Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

Teacher anger: New empirical insights using a multi-method approach

c a, *, Anne C. Frenzel b
Irena Buri
a
Department of Psychology, University of Zadar, Croatia
b
Department of Psychology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany

h i g h l i g h t s

Teacher anger was explored using a multi-method approach through a series of four studies.

Teacher anger is a multi-faceted phenomenon evoked by students, parents, colleagues, and the educational system.

Facets of teacher anger can be successfully measured via self-report.

Facets of teacher anger correlate with teachers' emotional labor, well-being, and self-efficacy.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Anger is a very common emotion for teachers with potential adverse effects for themselves and their
Received 18 December 2018 students. The aim of this research was to thoroughly explore teacher anger, determine and operationalize
Received in revised form its contextual triggers and components, and establish its relationships with teachers’ emotional labor,
8 July 2019
well-being, and self-efficacy. Through a series of four independent studies using diverse methodological
Accepted 1 August 2019
and analytical approaches and involving over 3000 teachers, it was established that teacher anger is a
Available online xxx
multi-faceted construct evoked by diverse contextual triggers (i.e. students, parents, colleagues,
educational system). These facets can be successfully assessed via self-report and meaningfully relate to
Keywords:
Teachers
external variables.
Anger © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Multi-method approach

1. Introduction
Research on teachers' emotions indicate that teachers experi-
ence a wide variety of emotions while teaching and interacting
with students (for a review see Sutton & Wheatley, 2003) of both
positive (e.g. joy, pride, love) and negative valence (e.g. anger,
frustration, hopelessness, anxiety). Among the array of discrete
negative emotions, anger is considered to be the most prominent
one, both in life in general (Scherer, Wranik, Sangsue, Tran, &
Scherer, 2004) as well as among teachers (Buri c, Sliskovi
c &
Macuka, 2018; Chang, 2013; Frenzel, 2014; Hagenauer & Volet,
2014; Keller, Frenzel, Goetz, Pekrun, & Hensley, 2014; Sutton,
2007). Anger is not only prominent and frequent in teachers'
everyday professional lives, but can also have adverse conse-
quences on teachers' psychological and professional functioning.
Research indicates that teacher anger is negatively related to
teacher well-being, but positively to burnout and to leaving the
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: iburic@unizd.hr (I. Buri
c).
teaching profession (Chang, 2009; 2013; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015).
Moreover, teacher anger is negatively related to instructional
effectiveness (Frenzel, Goetz, Pekrun, & Jacob, 2009) and the
establishment of positive and supporting relationships with stu-
dents (Klassen, Perry, & Frenzel, 2012). For instance, a diary study
showed that anger has a potential to change teacher classroom
behaviour by negatively affecting teacher concentration on their
teaching activities, planning for the class, and their relationships
with students (Sutton, 2007). In addition, experiencing and dis-
playing anger while teaching is often seen as undesirable and
inappropriate (Liljestrom, Roulston, & de Marais, 2007; Sutton,
2007), which is why teachers report to engage in emotion regula-
tion in order to hold in their anger and keep themselves in check
(Sutton, 2007). However, some of the emotion regulation strategies
used by teachers to regulate their anger (e.g., suppression or hiding
feelings) can negatively influence their professional well-being
(e.g., Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011), their sense of efficacy (Sutton,
2007), and their teaching quality (Buri c, 2019). It is important to
note that all these findings on teacher anger are scattered across the
literature addressing teacher experiences and emotion regulation
most generally. Therefore, the present paper seeks to provide a

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2019.102895
0742-051X/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
systematic, in-depth insight into the phenomenology, causes, and
possible consequences of teacher anger. More precisely, the aim of
this research is to thoroughly explore teacher anger, its contextual
triggers and components, and its relationships with teachers'
emotional labor, well-being, and self-efficacy, by employing a
multi-method approach in a series of four independent studies. We
suggest that understanding the contextual triggers and compo-
nents of teacher anger and their relationships with teachers’ pro-
fessional functioning could prove useful for pre-service teacher
education and/or in-service professional development programs
aimed at enhancement of teacher effectiveness through supporting
them in optimizing the regulation of their anger and thus preser-
ving their well-being.
1.1. Conceptualization of teacher anger
Emotions, most generally, can be defined as a multicomponent
processes comprising subjective feelings (e.g. pleasure or displea-
sure), particular cognitive appraisal patterns, specific motivational
tendencies, facial and bodily expressions, and physiological
changes (Lazarus, 2001; Scherer, 2009). When considering the
emotion of anger, it can be understood as unpleasant feeling that is
typically verbally described using terms such as “angry”,
“annoyed”, or “enraged”. Furthermore, anger is typically accom-
panied with appraisals of other blame for blocked goals, and tends
to motivate approach behaviours, that is, attack and aggression
(Berkowitz, 1993). The expression of anger involves frowning eye-
brows, dilating nostrils, clinching teeth, and a face that flushes red
(Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2016). Physiologically, anger is
typically accompanied by increases in cardiac contractility and
heart rate, diastolic blood pressure, and finger temperature
(Cacioppo, Berntson, Larsen, Poehlman, & Ito, 2000).
Furthermore, emotions are typically either conceptualized as
transient and short-lived states or as relatively stable traits (Bieg,
2013). Traits can be understood as individuals' tendencies to
frequently and intensively experience certain emotional states. As
such, it is reasonable to make inferences from a person's trait
emotions about the emotions they will experience in a corre-
sponding context, and vice versa. Nevertheless, empirically, some
discrepancies have been shown between emotions assessed as
states versus traits, while emotions operationalized in a trait-like
manner have been shown to be more predictive of future behav-
iours and choices (e.g. Levine, Lench, & Safer, 2009) than emotions
operationalized as states, and traits are much more economic in
their assessment (single questionnaire which details the context as
opposed to multiple measurement occasions which need be
embedded “in situ” in the corresponding situations). Therefore, we
chose to focus on teachers' trait anger in the present contribution
by exploring and assessing teachers' reports of their typical (i.e.,
usual, common) experiences of anger at their workplace.
While the basic components and appraisal patterns of anger are
probably universal for all humans, the key question addressed in
this research was to explore the peculiarities of anger as experi-
enced by the particular population of teachers. For instance, while
it is universally the case that anger occurs when others are blamed
for the blockage of one's goals, it remains unclear which circum-
stances are typically appraised by teachers in a way that they arouse
anger. According to the reciprocal model on causes and effects of
teacher emotions (Frenzel, 2014; Jacob et al., 2017), teachers seek to
achieve four overarching classroom goals, namely students'
acquisition of subject-specific competences, students' motivational
engagement in classroom activities and learning, students' devel-
opment of socio-emotional competences, and the establishment of
a well-functioning relationship with students. Teacher emotions,
according to this model, develop as a result of their judgements
whether the students' behaviour in class corresponds with those
goals. More specifically, teachers cognitively appraise the
following: whether they succeeded in meeting their goals (i.e. goal
consistency); whether student behaviour is seen as beneficial for
attaining those goals (i.e. goal conduciveness); whether teachers
view themselves as capable of attaining goals (i.e. coping poten-
tial); who is responsible for (non)attainment of goals (i.e. goal
attainment/impediment responsibility); and how important it is for
teachers to achieve certain goal (i.e. goal importance). The model
postulates that anger is characterized by negative cognitive ap-
praisals of goal consistency and conduciveness, coupled with
external goal impediment responsibility (Frenzel, 2014). The (little)
existing empirical evidence on teacher anger provides support for
those claims, and shows that the teaching context can be a great
source of anger. For example, it has been shown that teachers
experience anger when students fail and teachers appraise this
failure as caused by intentionally low effort invested by the stu-
dents, or when teachers' instructional goals are obstructed by
students' seemingly deliberate misbehaviour, disrespectful behav-
iour, or lack of motivation and commitment (Buri c et al, 2017;
Chang, 2013; Khajavi, Ghonsooly, Fatemi, & Frenzel, 2018; Sutton,
2007).
The described reciprocal model on causes and effects of teacher
emotions is somewhat limited as it only considers goals related to
teaching and interacting with students. Yet, those are probably not
the only contexts with the capacity to evoke teacher anger. The
teaching job is highly complex and comprises of a multitude of
diverse tasks e with corresponding goals e that all have strong
potential to trigger a variety of emotions, including anger. The
abundance of teachers’ tasks and obligations was well illustrated by
the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS, 2013)
which showed that teachers do spend the majority of their working
time in the classroom on teaching and scaffolding learning (ca. 50%
of their working hours). However, they also engage in a multitude
of activities outside the classroom, such as planning and prepara-
tion of lessons (18% of their working hours), correcting student
work (13% of their working hours), student counselling and guid-
ance, and extracurricular activities. Furthermore, teachers, on a
regular basis, communicate and cooperate with parents and
guardians, participate in team work and interact with colleagues,
and carry out a substantial amount of administrative work (up to 5%
of their working hours; Burns & Darling-Hammond, 2014; OECD,
2014).
When it comes to school teachers and their anger in particular,
scattered existing research shows that there are indeed a variety of
factors outside the classroom that trigger feelings of anger. These
factors include uncooperative colleagues, inappropriate parental
behaviour (e.g. carelessness and irresponsibility), as well as
educational policies (e.g. educational reforms) that make teaching
with high quality more difficult to attain (e.g. Liljestrom, Roulston,
& Demarrais, 2007; Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). Therefore, more in-
depth exploration of the relevance of achieving tasks and goals that
are not directly related to students and classroom activities in
explaining teacher anger, poses as an important research question.
By extrapolating the reciprocal model on causes and effects of
teacher emotions (Frenzel, 2014), it can be expected that teachers
also set goals for themselves that go beyond the classroom,
including maintaining positive and constructive relationships with
colleagues and parents, successful collaboration with members of
the school staff, professional development, and keeping up a sense
of being valued as a professional. Obstruction of such goals, that is,
situations and events that are cognitively appraised by teachers as
the ones that make their goals more difficult to attain, may
consequently result in the experience of teacher anger.
 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895 3

2. Correlates of teacher anger: emotional labor, well-being task by making mood-congruent thoughts more available
and self-efficacy (Kavanaugh & Bower, 1985). In turn, self-efficacy beliefs also impact
emotions. For instance, self-efficacy beliefs direct one's attention,
Above and beyond exploring contextual triggers of teacher shape the appraisals of emotional events, and influence the acti-
anger, the present research also sought to explore correlates of this vation of emotion regulation mechanisms (Chemers, Chu, & Garcia,
prominent teacher emotion. Specifically, we deemed teacher 2001). For the emotion of anger in particular, negative relationships
emotional labor, well-being, and self-efficacy to be important with self-efficacy can be expected and have been shown in prior
candidates to consider since they are proposed to be closely research (e.g. Buric & Macuka, 2018; Frenzel et al., 2016).
intertwined with teacher anger (e.g., Buri c, Sliskovic, & Penezi
c,
2019; Chang, 2009, 2013; Sutton, 2007).
2.1. Assessing teacher anger
Emotional labor can be understood as a process in which em-
ployees regulate the internal and expressive components of their
Since emotion is a complex phenomenon which comprises
emotions to align them with the emotional display rules of their
multiple components e subjective, cognitive, motivational,
profession (Hochschild, 1983). Two main forms of emotional labour
expressive, and physiological (Lazarus, 2001; Scherer, 2009), the
can be distinguished, deep acting and surface acting. Deep acting
best research approach to study teacher anger would be one that
refers to the conscious management of internal feelings in order to
addresses all five components. In order to achieve this goal, teacher
consequently experience and express the desirable emotion. For
anger can be measured by different methods like observation,
instance, teachers may engage in positive thoughts about their
neuroimaging techniques, peripheral physiological measures, and
students (such as a student success, or particularly kind behaviour)
self-report (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014). The self-report
and consequently start to experience joy and affection. It has been
method dominates in research on emotion in the educational
shown to be a rather effective and adaptive strategy. Surface acting,
context, due to its cost-effectiveness and capability to easily access
in turn, implies modifying the expression of an undesirable
specifically the subjective and cognitive components (Pekrun &
emotion by hiding it, suppressing it, or by faking a more desirable
Bühner, 2014), but also the motivational, physiological, and
one. For example, teachers who are angry with students due to
expressive components of emotion. Finally, the self-report method
their rude and disrespectful behaviour, may try to keep cool and
is particularly suited for the assessment of emotions as traits, that
maintain a poker face, i.e. suppress their observable signs of anger
is, emotions which are typically or frequently experienced in
and fake calmness and indiference instead. Surface acting has been
certain circumstances.
shown to be rather maladaptive (Brotheridge & Lee, 2003;
Recently, considerable research attention has been directed to
Hochschild, 1983).
measuring teacher emotions, including teacher anger. The Teacher
There is ample evidence that teachers frequently apply
Emotions Scales (TES; Frenzel et al., 2016) measure the intensity
emotional labor strategies to comply with the emotional display
and frequency of enjoyment, anger, and anxiety with respect to
rules of their profession, one of which is that anger is an undesir-
classroom teaching (both in general and with respect to a specific
able emotion for teachers (e.g. Sutton, 2007; Sutton, Mudrey-
group of students). The Teacher Emotion Inventory (TEI; Chen,
Camino, & Knight, 2009; Yin & Lee, 2012). Yet, teacher emotional
2016) and Teacher Emotion Questionnaire (TEQ; Buri c et al.,
labor literature typically addresses the regulation and experience of
2018) are self-report instruments which quantify multiple rea-
“emotions” most generally, and evidence is scarce on links between
sons for experiencing a large range of negative and positive emo-
regulation strategies and specific, discrete emotions. However, in a
tions. Both TES and TEQ contain items on the emotion of anger, but
recent study Buri c et al. (2019) found that teacher anger experi-
only in relation to teaching and interacting with students. The
enced about students predicts higher frequency of hiding feelings
anger subscale from the TEI (Chen, 2016) measures reasons for
and faking emotions, that is, two forms of surface acting, over time.
teacher anger in more general manner (its items encompass anger
The present study seeks to further explore the links between
evoked by parents, colleagues, society and policy). Still, it does not
teacher emotional labor strategies and teacher anger with respect
clearly differentiate those contextual facets of teacher anger.
to multiple contexts.
Therefore, developing a valid and reliable measure of different
In turn, teachers’ negative emotions have been recognized as
facets of teacher anger was an important step towards a more
important factors in explaining teacher burnout (Carson, 2006;
precise quantitative investigation of this complex construct.
Chang, 2009; 2013). Since teacher anger, as a negative emotion, is
typically viewed as undesirable and as an emotion that should be
suppressed or masked (e.g. Sutton, 2007; Taxer & Frenzel, 2015), 2.2. The present research
thus creating an emotional dissonance and leading to emotional
exhaustion (Morris & Feldman, 1996), its positive association with Based on the theoretical assumptions and the results of prior
burnout, can be expected. Similarly, as emotions have been research outlined above, it seems that teacher anger can arise from
acknowledged as important factors in determining job-related at- a variety of situations and events. However, not enough is known
titudes and behaviour (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Weiss & yet regarding the exact contextual triggers and components of
Cropanzano, 1996), anger can also be expected to be negatively teacher anger. Moreover, prior research so far has missed to sys-
related to job satisfaction. In other words, if teachers experience tematically quantitatively explore the relationships between such
anger across diverse situations with respect to their work, this fine-grained facets of teacher anger with emotional labor, well-
should not only contribute to higher levels of burnout and impaired being, and teachers’ self-efficacy. This can be attributable to both
mental health, but also negatively impact their job satisfaction and limited prior research on teacher anger most generally, and a lack of
make them consider leaving the profession (Macdonald, 1999). valid and reliable measures of this complex but relatively frequent
Finally, it can be assumed that emotions are reciprocally linked and important teacher emotion. Therefore, by relying on a mixed-
with self-efficacy. Self-efficacy has been conceptualized as a “belief method approach and through a series of four independent
in one's capabilities to organize and execute the course of action studies, the following research questions were addressed:
required to produce given attainments” (Bandura, 1997, p. 3).
Emotions represent a source and a filter of information about one's 1. What are the contextual triggers and components of teacher
performance and determine individual sense of efficacy at a given anger, that is, of which facets is teacher anger constituted?
4 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
2. Can different facets of teacher anger be measured through a self-
report instrument with good psychometric properties?
3. How are different facets of teacher anger related to their
emotional labor, indicators of well-being and self-efficacy?
In order to address these research questions, four studies using
independent samples of teachers were conducted. Study 1 used a
qualitative method to reveal contextual triggers and components of
teacher anger. Studies 2 and 3 aimed at development of the self-
report measure of different facets of teacher anger as well as at
establishment of its latent structure and psychometric properties
by combining exploratory and confirmatory approaches. Finally, in
Study 4, theoretically meaningful relations between teacher anger
and external variables of emotional labor, well-being, and self-
efficacy were tested in order to provide evidence of criterion val-
idity of the new measure and to emphasize the relevance of the
teacher anger construct in explaining diverse outcomes of teachers’
professional functioning.
3. Study 1: A qualitative investigation of components and
contextual triggers of teacher anger
In order to get a more thorough and in-depth insight into
different components of teacher anger (i.e. subjective, cognitive,
motivational, expressive, and physiological), and groups of situa-
tions and events (i.e. contextual triggers) that can evoke teacher
anger, a qualitative study based on semi-structured interview
technique was implemented.
3.1. Participants and procedure
In total, 25 Croatian middle-school teachers (23 female)
employed in 12 different state schools were interviewed. Teachers
were on average 43.40 years old (SD ¼ 7.50), had 13.80 years of
teaching experience (SD ¼ 7.20), and taught a wide range of sub-
jects (e.g. Croatian language, English language, Geography, Biology,
Mathematics, Sport, Religion, ICT, etc.). Participation in the study
was voluntarily and teachers were assured that information they
shared would be treated with strict confidentiality and used only
for research purposes. Once teachers gave their informed consent,
in-depth, semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted
and audio-taped. Their statements were transcribed verbatim. All
interviews were moderated by a hired expert with rich experience
in qualitative research on emotional processes. Since the qualitative
data collection was a part of a larger research project on teacher
emotion and emotion regulation, only data related to teacher anger
were used and analysed for the purposes of this study. The total
length of the interviews ranged between 40 and 90 min.
Teachers were asked to list and describe situations and events
that evoked anger in them, to describe how they felt at that
particular moment, what they were thinking about, how they
behaved, what bodily sensations they experienced, and what they
wanted/wished they could do. Teachers were prompted to talk
about as many events and situations as they could recall. All tran-
scripts were subjected to thematic analysis which consisted of the
following main steps: 1. familiarizing with the data, 2. generation of
initial codes, 3. searching for themes, 4. reviewing themes, and 5.
defining and labelling themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006). In order to
ensure the objectivity and reliability of findings, two forms of
triangulation were employed. First, after familiarizing with the
data, two researchers with experience in qualitative data analysis
independently generated initial codes and searched for emerging
themes/categories. This was followed by peer debriefing in which
researchers analysed and compared the identified categories
(Willig, 2008). Second, the emerging themes and categories were
scrutinized by comparing across the widely varying data sources
(i.e. teachers from different schools, with diverse teaching disci-
plines and a wide range of years of teaching experiences).
3.2. Results and discussion
The thematic analysis showed that teachers experience anger in
a variety of situations and events experienced at work or in the
relation to their work. These evoking situations and events (i.e.
contextual triggers) could be classified into four major themes.
The first category of contextual triggers of teacher anger refers
to interactions with students and encompasses situations and
events such as violation of classroom rules, rudeness and arro-
gance, disrespect of teacher and peers, aggressive behaviour,
obstruction of class goals by inappropriate behaviour, etc. Two
examples that illustrate this group of triggers are:
I get angry when I see that I don't spend enough time on
teaching, the thing I should do. Instead, sometimes I have a
feeling that I just yell and try to keep order in classroom all day.
(Female Croatian language teacher, 10 years of teaching
experience)
I don't have a problem with the fact that a child is not interested,
that a student is not capable enough. I can accept that … There
are kids who do poorly in school for some reason. I think we
should encourage them, help them not to stay at the bottom. But
if they are rude and arrogant … I am allergic to it! It really
tackles my nerves. (Female English language teacher, 22 years of
teaching experience)
The second theme refers to relationships and interactions with
parents of their students as sources of teacher anger. Triggering
situations include accusations and verbal attacks, interfering with
teacher's job, parents who are overly oriented towards perfor-
mance of their children while neglecting an acquisition of knowl-
edge and investment of effort, overestimating their child's real
capabilities, rudeness in communication, etc. For example, two
teachers stated:
They [parents] can be so frustrating! I have a feeling that they
are free to enter the school and to spill down the nervousness
that they picked up during that day on us [teachers] … and we
have to stay calm and polite. I really feel trapped then. (Female
ICT teacher, 15 years of teaching experience)
I feel revolted because of some parents. When a parent comes to
school and tells you that you don't do your job properly and that
his child should achieve better … like, he knows his kid and her
capabilities, and you don't … And you cannot tell him no, you
are wrong!..Even though you would love to do that. It is really
frustrating. (Female English language teacher, 28 years of
teaching experience)
The third category of contextual triggers of teacher anger relates
to relationships and interactions with colleagues. Teachers
mentioned situations such as unfair distribution of tasks among
school staff, hostile and uncooperative colleagues, colleagues who
have ‘given up’ or do not feel ‘a call to teach’, incompetent col-
leagues, colleagues who do not have enough understanding for
children, etc. To illustrate this category of emotional triggers, the
following quotes were excerpted from the transcripts:
We [teachers] all work for the same wage, but there are some
colleagues in school who don't want to work or don't know how
to do something … they never get an extra task. And there are
 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
those who are capable and hard-working and they always get
burdened with extra job. It's just not fair and it makes me angry.
(Female mathematics teacher, 23 years of teaching experience)
I am angry with my colleagues who refuse to develop profes-
sionally … they are lazy and not ready for changes … like
learning new technologies … They want to slow down the
children instead of learn something new and accept changes.
(Male Sport teacher, 16 years of teaching experience)
Finally, the fourth and last category of contextual triggers of
teacher anger refers to the features of the educational system and
educational policy. Teachers mentioned issues like frequent
changes in the curriculum imposed by authorities, degradation of
public respect towards teachers, excessive paperwork, lowering
teachers' professional status in today's society, underestimating the
significance of the teacher's job, poor educational policy and reg-
ulations, poor material conditions, etc. The following two quotes
illustrate this category:
They [the authorities] give really little to us [teachers], but
expect from us to work more and more and to deal with enor-
mous amount of paper work which is useless and doesn't make
sense. This is really frustrating for all of us. (Female Croatian
language teacher, 3 years of teaching experience)
It is annoying when you have a feeling that no one values your
work. Even your family and friends have an attitude that
teachers don't work much and have long holidays. (Female
Croatian language teacher, 22 years of teaching experience)
Triggers of teacher anger related to teaching and students thus
largely confirmed previous research that recognized student mis-
behaviour, violation of classroom rules, and students' failure that is
perceived as intentional or controllable by students, as sources of
teacher anger (Chang, 2009; Prawat, Byers, & Anderson, 1983).
Moreover, the results of this qualitative study are in line with
scattered existing findings that identified parents (i.e. failure to
follow institutional norms of appropriate parental behaviour and
careless and irresponsible parents; Lasky, 2000), colleagues (i.e.
uncooperative colleagues; Bullough, Knowles, & Crow, 1991), and
policy related factors like administrative work, educational re-
forms, and school administration (Hargreaves, 2004; Zembylas,
2003) as relevant sources of teacher anger and frustration. How-
ever, the current study also provided a more in-depth look into
significantly wider coverage of contextual triggers of teacher anger
that had not yet been recognized in previous studies. For instance,
our data clearly revealed a parenting trend in which a main goal for
one's children is performing well (rather than mastering a subject),
which spills down to teachers who are expected to “produce”
highly performing kids, irrespective of their actual skill and
knowledge levels. Aggravating this, there seems to be a consider-
able number of parents who persistently overestimate their chil-
dren's real capabilities and consequently put unreasonably high
pressure on teachers. In addition, this research showed that
teachers sense that a certain proportion of their colleagues lack
motivation and are seen as incompetent and passive at their
workplace, which makes them frustrated and angry. Finally,
teachers in this study raised the concerning issue of degradation of
public respect and professional status of teachers in today's society
as a great source of anger and disappointment, which may have
adverse effects in terms of raising the likelihood of teacher attrition
and shortage.
Apart from these clearly emerging themes within the interviews
pertaining to the various contextual triggers of teacher anger, it is
5
also worth noting that the teachers’ descriptions of the phenome-
nology of their anger were very rich. They contained verbal de-
scriptions of all theoretically proposed components of emotions
(subjective, cognitive, motivational, expressive, and physiological).
To describe the subjective affective core of anger experiences, the
teachers used a wide array of adjectives and nouns (angry, frus-
trated, annoyed, irritated, tense, restless, indignant). In depicting
the cognitive processes involved in anger experiences, they spoke
of thinking about losing control, evaluating the situation as unfair,
and having doubts about usefulness of time, effort, and energy
invested in their job. To illustrate motivational component of anger
experience, teachers mentioned urges to yell at someone, to hit
something, leave the classroom, quit the job. Teachers were also
aware of their expressive manifestation of anger experience which
was described by terms like blushing and frowning. Finally, the
physiological component of anger experience was depicted as
sweating, headache, and rise in blood pressure, and heart rate.
These findings support the view of emotion as a multicompo-
nent phenomenon (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2016;
Schuman & Scherer, 2014) and reveal that teachers are indeed
aware of subjective and cognitive components of anger, but are also
capable of accurate description of other emotional components (i.e.
physiological, expressive, and motivational) that are typically
assessed by methods other than self-report (Pekrun & Bühner,
2014).
4. Study 2: measuring teacher anger
Based on the qualitative data obtained in Study 1 and theoretical
assumptions (i.e. multi-component definition of emotion and pre-
vious research on sources of teacher anger), the aim of this study
was to create a valid and reliable assessment tool that would effi-
ciently capture teacher anger while taking into consideration its
components and contextual triggers. Specifically, a list of 25 self-
report statements covering various emotional components and
the contextual triggers as identified through the interviews and
existing studies (Buric et al., 2018; Chen, 2016) were formulated to
create an initial item pool. By relying on expert judgement and
criteria of semantic redundancy (Frenzel et al., 2016), 16 items were
retained, that is, four items for each of the four facets of teacher
anger: (1) students-related (sample item: “The reactions of some
students frustrate me so much that I would rather just quit the
job”),1 (2) parents-related (sample item: “I feel resistance and anger
with parents who overestimate their children's real capabilities”),
(3) colleagues-related (sample item: “The anger I feel about un-
equal workloads among school staff makes me want to quit my
job”), and (4) system-related (sample item: “It infuriates me to
think about how little the government invests in education”). The
full set of items can be found in the Appendix.
4.1. Participants and procedure
Participants of this study were 615 middle-school teachers (464
female, 122 male, and 29 did not indicate their gender) employed at
43 Croatian state schools. Teachers were on average 41.15 years old
(SD ¼ 10.61) and had 11.17 years of teaching experience
(SD ¼ 10.15). In addition to demographic questions, teachers were
asked to rate the level of agreement with each of the 16 statements
on a five-point scale with possible responses from 1 to 5
(1 ¼ strongly disagree, 2 ¼ disagree, 3 ¼ neither agree nor disagree,
4 ¼ agree, and 5 ¼ strongly agree). Teachers were instructed to
1
The items aimed to assess students-related anger are taken from Teacher
Emotion Questionnaire (TEQ, Buri
c et al., 2018).
6 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
report “how they typically feel” in relation to their students, par-
ents, colleagues, and educational system. Participation in this study
was voluntarily and anonymous e questionnaires were sent to
schools via postal service, distributed to teachers with the assis-
tance of school psychologists, and returned to researchers closed
each in its own envelope two weeks later. The average response
rate across schools was 57%, which is considerably higher than in
teacher studies reported earlier (e.g. Taxer & Frenzel, 2015, p. 33%;
Metler, 2003, p. 21% for paper-and-pencil assessment, 11% for web-
based assessment).
4.2. Results and discussion
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and exploratory structural
equation modelling (ESEM) were used to test the latent structure of
the measure of teacher anger. In typical CFA model all items have
zero factor loadings on all factors except on the factor they are
expected to measure (i.e. cross-loadings are constrained to zero)
(McDonald, 1985). Such constraints are often too restrictive in
psychological measurement since the existence of cross-loadings
can be typically justified both by substantive theory and by item
content (e.g. method effects). Moreover, fixing cross-loadings to
zero typically results in inflated correlations between factors, their
reduced discriminant validity, and biased estimates of relations
with other variables if they are included in structural equation
model (SEM; Marsh, Morin, Parker, & Kauer, 2014). ESEM was
therefore proposed as a useful technique that may resolve these
issues since the only a priori information required to run an ESEM
model is the number of factors, and all other parameters (including
cross-loadings) are freely estimated (Asparouhov & Muthe n, 2009).
Considering the purpose of this study, that is, to examine the latent
structure of the newly developed measure of different facets of
teacher anger, it is reasonable to test and compare the results of
both approaches e CFA which is more restrictive but also more
parsimonious and ESEM which is less restrictive but more complex.
Moreover, even though different facets of teacher anger may be
considered as sufficiently discriminant constructs, they still repre-
sent the same phenomenon (i.e. teacher anger) and moderate
correlations between the factors as well as cross-loadings can be
expected.
In total, three models were tested and compared: 1) a one-factor
model in which all 16 items were set to load on the same factor, 2) a
four-factors CFA model in which 16 items were set to load on 4
respective factors (i.e. students-related anger, parents-related
anger, colleagues-related anger, system-related anger, and 3) a
four-factors ESEM model in which 16 items were set to load on 4
respective factors and in which, as opposed to more restrictive CFA
model, cross-loadings are freely estimated. All analyses were con-
ducted using Mplus 6 (Muthe n & Muthen, 1998e2010). Parameters
were estimated by maximum likelihood estimation method (ML)
and missing data were compensated by full information maximum
likelihood method (FIML). In ESEM analysis, an oblique Geomin
rotation with an epsilon value of 0.5 was utilized (Marsh et al.,
2009; Morin, Marsh, & Nagengast, 2013). Model fit was evaluated
by comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), root-mean-
square error of approximation (RMSEA) and standardized root-
mean residual (SRMR). CFI and TLI values higher than 0.90 indi-
cate satisfactory model fit, while values above 0.95 reflect an
excellent fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999). RMSEA values that fall between
0.05 and 0.08 indicate adequate fit, and RMSEA and SRMR values
smaller than 0.05 point to excellent fit (Browne & Cudeck, 1992).
For comparisons of tested models, DCFI<0.01 was used e model
with smaller CFI value was chosen as better fitting one (Chen,
2007). The results of model testing are shown in Table 1.
It can be seen that the 1-factor model showed the worst fit to the
data implying that items assessing teacher anger need to be
differentiated. And even though the 4-factors CFA model demon-
strated a substantial and sufficient increase in model fit, it still fit
worse when compared to the 4-factors ESEM model (DCFI ¼ 0.033).
This implies that teacher anger is indeed a multifaceted construct,
however, the relationships between particular items and imposed
factors are not that exclusive. Instead, a certain degree of variation
in each item could be predicted by multiple factors, that is, by
diverse contextual triggers. Nevertheless, the pattern of factor
loadings was as expected by the hypothesized model and sufficient
in size (>0.50). The only exception refers to the first item of anger
related to colleagues which in ESEM demonstrated poorer
discriminant power (i.e. I wish to yell when I just think about the
improper behaviour of some colleagues); see Table 2). Furthermore,
as shown in Table 3, latent correlations between different facets of
teacher anger obtained by CFA were mostly moderate in size
ranging from 0.27 to 0.59, whereas those calculated by ESEM were
substantially lower ranging from 0.22 to 0.37. The sizes of these
correlations indicate that even though different facets determined
by diverse emotional sources belong to the same construct, they
can be sufficiently differentiated.
Finally, all scales demonstrated satisfactory levels of internal
consistency (Cronbach a ranged from 0.77 to 0.82) implying that
different facets of teacher anger can be reliably measured. Mea-
sures of all facets also showed sufficient variation in scores and
distributions that do not substantially depart from normality.
However, distribution of scores of anger related to educational
system was to some degree negatively skewed pointing to the fact
that most teachers tend to quite strongly endorse the items on
anger related to the features of educational system and policy. In
conclusion, our newly developed measure of teacher anger
demonstrated sufficient degree of convergent and divergent val-
idity, reliability, and variation of scores.
5. Study 3: testing the measurement invariance of teacher
anger across educational levels
The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invari-
ance of the facets of teacher anger across two educational levels e
middle school and high school. In addition to the test of factorial
equivalence, the equivalence of latent means was also examined. In
other words, the goal of the third study was to test whether the
newly developed measure of teacher anger functions equivalently
in terms of measurement among middle-school and high-school
teachers and whether there are any differences in the intensity of
different facets of teacher anger between these two groups of
teachers.
5.1. Participants and procedure
In total, 2095 teachers (1645 female, 446 male, and 4 did not
report their gender) from 133 state schools in Croatia participated
in the study. Among them, 1099 were middle-school teachers and
996 were high-school teachers. Teachers were on average 41.51
years old (SD ¼ 10.41) and had 14.39 years of teaching experience
(SD ¼ 10.24). The data collection procedure was the same as in
Study 2 (i.e., teachers responded to the same16eitem questionnaire
in the same manner as in Study 2) and the average response rate
across schools was again quite high, namely 50%.The sample of
participating teachers in the this present study was independent of
the sample used in Study 2.
5.2. Results and discussion
Multi-group ESEM was employed to test the measurement and
 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895 7

Table 1
Model fit indices.

1 factor model 4-factors CFA model 4-factors ESEM model

c2 (df) 1407.13* (104) 268.14* (98) 113.87* (62)

CFI .642 .953 .986
TLI .587 .943 .972
SRMR .105 .051 .017
RMSEA (90% C.I.) .143 (.136, .149) .056 (.049, .064) .037 (.026, .047)

*p < .001.

Table 2
Results of testing the 4efactors CFA model and 4-factors ESEM model.

Source 4-factors CFA model 4-factors ESEM model

Students Parents Colleagues System Students Parents Colleagues System

Item
students 1 .68 .70 -.04 .08 -.01
students 2 .78 .75 .07 .04 .03
students 3 .70 .64 .06 .11 -.02
students 4 .68 .53 .18 .12 .10
parents 1 .71 .09 .57 .14 .08
parents 2 .63 .18 .54 -.02 .07
parents 3 .82 -.02 .79 .08 .08
parents 4 .76 .07 .66 .10 .08
colleagues 1 .61 .03 .20 .39 .24
colleagues 2 .70 .08 .03 .70 -.01
colleagues 3 .72 .07 .09 .64 .04
colleagues 4 .68 .05 .03 .68 .01
system 1 .76 -.03 .15 .01 .70
system 2 .73 -.01 .10 .01 .69
system 3 .66 .08 .03 .07 .62
system 4 .80 .04 .05 .09 .74

Table 3 factor means (Morin et al., 2013). The results of the test of these
Descriptive statistics and latent correlations between different facets of teacher models are shown in Table 4.
anger.
As can be seen in Table 4, imposing restrictions on factor load-
Source of anger Students Parents Colleagues System ings (i.e. weak measurement invariance) did not result in any
Students e .49 .55 .27 substantial loss of the model fit (DCFI ¼ 0.008) when compared to
Parents .27 e .59 .58 baseline, configural model. Next, the difference between weak
Collagues .32 .33 e .44 invariance model and strong invariance model was not substantial
System .11 .37 .22 e
in size either (DCFI ¼ 0.001) implying invariance of item intercepts
Possible Range 1e5 1e5 1e5 1e5
M 2.12 3.10 2.39 4.01 too. Introducing additional restrictions on variances and co-
SD .86 .94 .83 .84 variances did not lead to the loss of model fit either (DCFI ¼ 0.002),
Skewness (S.E.) .78 (.10) -.32 (.10) .32 (.10) 1.05 (.10) indicating that the variability of factors and factor correlations
Kurtosis (S.E.) .40 (.20) -.24 (.20) -.14 (.20) .92 (.20) could be considered equal in both groups of teachers. Finally,
Cronbach a .80 .81 .77 .82
imposing restrictions on factor means did not substantially worsen
Note. All latent correlations were statistically significant at p < .001. Latent corre- the model fit (DCFI ¼ 0.005), which means that middle school and
lations obtained by CFA are shown above the diagonal while latent correlations
high school teachers did not differ in different facets of teacher
obtained by ESEM are shown below the diagonal. Descriptive statistics were
calculated on manifest variables. anger with respect to their latent means. To conclude, in terms of
measurement and underlying latent structure, the newly devel-
oped measure of teacher anger operates similarly across different
latent means invariance of the measure of teacher anger (i.e. educational levels. Moreover, it seems that middle-school and
analysis of mean and covariance structure e MACS; Byrne, 2012) high-school teachers do not differ in their anger levels across the
across two groups of teachers. The analysis was conducted in Mplus various contexts considered.
6 (Muthe n & Muthe n, 1998e2010) and using the same estimation
method and criteria of model evaluation as in Study 2. The
6. Study 4. relationships between facets of teacher anger and
following analysis steps were undertaken: 1) estimating the base-
indicators of teacher emotional labor, well-being, and self-
line 4efactors ESEM model in the two groups of teachers simul-
efficacy beliefs
taneously, while leaving all model parameters free to vary across
the two groups (i.e. configural invariance), 2) testing the mea-
Even though previous research recognized the role of teacher
surement invariance of the model by constraining various model
anger experienced in the classroom in explaining teacher well-
parameters to be identical across the two groups; (a) factor load-
being outcomes as well as their efficiency and instructional
ings (i.e. weak measurement invariance), (b) factor loadings and
behaviour (e.g. Carson, 2006; Chang, 2013; Frenzel, 2014;
item intercepts (i.e. strong measurement invariance), (c) factor
Macdonald, 1999; Sutton, 2007), research on teacher anger trig-
loadings, item intercepts, and factor variances-covariances; (d)
gered by contextual factors other than teaching and students are
factor loadings, item intercepts, factor variances-covariances, and
largely lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine
8 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
Table 4
Invariance tests of the 4efactors ESEM model.
Model
Configural invariance
Weak measurement invariance
Strong measurement invariance
Strong measurement invariance þ invariance of factor variances-covariances
Strong measurement invariance þ invariance of factor variances-covariances þ invariance of factor means
Note. *p < .001.
the relationships between different facets of teacher anger (i.e.
anger related to students, parents, colleagues, and the educational
system) with indicators of emotional labor (i.e. deep acting and
surface acting), well-being (emotional exhaustion and job satis-
faction), and teachers’ self-efficacy (efficacy for instructional stra-
tegies, classroom management, and student engagement). Based
on previous research, it can be expected that all facets of teacher
anger would be positively related to surface acting (Taxer & Frenzel,
2015, Buric et al., 2019) and emotional exhaustion, an indicator of
burnout (Carson, 2006; Chang, 2013), and negatively to job satis-
faction (Macdonald, 1999; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996) and teacher
self-efficacy (Schwarzer & Hallum, 2008).
6.1. Participants and measures
The sample consisted of 505 middle-school teachers employed
in 32 state schools in Croatia. Of the total sample, 388 declared
themselves as female, 101 as males, while 16 of them did not
indicate their gender. On average, teachers were 41.39 years old
(SD ¼ 10.44) and had 14.95 years of teaching experience
(SD ¼ 10.71). The data collection procedure was the same as in
previous quantitative studies, and the response rate was again as
high as 49%. Again, this study included a new and independent
sample of teachers that did not participate in studies 1, 2, and 3.
Along with items developed to assess facets of teacher anger, the
following additional measures were administered:
1) Emotional Labor Scale (ELS; Brotheridge & Lee, 2003) which
consists of two scales e Surface acting (3 items, e.g. On an average
day at work, how frequently do you resist expressing your true feel-
ings? a ¼ 0.65) and Deep acting (3 items, e.g. On an average day at
work, how frequently do you actually try to experience the emotions
that you must show? a ¼ 0.81). Teachers responded on 5-point scale
ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always).
2) Job-related Emotional Exhaustion Scale (Wharton, 1993)
which consists of 6 items measuring emotional exhaustion expe-
rienced at work (e.g. I dread getting up in the morning and having to
face another day on the job; a ¼ .90) was used as an indicator of
teacher burnout. Teachers reported their level of agreement with
each item by using a six-point scale ranging from 1 (never) to 6
(every day).
3) Job Satisfaction Scale (Judge, Parker, Colbert, Heller, & Ilies,
2001) which encompasses 6 items measuring overall job satisfac-
tion (e.g. I feel fairly satisfied with my present job; a ¼ 0.85) on a 7
point scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely
agree).
4) Teacher Sense of Efficacy Scale (TSES; Tschannen-Moran &
Hoy, 2001) which assesses three domains of teacher self-efficacy:
Efficacy for instructional strategies (e.g. To what extent can you
use a variety of assessment strategies? a ¼ 0.79), Efficacy for class-
room management (e.g. How much can you do to control disruptive
behaviour in the classroom? a ¼ 0.90), and Efficacy for student
c2 (df) CFI TLI RMSEA (90% C.I.) SRMR
506.45* (124) .968 .937 .055 (.050, .060) .022
638.95* (172) .960 .945 .052 .031
(.047, .056)
667.35* (184) .959 .947 .051 (.047, 055) .031
699.63* (194) .957 .947 .051 .036
(.047, .055)
765.65* (198) .952 .942 .053 .042
(.049, 057)
engagement (4 items, e.g. How much can you do to help your stu-
dents value learning? a ¼ 0.78). Teachers responded on a 9 e point
scale (1 ¼ nothing, 3 ¼ very little, 5 ¼ some influence, 7 ¼ quite a
bit, and 9 ¼ a great deal.
7. Results and discussion
As expected, the four facets of teacher anger included in this
research showed theoretically meaningful relations with the other
variables assessed in this study, including gender and work
experience.
As shown in Table 5, there was a tendency for females to report
more anger with parents and colleagues, and for increased anger
across teaching years, however those effects were all quite small in
size. More importantly, all facets of teacher anger were positively
correlated with surface acting, that is, that is, hiding true emotions
and faking expected ones. This is in line with previous research on
teachers’ anger regulation (Taxer & Frenzel, 2015; Buri c et al., 2019)
as well as with implicit emotional display rules of teaching pro-
fession (e.g. Sutton, 2007; Sutton et al., 2009; Yin & Lee, 2012).
Those correlations were significant but small in size and the size of
the association was considerably smaller for anger triggered by
characteristics of educational system. Deep acting was largely un-
related to teacher anger; only teacher anger evoked by students
was marginally negatively related to deep acting. This implies that
teachers who invest more effort to really experience and show
emotions they are expected to, tend to experience less anger in
relation to their students, but this does not relate to their anger
with respect to parents, colleagues, or the educational system.
Furthermore, in line with expectations, teacher anger proved to
be related to poorer well-being in terms of job satisfaction and
emotional exhaustion. Teachers who reported to typically experi-
ence more anger related to students, parents, colleagues, and
educational system, reported to be less satisfied with their job;
which is in accordance with previous findings (Macdonald, 1999).
In addition, teacher anger, across contexts, was positively associ-
ated with emotional exhaustion. These links were considerable in
size, emphasizing once again the crucial role of teachers’ negative
emotional experiences, specifically anger experiences, for teacher
burnout (Carson, 2006; Chang, 2009; 2013).
Finally, teacher anger was negatively associated with self-
efficacy. These associations are in line with previous empirical ev-
idence on the relationship between self-efficacy and affective ex-
periences (e.g. Buri
c & Macuka, 2018; Chemers, Hu, & Garcia, 2001).
The present research extends these findings, though, as there is a
clear pattern of teacher anger with respect to students being most
closely related with teachers' self-efficacy, whereas correlations
between the other facets of teacher anger and teacher self-efficacy
were small in size, or zero. This implies that teachers’ experience of
anger related to parents and the educational policy and system
does not undermine their perceived efficacy as teachers.
 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
Table 5
Correlations of teacher anger with emotion regulation, well-being outcomes and self-efficacy.
Facets of tacher anger
Students
Gender .05
Working experience in years .09*
Deep acting -.11*
Surface acting .30**
Emotional exhaustion .53**
Job satisfaction -.41**
Efficacy for instructional strategeis -.35**
Efficacy for classroom management -.39**
Efficacy for student management -.28**
M 2.40
SD .87
Cronbach a .78
*p < .05; **p < .001
8. Conclusions
With the aim to more thoroughly explore teacher anger, its
sources and components, and its relationships with teachers’
emotional labor, their well-being, and self-efficacy, a series of four
studies, based on diverse methodological and analytical approaches
and involving more than 3000 teachers, was conducted. Based on
the results obtained by this line of research, several conclusions can
be drawn.
First, teacher anger is indeed complex and multifaceted
construct. As any other human emotion, it consists of various
distinguishable emotional components e subjective, cognitive,
motivational, expressive, and physiological e which is in accor-
dance with contemporary multi-component definitions of emo-
tions (Harmon-Jones & Harmon-Jones, 2016; Schuman & Scherer,
2014). In addition, teacher anger is evoked by contextual triggers
that go beyond teaching and interacting with students. While most
existing research on teachers' emotions focused primarily on
emotions experienced in relation to students and classroom ac-
tivities (e.g. Buri
c et al, 2018; Frenzel, 2014; Hagenauer & Volet,
2014), data from Study 1 reported herein showed that anger in
teachers is also evoked by a wide variety of situations and events
related to parents, behaviour of colleagues and encounters in the
staff room, as well as by features of educational system and policy.
These results clearly demonstrated that teachers have multiple
goals and tasks at their job. Those are not only related to students,
but also to their colleagues, parents, and educational system. As
proposed by the reciprocal model on causes and effects of teacher
emotions (Frenzel, 2014; Jacob, Frenzel, & Stephens, 2017), situa-
tions and events that teachers perceive as blocking their goals, and
appraisals concerning the responsibility for this goal blockage be-
ing external to them, triggers anger. For example, encounters with
parents who refuse to cooperate with a teacher and persist in
overestimating their child's real capabilities, may block the
achievement of teachers' goal related to keeping positive and
constructive relationships with parents and guardians. Similarly, a
public perception of teachers as working only few hours a day, may
obstruct teachers' goal of being a member of valued profession in
today's society. In sum, the present qualitative study highlighted
the importance of incorporating diverse contextual triggers when
aiming to better understand the emotion of anger among teachers.
Second, our newly developed measure of different facets of
teacher anger presented herein proved to have sufficient conver-
gent and divergent validity, exhibited satisfactory internal consis-
tency and sufficient variations of scores, and resulting scores
demonstrated theoretically meaningful relations to external vari-
ables (i.e. emotional labour, emotional exhaustion, and self-
9
Parents Colleagues Educational system
.16** .10* .07
.12** .13** .10*
-.01 -.05 -.03
.30** .30** .19**
.45** .51** .37**
-.32** -.41** -.23**
-.19** -.17** -.04
-.14** -.11* .06
-.17** -.17** -.06
3.29 2.48 4.00
.84 .84 .78
.75 .80 .73
efficacy). Moreover, the multi-group ESEM analysis showed that
the measure of teacher anger functions equivalently among mid-
dle- and high-school teachers, and that these groups of teachers do
not differ in the level of distinct facets of anger.
Third, the new measure presented herein is short and
economical, with four items for each facet. However, this implied
that the measure did not systematically address all five emotional
components (affective, cognitive, motivational, expressive, and
physiological) within each facet of teacher anger, and it clearly does
not exhaustively cover all potential contextual triggers for teacher
anger. Thus, future research may be directed at expanding the
scales in order to grasp all components in a valid and reliable way.
Alternatively, future research on teacher anger may involve mea-
sures beyond self-report to include the other components, for
example by measuring heart-rates to grasp the physiological
component (e.g. Donker, van Gogh, & Mainhard, 2018), or using
facial emotion recognition for the expressive component.
Finally, teacher anger is related to indicators of teacher well-
being and self-efficacy. All facets of teacher anger were positively
related to surface acting, a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy
(Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011) and emotional exhaustion, a core
component of burnout (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001) as well
as negatively to job satisfaction, indicating that teacher anger may
play an important role in eroding teacher well-being. In addition,
teacher anger was negatively related to teachers’ sense of efficacy
for instructional strategies, classroom management, and student
engagement. It thus seems that teachers who engage in maladap-
tive emotion regulation strategies experience more emotional
exhaustion and more anger, which in turn undermines their self-
efficacy. However, given the correlational nature of our data, such
causal inferences are only speculative and tentative and should be
confirmed in future research that would need to be based on lon-
gitudinal and/or experimental designs in order to establish a true
direction of causation between teacher anger and well-being or
performance indicators.
As another word of caution, when interpreting the findings from
this research program, one has to bear in mind that it heavily relies
on self-report which clearly has its disadvantages such as inac-
curacies in recall or giving socially desirable answers (Pekrun &
Bühner, 2014). To avoid corresponding potential common-method
biases (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003), future
research on teacher anger should involve a greater variety of
assessment methods, including behavioural observations, or
physiological measures. Lastly, future studies on teachers from
different countries and cultures are needed in order to replicate our
findings since teachers’ emotions may are embedded within spe-
cific social-cultural contexts (Liljestrom et al., 2007).
10 I. Buric, A.C. Frenzel / Teaching and Teacher Education 86 (2019) 102895
In conclusion, we hope that the existence of our newly devel-
oped measure of different facets of teacher anger inspires future
investigations on the role of anger in predicting various important
outcomes for both teachers, their students, and quality of education
in general. In addition, the results of this research provide impor-
tant starting points for developing interventions targeted to pro-
mote efficient and adaptive emotion regulation strategies for
teachers. More precisely, negative effects of teacher anger can be
prevented or mitigated by promoting an implementation of effec-
tive emotion regulation strategies targeted at teacher cognitive
appraisals (i.e., deep acting or reappraisal) and/or development of
their professional skills and competencies (Buri c, Penezi
c, & Sori
c,
2017). Such strategies can efficiently help to down-regulate anger
while preserving teacher well-being and sense of efficacy (Buric
et al., 2017; Sutton, 2007). Moreover, teachers are not the only
ones who can influence their anger e changing the features of
educational policies and school organization can also be effective
mean to promote teachers' emotional well-being. For instance,
releasing teachers from excessive administrative workload,
ensuring fair distribution of work tasks in school, or acknowledging
teachers’ efforts and boosting their societal value by promoting and
actively participating in initiatives such as the OECD “World
Teacher Day” (https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/
worldteachersday) or the “Global Teacher Prize” by the Varkey
Foundation (https://www.globalteacherprize.org/) professional
status that would correspond to their level of education and job
complexity, can show useful in preventing and reducing teacher
anger along with its possible adverse consequences for their per-
formance and well-being.
Funding
This research was supported by Croatian Science Foundation
(Grant No. UIP-11-2013-5065).
Appendix
Students-related anger2
1. The reactions of some students frustrate me so much that I
would rather just quit the job.
2. The frustration I feel while working with students undermines
my job motivation.
3. Some students make so angry that my face goes red.
4. I get anger-caused headache from the behaviour of some
students.
Parents-related anger.
1. I feel resistance and anger with parents who overestimate their
children's real capabilities.
2. I feel my pulse speeds up out of anger when a parent tells me
how to do my job.
3. I am annoyed by parents who do not want to accept their child's
real capabilities.
4. I feel revolted towards parents who seem not to “hear” the
teacher.
Colleagues-related anger.
2
The items aimed to assess students-related anger are taken from Teacher
Emotion Questionnaire (TEQ, Buri
c et al., 2018).
1. I wish to yell when I just think about the improper behaviour of
some colleagues.
2. The anger I feel about unequal workloads among the school staff
makes me want to quit my job.
3. My heart pounds faster when I think about certain annoying
colleagues.
4. Unfair distribution of work tasks gets me so frustrated that I
get all sweaty.
Educational system-related anger.
1. I get annoyed because educational regulations and laws are
prescribed by people who have never worked in the school.
2. It infuriates me to think about how little the government invests
in education.
3. I am angry when teaching quality has to suffer from poor ma-
terial working conditions.
4. Increasing demands, but with no changes in status, salary, and
working conditions, make me angry.
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