decision making, including the degree to which they might approach or avoid emotional stressors, the degree to which they might distance themselves from relationships, and the degree to which they might express passionate emotions to students. The study supports teacher training by revealing adaptive emotion regulation actions and the contextual factors that afford their use, and makes recommendations to teachers, trainers, and institutions regarding the use of emotion regulation in consideration of classroom outcomes and well-being