Social Emotions between Students and Teachers

The research project aims to investigate social emotions between students and teachers at school (e.g. sympathy, admiration, appreciation, anger) and their relevance for students` learning and achievement as well as teachers` behaviour in the classroom and classroom practices. Major aims of the project are as follows: (1) First, systematise and develop a taxonomy of social emotions between students and teachers. (2) Second, explore the eliciting conditions of social emotions. (3) Third, investigate the consequences of social emotions (e.g. for students` learning and achievement but also for teacher`s behaviour in classroom). Research on this topic is relevant for both theoretical and practical reasons. The investigation of social emotions between teachers and students helps to broaden (a) theories about emotion in educational contexts (e.g. control- value theory for academic achievement emotions, Pekrun, 2009) and (b) interactional theories (e.g. Nickel, 1981). At the moment only results concerning academic achievement emotions and teacher-student interactions from a behavioural perspective as well as research results concerning teachers-student relationship in general but not focusing on emotional aspects in particular are available. From a practical perspective, gaining knowledge about determining factors for social emotions supports teachers in schools in creating their emotional relationships with students. Furthermore, providing empirical evidence about the importance of social emotions in classroom broadens standards of teacher education. A stay at the host university (Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia) is important for the realisation of the project as Prof. Simone Volet is an internationally accepted scholar in the field of motivation and emotion research in educational settings (member of the EARLI Sig: Motivation and Emotion). Her theoretical / conceptual and methodological works concerning the mentioned research topic are well known and valued among researchers in this field. Due to the fact that the main aims of the stay abroad are theoretical and methodological (design / instruments) in nature, a good fit between the project aims and Simone Volet`s expertise can be provided. Next to the conceptual and methodological work the newly developed instruments will be pretested in Australia. The sample will consist of middle school students because a special challenge exists in building a good teacher-student relationship in middle years. During the return phase the research instruments are pretested in Austria and the sample for the main study is gained. The main study should be executed during a regular tenure as Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Salzburg. A cross-cultural comparison is planned but the major data collection will be carried out in Austria. The stay abroad will enhance the chances to obtain a research tenure track position at the University of Salzburg because of the gain in theoretical and methodological experience in investigating emotions in the classroom as well as the deepening and broadening of international cooperation. The whole project - aiming to answer the mentioned main research questions (see above; point 1-3) - will last for at least 3-4 years due to an applied longitudinal design using multiple methods (Volet, 2001a).