A Narrative Inquiry Into Emotional Experiences Of Novice Middle School EFL Teachers In Their Professional Lives

Emotion,as one of the heated research topics in psychology,philosophy and sociology,is defined as a broad concept which contains people's emotional state,mood,mental state as well as valence experience.As one of the significant elements in teachers' professional lives,teacher emotion plays no less important roles than teachers' cognition.It influences teachers' cognition,teaching practice and professional well-being since it is an essential indicator of teachers' spiritual state.However,not only the concept of "teacher emotion"was once considered as something marginal in teachers' teaching practice,but also the research on teacher emotion has long been ignored due to the binary stance held by the academy,which advocated that there should only be the binary opposition between issues such as individuals and public,rationality and emotion,and quantitative research paradigm and qualitative research paradigm.The topic of emotion in educational research field did not come into rising until the 1980s to 1990s.Nowadays,following the humanistic trend of research,it has become a heated topic in educational research.Studies on EFL teacher emotion were then widely conducted both abroad and at home with the prevailing of the"emotional revolution" in the academic field.However,most of the research paid much attention to emotional experiences on experienced EFL teachers or college EFL teachers,with quite few centered on the specific emotional experiences of novice EFL teachers,especially the novice English teachers in the context of Chinese EFL teaching.Therefore,the study on the teacher emotion of novice EFL teachers is desired to promote their professional development.The present study,based on the bioecological dynamic systems theory,has investigated the teachers' emotional experiences,the changes and the formation of the emotion and emotion regulation of two middle school novice EFL teachers through narrative inquiry.Data from conversations,interviews,teaching diaries,case materials and video classroom observation has been analyzed and discussed,which aims to solve the following three research puzzles,(1)What emotional experiences have the middle school novice EFL teachers been through in their professional lives?(2)How are those emotional experiences formed in the professional lives of the middle school novice EFL teachers?(3)How do the middle school novice EFL teachers regulate their emotions in their professional lives?After a detailed analysis and discussion of the data,this study has three major findings.Firstly,positive,negative and mixed emotions were found in the two novice teachers'professional lives.Secondly,the middle school novice teachers' complex emotional experiences were formed in the interactions between the teachers' evaluation on their teaching goals and the bioecological environment,which includes micro-,exo-,meso-,and macro-environment.And finally,antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategies and response-focused emotion regulation strategies were employed by novice EFL teachers.Through these findings,it can be seen that efforts needed to be made by the teachers themselves,school administrations as well as the whole society.For teachers,they should improve their self-initiative and then grasp effective strategies to positively regulate their emotions;for school administrators and policy makers,they should pay attention to the personal and environmental factors which contribute to the formation of teacher emotion and improve teachers' well-being by making proper and personalized policies;and for the whole society,emotional ties should be established to care for teachers' emotional development.