Emotion regulation goals and strategies of instructors of english: a phenomenological study at a foundation university in Turkey


Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2017

Öğrenci: MERVE ARIĞA

Danışman: AYŞEGÜL DALOĞLU

Özet:

This study aims to explore what goals and beliefs Turkish instructors of English in a foundation university have for their emotion regulation and what cognitive and behavioral strategies they use to regulate their positive or negative emotions through their conscious and deliberate efforts. Designed as a phenomenology, this study also seeks to gain an understanding of these instructors’ emotion expressions, experiences and regulation processes before class, during class and after class. Besides, this study explores their perceptions of cultural and organizational display rules that may influence their emotion regulation process. The study at hand utilizes one-on-one semi-structured interviews with 27 Turkish instructors of English in a foundation university based on their lived experiences regarding their emotion regulation. The findings of the study revealed that emotion regulation in general is inextricably bound up with instructors’ perceptions of professionalism. In addition to this, they also suggested that regulating their negative emotions helped them achieve instructional goals, maintain a good communication/relationships with students, avoiding being the “scapegoat” for students’ failure, preventing emotions from spreading like a “virus" and maintaining discipline and management in classroom. As for the regulation of positive emotions, teachers’goals included maintaining a professional distance between their students and themselves, presenting an unbiased teacher image, coping with classroom management and discipline problems, and encouraging students through fake smile, and exaggerated praise and compliments. Teachers also used a variety of antecedent-focused and response-focused emotional regulation strategies to help them regulate their emotions before, in and after the class. Turkish instructors of English used response-modulation most frequently. The findings were also discussed with reference to the role of the cultural and organizational display rules on teachers’ emotion regulation process.