A Study On The Correlation Between Emotional Labor Strategies And Job Satisfaction Of High School English

Emotional labor has been one of the hot issues in the field of teacher educational research at home and abroad in recent years.Education is not only concerned with the transfer of knowledge,but also the shaping of the soul,which is a career that requires the emotional investment of teachers.Therefore,as a group of highly emotional labor,the importance of teachers’ emotion lies in their ability to influence not only their own professional development,but also their students,parents and colleagues directly or indirectly,which are the characteristics and requirements of the teaching profession.Ideally,teachers need to demonstrate enthusiasm,happiness,confidence,and satisfaction of their job.In reality,however,the complexity,high pressure and other characteristics of educational job is highly susceptible to a generalized negative state of affairs in the teacher community.In addition,high social expectation,fierce social competition,complex and changeable teaching environment can also create emotional instability for teachers.If teachers’ negative emotions are not dealt with in a timely and effective manner,they are prone to physical and psychological disorders,such as reducing teachers’ job satisfaction and causing job burnout.In order to better explore the current situation of emotional labor and job satisfaction,as well as the correlation between them of high school English teachers,168 teachers from Guangxi and Sichuan Provinces were selected as the research subjects in this research,which addresses three questions:(1)What is the current situation of high school English teachers’ emotional labor strategies and job satisfaction?(2)Are there any significant differences in the emotional labor strategies and job satisfaction of high school English teachers in terms of demographic variables,such as gender,educational background,years of teaching and professional titles?(3)What is the correlation between emotional labor strategies and job satisfaction of high school English teachers?This research adopted a quantitative research method.The questionnaire was utilized asthe quantitative research instrument.It consisted of Diefendorff’s Emotional Labor Strategy Scale which covers three dimensions: surface acting,deep acting and naturally felt emotions strategy,as well as the questionnaire for teachers’ job satisfaction was called Minnesota Satisfaction Question(MSQ),which was made by Weiss et al..The MSQ concludes two dimensions: internal job satisfaction and external job satisfaction.After the questionnaires were collected,the SPSS 21.0 was used for descriptive analysis,independent sample T-test,Pearson correlation analysis and so on.The research results indicated that:(1)the current high school English teachers are at a median level in the use of emotional labor strategies,and the present situation is that the majority of them use naturally felt emotions strategy,followed by deep acting and surface acting is less.In terms of demographic variables,the use of emotional labor strategies of high school English teachers is significantly different in terms of marital status,educational background,professional titles and whether they hold administrative positions;(2)high school English teachers’ job satisfaction is at mid-level,and the level of internal satisfaction is higher than external satisfaction.In terms of demographic variables,there are significant differences in high school English teachers’ job satisfaction in terms of gender,marital status,educational background,professional titles and whether they hold administrative positions;(3)emotional labor strategies of high school English teachers are significantly correlated with their job satisfaction.Specifically,the surface acting of teachers’ emotional labor strategy is positively correlated with job satisfaction.Deep acting is positively correlated with job satisfaction.Naturally felt emotions strategy has a significant positive correlation with job satisfaction.Based on the findings of the above research,as well as the model of influencing factors of emotional labor under the affective events theory,this thesis puts forward the following suggestions for improving the emotional labor situation of high school English teachers from the perspective of school administrators and teachers themselves:(1)improving school culture and creating a good emotional labor environment;(2)providing targeted training for high school English teachers of different groups and improving the emotional literacy education system for English teacher-training students in universities,so as to help in-service and pre-service teachers to use a balanced range of emotional labor strategies,especially to strengthen the use of deep acting strategies;(3)enhancing their own professionalism and interpersonal communication skills is a priority for high school English teachers..In terms of improving English teachers’ job satisfaction,first of all,managers need to pay more attention to teachers’ physical and mental health and relieve teachers’ work pressure appropriately.Secondly,managers have to pay attention to the needs of different groups of teachers,so as toachieve scientific management.In addition,flexible management should be implemented as much as possible,giving teachers more opportunities to participate in democratic decision-making,and effectively protecting teachers’ democratic rights and interests.