Socio-emotional Dynamics in Teacher Learning

Abstract

The large body of research on teacher learning focuses primarily on cognitive dimensions, often to the neglect of socio-emotional dynamics. Taking a socio-cultural approach, emotions may be viewed as a social construct, entangled with positioning and identification processes, relative to others as well as to ideal concepts of knowing, learning, and teaching. Emotions can be displayed in social interaction both verbally and non-verbally, explicitly and implicitly. This symposium presents four studies using a variety of discourse analysis methodologies to study socio-emotional dynamics in a range of professional development contexts: pre-service teachers in a science content and pedagogy course, science teachers within a blended-online program, math teachers in video-based debrief conversations, and elementary/middle school teachers in school-based team meetings. The findings of the four papers shed light into the critical role socio-emotional dynamics play in teacher professional learning, revealing different kinds of dynamics appearing in a broad range of topics.