Emotional Experience and Emotion Regulation of Teacher Training Students in the Practical Semester – A Diary Study

Abstract

Emotions and dealing with emotions are particularly important for future teachers. The ability of future teachers to actively deal with their emotions is a decisive factor for the development of teaching professionalism and for mental health in the future profession. The handling of emotions by future teachers has so far only been addressed to a limited extent or selectively in teacher training. The practical semester is a phase of teacher training that can be highly emotionally charged for teacher training students due to the new challenges and tasks. The present diary study examines specific emotion-triggering private-professional situations in the everyday life of teacher training students (n=10) in the practical semester. In this context, the valence (positive – negative) of the experienced emotions and the situation-specific emotion regulation were also examined. The teacher training students were instructed to indicate whether they regulated an emotion in a situation-specific way by using cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, or a free expression of emotion as an emotion regulation strategy. A total of 126 emotion-triggering situations were named in the practical semester, which can be divided into a school, private-professional and training context. The teacher training students stated that they had experienced more positive than negative emotions in specific situations. The free expression of emotions was used in most cases as an emotion regulation strategy.