Avoiding or preventing discussion of teacher emotions may constitute emotional rules that exclude emotions from pedagogical discourse¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 5 claims (5 for) · 2 studies (2 qualitative), q2 · 1 of 2 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article argues that facilitators' repeated avoidance of emotion displays does more than close a single discussion: it constitutes local emotional rules that teach teachers which emotions are permissible in professional discourse. The authors suggest that "consistently avoiding or preventing the discussion of teacher emotions may constitute emotional rules that exclude emotions from pedagogical discourse and, hence, miss out on a significant dimension of learning to teach." Because teachers appropriate emotional rules through participation in professional discourse, facilitator responses shape the role teachers ascribe to their emotions over extended time frames.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Awareness among facilitators that their responses to emotion displays model discourse norms for the group

Constraints¶

• The argument is theoretical, grounded in the sociocultural view of emotions rather than tested longitudinally in this study

Target Learners¶

• PD facilitators and teacher educators

Target Learning Goals¶

• Understanding how facilitation shapes the emotional rules teachers appropriate about professional discourse

Affordances¶

• Recognizing Exploring Emotion Continuums Framework

Claims¶

• Acknowledging the emotion to prevent further discussing it recognizes the emotion but constrains exploration of the underlying pedagogical problem [+W]
• Ignoring the emotion strategy neither recognizes nor explores the displayed emotion, closing the discursive space [+W]
• Mitigating and normalizing the emotion recognizes it more than acknowledging-to-prevent but limits exploration to attributions that avoid critique of PD design [+W]
• Quick transition from emotion to practice indirectly recognizes the emotion to a somewhat greater extent than ignoring it [+W]
• Elaborated discussion of narrated emotions supports teacher professional learning [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Integrating recognition and exploration of emotions to navigate the tension between relational and learning goals
• Facilitators can use a taxonomy of moves and strategies for acknowledging and exploring emotion to build a facilitation repertoire

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Dana Vedder-Weiss, Rotem Tractenberg-Maslaton, Karin Sarfati-Shaulov. (2025). Facilitation strategies responding to emotional displays in PD discourse: navigating relational and learning goals. Instructional Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-025-09737-4