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Emotional Issues in Teaching Science: A Case Study of a Teacher’s Views

Article  in  Research in Science Education · December 2004

DOI: 10.1007/s11165-004-0287-6

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AUTHOR’S PROOF!

© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Emotional Issues in Teaching Science: A Case Study of a Teacher’s Views

Michalinos Zembylas
Michigan State University, USA and Intercollege, Cyprus
Abstract

Science teaching environments are social environments, and teachers’ emotions interact with their
science teaching in powerful ways. To value the teacher is to value the whole person, not just the
intellect. In this paper, a theorization of teacher emotion in science teaching is developed which
illustrates the role of emotion in establishing and maintaining self-esteem in science teaching situa-
tions. From the standpoint of social-constructionist theory of emotion, it is argued that emotion is a
social construction within social relationships. Arising from this view, are the emotions of intellectual
excitement, frustration and shame that play a key role in the development of self-esteem. The dynam-
ics of these emotions, in the context of experiences of success and failure, may dispose teachers to
act positively or negatively towards science teaching. The theorisation developed is illustrated in
the emotional experiences of an elementary school teacher in an early childhood science classroom.
These experiences indicate that emotion is constitutive of teaching, and merits greater consideration
in science teaching.

Key Words: classroom emotional tone, science teaching, self-esteem, shame, social constructionist
theory of emotion, teacher emotion

It is encouraging that in the last few years educators have begun exploring the
relationship between teaching and emotion (e.g., Day & Leitch, 2001; Hargreaves,
1998a, 1998b, 2000; Jeffrey & Woods, 1996; Kelchtermans, 1996; Lasky, 2000;
Little, 1996, 2000; Nias, 1996) and, more specifically, the relationship between sci-
ence teaching and emotion (Barker, 2001; Zembylas, 2001, 2002a; Zembylas &
Barker, 2002). As it has been documented in the research literature, many teachers
feel uncomfortable dealing with some of the emotional aspects of teaching science
(see, e.g., Nichols et al., 1997; Richmond et al., 1998). Even teachers who are com-
fortable discussing their emotions of discomfort and anxiety often feel inadequately
prepared to deal with how they feel (Zembylas, 2002a). Perhaps these reactions are
appropriate to the current situation given the complex relationship between emo-
tion and teaching, on the one hand, and the contemporary pressures, declining job
satisfaction and occupational stress in teaching (see, e.g., Farber, 1991; Troman &
Woods, 2000; Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999), on the other hand.
Studies on teacher emotion emphasise how emotion is inextricably linked to teach-
ers’ lives. What does seem clear is that this interrelationship between teaching and
emotion implies that science teachers should consider the effects of the emotional
components of learning and teaching science in planning effective instruction. In
fact, attention to the role of emotion in science teaching and learning may be needed

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2 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

in order to accomplish the goal of positive attitudes toward science, a goal viewed
by science educators as an important outcome of science teaching (e.g., National Re-
search Council (NRC), 1996; American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS), 1993). Zembylas (2002a) suggested that “If we want progress in science
education, we need to look more carefully at the emotions of science teaching, both
negative and positive emotions, and use this knowledge to improve the working
environment of science teachers,” and that “when the emotional aspects of science
teaching and science teacher development are considered seriously, it is safe to say
that what is at stake in science teacher education and science curriculum reform and
how best to enrich them, will never look the same again” (p. 98).
As researchers investigate the role of emotion in science teaching, how to plan
effective instruction may become more clear to us. In the meantime, teachers are
dealing with emotional issues in one way or another. All teachers notice students’
emotional reactions in the classroom, their own emotional responses to events and
people, and sometimes classes seem to have a particular emotional tone. For the
classroom teacher, the emotional atmosphere in the classroom is as important as
individual emotions (Adams, 1989). In light of this view, it should be apparent that
the process of negotiating a classroom emotional tone is one in which the teacher
and students together interactively constitute the activity system that constrains or
encourages their individual actions.
In this article, I discuss some findings of a case study investigating the views of an
elementary school teacher (Catherine) on the emotional issues involved in science
teaching. Catherine participated in a three-year ethnographic project that explored
the role of emotions in her science teaching. I will argue that it seemed natural to
Catherine to reflect on her emotions and thoughts as she planned, carried through,
and evaluated her instruction. The purpose of this paper is to present ideas about
how emotions affect successes and failures in science teaching. Most importantly
here, a theorisation of teacher emotion in science teaching is developed to illustrate
the role of emotion in establishing and maintaining a teacher’s self-esteem. This is
particularly significant given the existing documentation that elementary teachers
often lack confidence in their science knowledge and skills and thus avoid teaching
science (e.g., Nichols & Tippins, 2000; Zembylas & Barker, 2002).
In the first part of the article, I discuss some of the current research in this domain
and the theoretical framework of this study. After the description of the case study
and methodology, I attempt to illustrate how emotions were used in Catherine’s case
to modify science instruction, presenting examples of analyses of the emotional tone
in her classroom as well as the formulation of positive and negative emotions in the
classroom social context. Finally, I consider possible implications of this analysis
on the emotional issues of science teaching in terms of consequences for teacher
self-confidence.

Teacher Emotions, Science Teaching, and Social Context

Several authors argue that emotional issues in teaching have long been under-
represented themes in research on teaching and teachers (Nias, 1996; Zembylas,

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 3

2002a). It is surprising that the role of emotion in teaching has remained largely
unexamined and certainly undervalued in the education literature, despite every-day
experiences in which teachers are delighted or frustrated by various events or people.
It appears that emotions can be powerful in encouraging and inhibiting effective
teaching, but educational research and models of teaching have shed little light on the
interrelationships between emotions and teaching. Even accounts of teacher emotion
have been accorded scant attention until recently, due in no small part to the legacy of
dualism, which has opposed reason to emotion, and accorded reason the high status
inscribed in Western thinking. Embedded in Western culture is the assumption that
emotions threaten the disembodied, detached, and neutral knower; consequently, as
it is suggested, emotions do not offer any valid knowledge.
The neglect of an exploration of teacher emotion is also due in part to the domi-
nation of cognitive psychology over educational research until the past two decades,
and the difficulty in capturing the emotional components of teaching for research pur-
poses. Educational research is now increasingly looking to the social sciences – for
example, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies – for frameworks
with which to understand teaching in its broader socio-cultural contexts
(Zembylas, 2002b).
Emotion as social construction (Harré, 1986) is a particularly useful view in that
it focuses on how people make sense of their emotional experiences. Central to the
social constructionist perspective on emotions is the idea that “the experience and
expression of emotions is dependent on learned convictions or rules and that, to the
extent that cultures differ in the way they talk about and conceptualize emotions,
how they are experienced and expressed will differ in different cultures as well”
(Cornelius, 1996, p. 188). The term “constructivist,” as Averill (1980) explains, has
a double meaning: first, it means that the emotions are social constructions, not ge-
netically determined, and second, it means that emotions are improvisations, based
on an individual’s interpretation of a particular situation.1 Harré (1986) points out
that an emotion can be seen only in how this or that person uses the emotion in their
culture. The behavior associated with anger, for example, differs across people, con-
texts and occasions; the same observed behavior is interpreted differently depending
on the circumstances, according to how someone is appraising a situation (Lazarus,
1991; Stocker, 1996).
Recent work on teacher emotion in science education (Barker, 2001; Zembylas,
2001, 2002a; Zembylas & Barker, 2002) is useful in foregrounding the emotional
context of teaching. Zembylas (2001, 2002a) argues that positive and negative emo-
tions play a significant role in a teacher’s construction of her science pedagogy,
curriculum planning and relationships with children and colleagues. He emphasises
how the emotional aspects of the science teacher-self in becoming or being a science
teacher, the acquisition and use of pedagogical approaches, and the application of
professional judgment in practice are inextricably linked. Similarly, Zembylas and
Barker’s (2002) study examines the power of analytical tools such as individual
spaces and community conversations in creating spaces of emotional comfort that
support the efforts of preservice teachers to become reflective practitioners. This

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4 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

study highlights the significance of creating emotionally supportive environments

for the development of positive attitudes and professional knowledge of preservice
teachers. By understanding preservice teachers’ attitudes and emotions and the re-
lationship of these to their understanding of science and science teaching, Zemby-
las and Barker point out, we will be in a better position to design more effective
programs and create supportive environments to recruit and retain more teachers.
In the literature, the emotion of shame has become prominent in recent years
(Bartky, 1990; Frijda, 1986, 1994; Markus & Kitayama, 1994). Scheff (1997) and
Bartky (1990) describe the way in which shame generates alienation and marginal-
isation. As an emotion it functions as a strong indicator of acceptance and rejection
by those one looks to for recognition. Bartky (1990) theorises “shame” arguing that
it is one of the patterns of mood or feeling that tend to characterise women more than
men. To say this, she explains, it does not imply that shame is gender-specific; “it is
only to claim that women are more prone to experience the emotion in question and
that the feeling itself has a different meaning in relation to their total psychic situation
and general social location than has a similar emotion when experienced by men”
(1990, p. 84). Shame may be a mark of powerlessness in a pervasive sense of personal
inadequacy. Shame is significant in a teacher’s experience as it is fundamental in the
formation of a teacher’s confidence, anxiety and fear (Bibby, 2002). It is central in
the construction of teacher self-esteem, and so is significant in the theorization of
emotion and science teaching.
Salzberger-Wittenberg, Henry, and Osborne’s (1983) much cited study illustrates
this issue. In undertaking the study, the researchers argued that a better understanding
of the nature of the emotional factors that enter into the process of learning and
teaching would help both teachers and students “to work towards a more fruitful rela-
tionship” (p. ix). As part of their study, Salzberger-Wittenberg et al. (1983) analysed
the teachers’ own emotional reactions in terms of transference onto themselves of
the early experiences of hope and fear, love and rejection, that they had experienced
in relation to authority figures. The emotions central in early teaching experiences
were seen to continue actively into the present. The implication of this study is that
if self-esteem is high, one may be disposed to act with the confidence of positive
expectation. This link between social relationships and confident expectation is a
central element in the view of emotion and teaching proposed here.
Barbalet (1998) argues that self-confidence has a basis in particular experiences
of social relationships – those situations in which a person receives acceptance and
recognition. Conversely, anxiety, frustration, fear and shame have their basis in situa-
tions in which a person is denied acceptance or recognition. Confidence functions in
opposition to emotions such as, anxiety, frustration and shame – emotions that may
be accompanied by inactivity and isolation. “All action,” Barbalet contends, “is based
upon that confidence which apprehends a possible future” (1998, p. 82). Confidence
is the “affective basis of action and agency” (p. 88), for it foreshadows a willingness
to act. As teaching arises in a situation in which we “do not as yet know” or are “as
yet unable to achieve what we aim to do” (Salzberger-Wittenberg et al., 1983, p. 54),
all teaching invariably involves uncertainty, hope and fear.

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 5

The possibility of teaching with confidence or a sense of certainty in the myriad

moments of the unknowable future in the classroom springs from experiences of
social relationships, both past and present. This may be modeled as follows:

Figure 1: Relationships with others give rise to self-confidence or shame and

construct the disposition towards teaching taken by an individual.

This model suggests relationships with teachers, colleagues, students, adminis-

tration and parents as giving rise to self-confidence or shame. Accompanying these
emotions are positions of solidarity or isolation and are the basis of decision-making,
conscious or unconscious, about immediate or future action (Ingleton, 1999). Ac-
tion in this case refers to the disposition towards teaching taken by an individual.
This model is illustrated below in the analysis of Catherine’s experiences of science
teaching in her classroom.

Overview of the Case Study

The data on which this article is based are drawn from a study of the emotions of
Catherine’s science teaching over a period of three years. I engaged in this research
project in a multiage classroom of first and second graders at a multi-ethnic ele-
mentary school of 400 students, located in a medium-size university city in Illinois.
My teacher-participant, Catherine Myers, was an experienced early childhood and
elementary educator. She was teaching for 25 years, and worked with children from
the kindergarten through fifth grade. For the last ten years she taught multiage classes
of kindergarten and first grade, or first and second grade.
For the first two years of the study, from January 1997 through July 1998, Cather-
ine taught kindergarten and first grade, and first and second grade, that is, she fol-
lowed the same students for a second year; in the third year (September 1998–
July 1999), she had all new students of first and second grade. A university fac-
ulty who described her as “an exceptional teacher who is enthusiastic about science

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6 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

teaching and who makes children feel excited about learning science” recommended
Catherine to me. Catherine has been honored in many ways including a PTA Hon-
orary Life Membership, A Disney American Teacher, and an Outstanding Educator
Award from the Regional Office of Education. She presented at numerous state re-
gional and national conferences informing the public and professional community
about her in-depth integrated approach in science – that is, her interdisciplinary
approach in teaching science.
Although my study began as an exploration of how children’s knowledge was
legitimated in Catherine’s classroom it soon evolved and focused on the role of
emotions in her science teaching, after we both discovered our common interest in
investigating the emotional aspects of teaching. My role evolved from a “participant-
observer” at the beginning of the study to a “participant-collaborator” by the end
of the study (Merriam, 1998). During the latter phase, I helped in planning lessons,
and in organizing and managing classroom activities in response to the needs and
interests of Catherine and her students. I felt that my presence as a collaborator in
her classroom was able to make a meaningful contribution to her professional life
and made her feel more comfortable to share how she felt about her teaching role,
her students, her pedagogy, the emotional politics at the school, etc.
My discussions with Catherine about the role of emotions in science teaching led
us to raise various questions, some of which are addressed here: (1) How is the class-
room emotional tone negotiated between the teacher and her students? (2) How are
the teacher’s positive and negative emotions constructed and what are the influences
for her sense of self-confidence in teaching science?

Methodology

To explore the above questions, a combination of two methodologies was used.

First of all, I chose a qualitative, ethnographic methodology (Miles & Huberman,
1994; Denzin, 1997), as the basis for the data collection and analysis. I chose to study
Catherine’s case over a long period (three years) to draw attention to the multiple
complexities of what specifically can be learned from a single case study (Stake,
1994, 1995) about how emotions are formulated historically and what implications
they have for one’s science teaching.
Second, the methodology of “memory-work” was also used – as inspired by the
work of the German feminist scholar Frigga Haug (1987) – to elicit memories about
Catherine’s past emotions. Haug successfully used this method to study female sex-
uality, and Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault, and Benton (1992) employed it in re-
searching emotions. Memory-work was particularly successful in exploring the lived
experience of individuals within the social relationships in which they “produce their
lives,” in order to understand the social construction of aspects of self-identity (Haug,
1987) and gender (Crawford et al., 1992). This method offers a way of exploring
one’s experiences as they are socially constructed through various events as they are
remembered. For example, in my study these events refer to things that happened

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 7

in the classroom or at the school; the focus in this exploration was on Catherine’s
reflections about these events either through her own self-reflections or through the
discussions we had together. The texts of memory-work, then, were both written
texts as well as narrated conversations. Although my approach is not exactly a repli-
cation of “memory-work,” there are significant similarities and shared theoretical
assumptions.
In memory-work, researchers make the assumption that what is remembered is
significant, problematic, unfamiliar or in need of review (Crawford et al., 1992).
The assumption underlying the methodology is that “memories are subjectively sig-
nificant events which play an important part in the construction of self” (Crawford
et al., 1992, p. 37). A memory is seen as “a construction of a real event in time: a
construction that changes with reflection over time” (p. 10). It is not the event which
is important so much as the meaning that is negotiated in the remembering, the search
for intelligibility in the construction of one’s life narrative. Through memories, past
experiences are used to evaluate the present, and structure future actions.
Both memory-work and ethnographic methodologies enable engagement with the
past and the present (Crawford et al., 1992) in that they describe what events, deci-
sions, and actions are significant to Catherine. Her self-reflections of something that
occurred recently in her classroom or previously in her past provide an important
point of departure for understanding Catherine’s emotions. Also, both methodolo-
gies allow an investigation of how one’s self is socially constructed through one’s
emotions. The construction of accounts on events and the reflections on them tell
us something about the ways Catherine relates to the social context in her class-
room. The continual reconstruction of memories and reflections is the means that
provide meanings to Catherine’s pedagogy, an active effort to make sense of her
lived experience.

Data Sources

The data sources from this study were field observations, in-depth interviews, and
collection of documents of all kinds. The data consisted of interview transcripts,
field notes and videotapes from observations, an Emotion Diary (in which Catherine
wrote how she felt about what happened during the day), and various documents such
as lesson plans, philosophy statements, children’s worksheets and school records.
I estimated that during the three years I worked with Catherine, I spent over about
200 hours at her classroom observing her teaching, and approximately 45 hours of
interviews with her. These estimates do not include telephone conversations, social
occasions and occasional discussions outside school. I tape-recorded each interview,
and I videotaped my observations. I kept a careful log of visits with complete field
notes of what I saw and heard that I typed soon after a visit to Catherine’s classroom
or an interview with her. I used the data gathered to guide future data collection and
analysis, and further the analysis of the role of emotives in Catherine’s teaching and

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8 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

pedagogy. This analysis emphasised the discovery of patterns in Catherine’s actions

and emotional expressions.

Procedures

It should be noted that in this study students were not explicitly interviewed to
elicit their emotions concerning their learning and their teacher’s emotional
responses, although Catherine’s interactions with students were part of the study.
Catherine participated in the study from January 1997 to July 1999. The days se-
lected for observation were based on when Catherine taught explicit science lessons
– usually twice or three times a week for approximately fifty minutes each time.
However, it should be emphasised that Catherine advocated interdisciplinary teach-
ing, thus in essence she taught integrated units. Therefore, although she planned
short activities in science almost on an every day basis, I was present only when she
taught science lessons “explicitly.” On the other hand, it was not uncommon for me
to be present in other lessons as well, especially when an activity followed a science
lesson. Over the three years of the project, I got to know the children well, learned
the rhythms of the classroom, and watched Catherine in action.
My visits in Catherine’s classroom lasted approximately two hours and included
an hour of observations and an hour of open-ended interviews with her. During my
observations, I wrote notes, which I later compiled with the aid of the audiotapes
and videotapes into a narrative record of each observation. In these records, I made
sure that the sequence of activities and interactions were preserved. My field notes
were devoted primarily to descriptions of the activities, observations of Catherine
and children’s responses to and experiences with these activities, reflections on my
own reactions in the activities, description of Catherine’s roles, how she seemed to
feel, and preliminary analyses of what I was seeing. I looked for examples of the role
of emotions – for example, excitement, anxiety, disappointment, satisfaction and so
forth – recording specific anecdotes where appropriate. During the open-ended inter-
views we had, we went into greater depth into what happened in the classroom but
we also covered other topics such as her family and educational history, educational
philosophy and practices, reflections on students and so on.

Analysis

Interview transcripts were analysed using qualitative coding procedures as out-

lined by Strauss and Corbin (1990), along with other organisational tools suggested
by Miles and Huberman (1994). I began with “open coding” by placing concep-
tual labels on selected segments of transcripts to represent the preliminary themes
emerging from the data. I then grouped these conceptual labels under broader cat-
egories, resulting in several major themes (“axial coding”). Rather than building a
single storyline as suggested by Strauss and Corbin (1990), for the purposes of this

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 9

study it seemed more useful to think holistically about the data, focusing on the
identification of major factors and experiences that appeared to contribute to the
formulation of emotives. A constant comparative approach was taken to build and
confirm emerging theory (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). My interpretations of the major
factors and experiences that appeared to contribute to the formulation of emotions in
Catherine’s science teaching are presented below.

Findings

To illustrate the major categories of emotional issues influencing Catherine’s sci-

ence teaching, I will draw some examples from the study. These examples are organ-
ised around two themes: (1) Negotiating classroom emotional tone, and (2) Positive
and negative emotions in science teaching. Each theme will be discussed below.

Negotiating Classroom Emotional Tone

Within a culture in general and a local social context, such as an elementary sci-
ence classroom, in particular, certain emotions are constructed and even warranted
(Armon-Jones, 1986). Catherine capitalised on the constructionist aspect of emotions
by revealing how she felt in order to teach children that they could feel free to express
how they felt. For example, the children were often asked to describe their thoughts
and emotions, as they were working on an investigation. Catherine was adamant
that the process of explaining their thoughts and emotions helped children “become
aware of the role played in a scientific investigation by their emotions.” She explained
that, “By understanding how I feel and how kids feel, I am better able to build an
emotionally and intellectually supportive learning environment.” As she put it during
one of our conversations:

I use my emotions in my teaching in terms of communicating to children how I feel about a learning
experience. If I’m excited about something or frequently even apprehensive I want to let kids know and be
aware of that; that’s part of communicating how I feel. And often an excitement excites them, too; trying
to stimulate emotions in children, to heighten their learning.

For a teacher, an approach like this can be a rich source of information about
emotional responses to science investigations – both the students’ as well as his or
her responses. It seems therefore important that teachers pay careful attention to
the emotional tone that the teacher and children mutually construct when science
learning occurs in the classroom. I will in fact argue that it was because Catherine and
her students established a supportive emotional learning environment that contrast
sharply with those of typical classrooms that I observed generally excitable emotions
in their science learning during the three years of my study.
When Catherine was teaching, her fascination for science was obvious from her
facial expressions and body language. Frequently, she would warmly smile at the

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10 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

children, change the tone of her voice modulating it with enthusiasm and excitement.
This excitement was also reflected in children’s responses. “Ooh,” “Aah,” “Wow!”
“This is awesome!” “Oh, my gosh! Look at that!” were frequent expressions of chil-
dren in Catherine’s class. Such emotional responses had always given me the sense
of a celebration, what seemed like they were taking a joyful journey in discovering
the wonders of this world. Occasions when the children rushed excitedly to Catherine
to tell her about their solution to a personally challenging question during an investi-
gation served to sustain and endorse the emotional tone that Catherine had attempted
to nurture. In effect, these emotions served the social function of helping to keep an
emotionally supportive classroom culture in doing science. The emotional sentiment
of Catherine and children’s actions indicated the significance they attributed to this
culture.
Catherine described the ways she became aware of children’s emotions and how
she considered them in planning her science instruction:

I can’t say, “Gee, I know how they feel.” I do try to observe and pay attention to facial expressions, to the
tone of voice, to body movements, to the degree of involvement, to things such as, do they choose to come
back to an activity? Do they share what happened with other people or are they reluctant to talk about
their experience afterwards? I watch the interactions of what’s going on with the group and how they are
responding to each other and how are they supporting each other or when there is a need for somebody to
have the answer sometimes and to show everybody else. I do ask them questions about: “Did you enjoy
this; what did you find frustrating; what did you find out from this, or even asking, would you like to find
out more?” Those are all ways to get some sense about their feelings . . .

Considerations of students’ emotional reactions emphasize the claim that emotions

occur within a local social context. This point is crucial to my analysis because
Catherine actively attempted to place the children within a classroom emotional
culture that differed markedly from those of typical classrooms. In other words,
Catherine and the children mutually established an empathetic understanding (Zem-
bylas, 2002a), a nonverbal “resonance” that allowed for empathetic communication.
This could be identified in the regularities or patterns that occurred in classroom
social relationships. For the most part, these patterns were constructed in the course
of interactions and were negotiated by Catherine and her students. By analyzing
these patterns, one could infer the largely implicit emotional rules (Zembylas, 2002a,
2002b) constructed in the local social context within which Catherine and her stu-
dents taught and learned science – the rules that Catherine and her students accepted
in particular situations as to how to express appropriately particular emotions. In
other words, emotions played a role in the development and re-negotiation of emo-
tional rules that regulated emotional activity in such situations as a classroom during
science instruction.
For example, because of the accepting and supportive emotional culture in the
classroom, children did not become embarrassed or defensive but might simply say,
“I don’t know” or “I disagree with my classmate.” It was immediately apparent
that Catherine accepted all answers in a completely nonevaluative manner, but she
would always ask children to justify their thoughts. Her intention, as she pointed

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 11

out frequently, was “to encourage the children to verbalize their thoughts and feel-
ings.” Her role was to initiate and guide a genuine scientific dialogue between the
students. She made it possible by capitalizing on students’ contributions and excite-
ment. Thus, rather than funneling the children’s excitement, she took her lead from
their excitement and encouraged them to build on each others’ contributions as she
guided explorations about science. As a result, the scientific meanings and practices
institutionalized in the classroom were not decided in advance by Catherine but,
instead, emerged during the course of conversations and investigations characterized
by a genuine commitment to empathetic understanding. In addition, the children, as
she argued, “were more likely to believe that one succeeds in science by attempting
to make sense of things that are exciting to them and less likely to believe that success
comes from following what the teacher says.”
In summary, Catherine and her students’ emotional responses not only contributed
but actually played a role in their mutual construction of a supportive emotional tone
in the classroom. For Catherine, emotions were not isolated events in her teaching or
her students’ learning, but they seemed to be a natural part of classroom life. Emo-
tions, as Catherine pointed out, entered the science curriculum in any experience in
which explicitly or implicitly she and the students saw themselves, the world around
them, and their place within the world. Emotions were situated in experiences that
expressed values, beliefs, judgments, attitudes, interests, needs, preferences, and de-
sires. Catherine carefully considered how her own emotions as well as her students’
emotions might influence her curriculum planning and decisions – from concerns
about what and how to study a science topic, to ways emotions influence everyday
actions and decisions. Further, she was seriously concerned with how emotions arise
in her classroom, and what they mean for her pedagogy and her students’ emotional,
social, and personal development.

Positive and Negative Emotions in Science Teaching

To illustrate the process of social construction of positive and negative emotions

in Catherine’s science teaching, I have extracted from the data some partial accounts,
in the forms of vignettes, of science investigation episodes that took place between
Catherine and her students during small-group and whole-class discussions or the
discussions I had with her during interviews.

Vignette 1: Excitement and wonder

Around the middle of the school year during the second year of my study, Cather-
ine and her second-grade students were exploring the growth of triops.2 There was
a certain degree of mystery and excitement about observing triops, since this was
their second trial to hatch them after the first one failed earlier that month. At the
beginning of the year the children examined the hatching of chicks; therefore, on
this particular day they began a discussion about the differences between hatching

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12 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

chicks and hatching triops. This was not something that Catherine had intended to do,
as she explained later, but since one child suggested, “the triops grow quicker than
the chicks,” more children wanted to share their ideas about the differences between
the triops and chicks. An exciting atmosphere began gradually to emerge and cen-
tered on children’s efforts to find as many differences as they could while Catherine
was documenting their ideas on the board. The following conversation illustrates the
development of excitement and wonder during the whole-class discussion.

John: The triops grow quicker than the chicks.

Karla: Yeah! It takes 21 days for chicks to hatch. It’s supposed to take only three days for triops [to
hatch].
Catherine: Karla, why are you saying, “it’s supposed to take only three days”?
Karla: Because we haven’t tried it yet. That’s what the flyer says [She points at the flyer that was
given to all the children and had information about hatching triops].
Andrew: There are other differences between growing triops and growing chicks.
Jason: Yeah! There are many differences! [Several other children say “yeah, yeah”].
Catherine: OK. Great! What are some other differences between hatching triops and hatching chicks?
John: We need to give food to the triop eggs.
Catherine: Wonderful idea! Can you say more about this?
[... ]
Lisa: (to Catherine) Ms. Myers, is it safe to touch the triops?
Catherine: What do you think? (Looking at the whole class).
Jonathan: I don’t think it’s safe. The triops have whiskers (he points at the whiskers on the picture that
Catherine showed them earlier) that might electrocute you, you know?
Andrew, Alison and James (together): Wow!
James: That’s cool!!

Catherine seemed very excited as the children began asking questions how to han-
dle triops, and she encouraged them to express their ideas emphasizing tactfully at
the same time that they needed to justify those ideas. The above discussion carried on
for much longer than expected and as Catherine reflected after class the children were
clearly excited about this project and had several ideas about how to proceed. After
this episode, we discussed how the development of wonder and excitement affected
her pedagogical decisions, such as the decision to allow more time for discussion and
exploration – which, at the end, became a conscious effort to intensify the feeling of
excitement.

I sensed the excitement building around this and I wanted to find ways to push that [ . . . ] Over the years,
I’ve become much more aware of the excitement, and yet again when it happens, I’m trying to understand
why was that so exciting? What really made that experience so wonderful? I still go back and reflect further
and frequently for me it is partly, in my experience, how it was similar to or different from something
that happened to me when I was younger or last week – as well as how fascinating it was to see kids
being engaged, so I was engaged, too. By expressing my excitement and by seeing kids expressing theirs,
I become even more excited!

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 13

This episode illustrates one of the many ways in which excitement and wonder for
science teaching directly or indirectly influenced Catherine’s pedagogical decisions
and actions. Her excitement “pushed” her towards one particular choice among oth-
ers such as, extending the time for activities or following the children’s suggestions
for an investigation when she sensed that the children were so immersed in what
they were working on. Accepting the children’s contributions and immersion into
what they were interested in was an important aspect of creating an emotional sup-
portive atmosphere in Catherine’s classroom. “I love encouraging them to explore
new things, to discover things for themselves, and to express their feelings and ideas
in science in a variety of ways,” as she said.
Furthermore, Catherine admitted that when the children were all joyful in the
classroom, she had the sense that they were somehow more “imaginative,” perhaps
because they felt they could explore whatever they wished to do and there were no
boundaries to their visions. The emotional rewards of teaching science in an intellec-
tually and emotionally exciting atmosphere – for example, through sharing emotions
and ideas, giving and receiving affection and respect, discussing and experimenting
together, enjoying meaningful and interesting activities, taking on new challenges,
and so forth – seemed to be some of the most important sources of excitement in
Catherine’s science teaching. Building and maintaining such positive emotions was
at the heart of Catherine’s science teaching, and of what made her take pride in these
achievements.
Catherine’s approach drew on a sense of wonder and excitement but it did not
ignore children’s conceptual learning. Her emphasis on connectedness – seeking
connections to ideas, to the world, such as in the discussion about growing triops and
chicks – was not only at the level of “feeling good about learning”; it also came from
a desire to understand the world. Conceptual understanding is certainly a worthy
goal for science education; however, another important aspect of science learning
that is often ignored when the emphasis is put on conceptual learning is “emo-
tional understanding” (Denzin, 1984) – how people experience the world emotion-
ally. Catherine seems to know very well that conceptual and emotional understanding
are intertwined. As she points out,

[O]ne of the things that to me is really important is that children get a chance to experience and to feel the
world around us. That just seems to be really important to give kids a chance to fool around with it and
share how they feel for what they are doing. I encourage them to experience and feel science. [ . . . ] This
is how they will be able to understand . . . conceptually . . . the connectedness in the world.

A critique of an earlier draft of this article suggested that perhaps conceptual

learning was ignored. The importance of conceptual understanding is certainly not
discounted; I contend, however, that Catherine’s emphasis on connectedness allows
for both conceptual and emotional understanding to be conveyed by the experiences
her students acquire. A celebration of wonder and excitement in Catherine’s class-
room works because conceptual learning is already at the center of her pedagogy. In
the example shared earlier, the children were engaged in the activity from the very
beginning.

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14 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

Vignette 2: Frustration and disappointment

Oatley (1992) argues that a negative emotion occurs when the probability of
achieving a goal decreases and one realizes that an important goal cannot be fulfilled.
The following vignette illustrates a continuing source of frustration and disappoint-
ment for Catherine: her conflict with other colleagues regarding the prevalent school
philosophy of “teaching-to-the-test.”
As Catherine said on the very first day we met: “I am appalled by this obsession for
testing! It kills inspiration and love for [science] learning. And it kills me too!” This
conflict consisted in the fact that Catherine strongly disagreed with the explicit value
of efficiency in educational products represented in the massive obsession for better
test results in standardized examinations, and the cultivation of relevant “proper”
virtuous roles for the teacher (for example, as someone who prepared students to
pass tests). On the contrary, Catherine believed that teaching and learning science
should be intellectually inspiring, not fixed at or determined by tests. As mentioned
earlier, Catherine taught science through long-term, in-depth integrated investiga-
tions focused on topics that the children chose at the beginning of the year. This
intense conflict with the “teaching-to-the test” approach, as it will be shown later,
was a major source of “shame” and low self-confidence for Catherine, because it
forced her to question and even doubt her own values and ideas. As she reflected:

I remember as a young teacher I often felt so much discomfort and shame, because my ideas were not
appreciated. I felt that my feelings were ignored or dismissed by my colleagues. [ . . . ] And this made me
feel a tremendous sense of disempowerment. Recognizing that my ideas and feelings lacked appreciation
made me feel even more discouraged.

Catherine felt disappointed and frustrated because her priority goals in teaching
science were in conflict with the priorities of her school. Seeking out to accomplish
her goal, as she had been doing all these years, exposed her to open rejection – and
thus to the fact she did not embrace the school’s goals – especially when most of
her colleagues considered testing as a priority. Submitting to the others’ goal might
have ended the conflict but required the sacrifice of a moral ideal and Catherine
made it clear that she would never do that. Resisting, though, all these years meant
implicating herself in a lot of emotional suffering.
As Catherine described, during her early years of teaching many of the other
teachers attacked her for being different and for not teaching the way everyone
else was. A young Catherine was encouraged (or rather forced) by the school social
norms that offered rewards and penalties to develop a particular teaching approach in
science. This conflict of values and ideals was an emotionally devastating experience
for Catherine. As she said: “I constantly felt like a failure. [ . . . ] During those days,
I felt like crying all the time, feeling guilty of what I was doing. I thought I was a
lousy teacher for not doing what everyone else was doing. I constantly questioned my
approach [ . . . ] and I still do.” Catherine described in details how she felt alienated
and dismissed by her colleagues; this feeling of dismissability hit at the heart of her

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 15

self-confidence and self-esteem and led her to question her teaching philosophy and
her values.
The turning point in Catherine’s career occurred when she taught kindergarten
some fifteen years ago. It was then that she saw for the first time how she and her
young students could articulate their own views as felt not merely as thought. “When
I went to kindergarten to teach,” said Catherine:

I felt comfortable for the first time talking about my feelings and my ideas. I felt I didn’t need to know all
the answers. Also, going to kindergarten I recognised the incredible need that everything had to be hands-
on. Feeling comfortable for the first time to say to my students, “I don’t have all the answers,” opened the
doors for a deeper reflection on my feelings, my teaching, and my self-confidence.

Over the years and after considerable emotional labor, Catherine managed to break
herself free of the restraints imposed by others at her school. It seemed that the
best resistance to the prevalent school social norms was to create spaces for a sup-
portive emotional culture in her classroom, both for herself and for her students –
for example, through empathetic understanding, as analysed earlier. The fact that
students responded positively and ultimately showed satisfactory learning outcomes
– determined not only through the results of mandatory state tests but also through
her own evaluation of the progress in the students’ investigative and thinking skills
– seemed to empower Catherine and her pedagogy. Also, as a result of constantly
accumulating new emotional knowledge about her teaching, Catherine asserted that
gradually she managed to subvert feelings of shame and low self-esteem and feel
more free emotionally. As she explained:

I don’t think I had a broad enough understanding of how I could break free from all the restraints around
me back when I was a young teacher. [ . . . ] Maybe it was when I freed up to ‘Oh, I see that science
is everything I do! OK!’ Probably the biggest thing was just self-confidence. And in writing and reading
more about ways to approach the teaching of science and thinking about my ideas and sharing my feelings
with my children and some trusted colleagues. I think all of those experiences with things that made me
feel more comfortable and more confident about ‘Gee, it’s not that I know a great deal more than I knew
ten years ago about individual topics,’ maybe this is about thinking more about what I think and how I feel
it’s important [ . . . ] and seeing how positively kids respond to what we do. This is something that made
me feel more free in a sense [ . . . ] and feel good about what I am doing.

This vignette illustrates that the feeling of frustration and disappointment teachers
commonly experience can be profound and deeply troubling for them (Hargreaves,
2000). Hargreaves refers particularly to the “guilt” that teachers experience in their
work. As it seemed in Catherine’s case, while frustration was a deep personal trouble
for her, it also served as a point of departure for self-reflection, motivation, and
personal and professional growth. This is not to say that the effects of stress and
anxiety cannot discourage and even paralyze a teacher’s work. Nias (1993), for ex-
ample, writes about the “demoralization” of teachers, a feeling that is accompanied
by a strong sense of loss and grief. Consequently, it is extremely useful to watch
how teachers like Catherine deal with their negative emotions and overcome the
undesirable consequences of those emotions.

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16 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

Self-confidence and Shame in Science Teaching: Some Implications

The research questions that motivated this study were: (1) How is the classroom
emotional tone negotiated between the teacher and her students? (2) How are the
teacher’s positive and negative emotions constructed and what are the influences for
her sense of self-confidence in teaching science? The two themes analysed here serve
as examples of the ways in which Catherine capitalised on her own and her children’s
emotions to initiate, negotiate and sustain the mutual construction of a supportive
emotional tone in the science classroom. These themes also exemplify my view
of what constitutes an effective way of dealing with negative emotions and using
positive emotions to create an intellectually and emotionally satisfying atmosphere
in the classroom, despite the often prevailing feelings of frustration, anxiety and
disappointment. The analysis of the positive emotions presented above are consistent
with findings in other disciplines (e.g., see Oatley, 1992; Oatley & Duncan, 1992;
Reddy, 2001) that people become increasingly involved in something when they
become excited and feel good about themselves; negative emotions occur when they
are deprived of the opportunity to think things through for themselves. More far-
reaching implications become apparent when this analysis is related to a theorization
of the role of teacher’s feelings of self-confidence and shame in science teaching. It
should be emphasized, of course, that Catherine’s memories from her early teacher
career are impressions and personal recollections that cannot be checked out but are
the basis of the manner in which she sees how her teaching changed. We do not
know whether her teaching changed to the degree that she imagines that it changed;
nevertheless, these recollections provide a significant source of information about
the evolution of her teaching.
As I have discussed earlier, it seems that shame has been a profound emotion in
Catherine’s early teaching career. One way of describing shame is when one’s self
has been exposed as having some kinds of flaws. In this sense, Bartky’s view of
shame as “profound mode of disclosure both of self and situation” (1990, p. 84) is
valuable in understanding the implications of emotions in Catherine’s science teach-
ing practices. Shame, guilt and low self-esteem were the emotional consequences of
the conflict between Catherine’s values and the school social norms. Her emotional
suffering was characterized by a state of herself as inferior or in some way dimin-
ished. These self-concepts were powerful means in the formulation of emotions,
because they contributed in the constitution of a personal emotional style for her.
A response to feeling shame is often a tendency to hide or get away (Bartky,
1990; Campbell, 1994, 1997). Shame can be a devastating experience characterised
by many negative evaluations of one’s self, and by a sense of worthlessness and pow-
erlessness (Tangney, 1991). Emotional suffering led to Catherine’s withdrawal from
communicating with most of her colleagues coupled with action aimed at managing
appearances; such action took the form of emotion talk and behavior that stimulated
and intensified socially approved feelings and played down or denied deviant ones.
As she explained: “I often had to pretend I felt differently, because I didn’t want
to reveal to them [colleagues] how I really felt. I became pretty good at saying

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 17

and showing I felt one thing, while feeling something totally different. [ . . . ] As
you can imagine, of course, the emotional cost was very high.” These responses
were elements of Catherine’s personal emotional style. Withdrawal, for instance, is
generally considered a widely popular emotional style. But, at the same time, such
efforts by Catherine are to be seen as traces of an attempt to reconfigure her emotions
in a new way.
The most general implication of this work is that the teacher should negotiate the
social context within which she or he teaches science and thus influence his or her
emotions about the teacher’s roles and the nature of science teaching and learning.
Shame and self-confidence are powerful emotions in science teaching because they
are part of social bonding, and the basis of a teacher’s self-identity and self-esteem.
Because they are part of identity building, they are essential to the protection of
self-esteem. In teaching, one works hard at avoiding shame and the lowering of self-
esteem. This may well be a significant basis of the known discomfort that many
elementary teachers feel in teaching science. Uncertainty about one’s ability often
leads people to “self-handicap,” to not do well, or not try, for example, in order to
discount the effect of failure, in the service of maintaining self-esteem (Ingleton,
1999). In order to maintain a sense of acceptance and avoid marginalization, some
elementary teachers may deliberately not value science teaching because they feel
uncertain about their abilities to teach science. Those teachers need a supportive
emotional culture at school to identify the sources of their frustration, anxiety and
disappointment and find ways to deal with them.
Developing an awareness of emotional responses as one of many ways of knowing,
and using the power of emotion as a basis of collective and individual social resis-
tance, teachers can sort their experiences, anxieties, fears, and excitements and learn
how to use emotions in empowering ways. A strategy to increase awareness about
the role of emotions in science teaching and create resistance through the power of
emotion is the encouragement of teachers to engage in (action) research on their own
practices and on the emotional aspects of the self which are inextricably related to
teaching. To challenge dominant views that treat teachers simply as rational agents,
the reflexive teacher needs to connect to, or create with others, resistances in com-
munities whose reflexive self-strategies aim at redefining the normalized identities
of teachers (i.e., what the teacher “is supposed” to do and feel). For such strategies
to have any possibility of being effective they need to be collective.

Conclusion

Emotion is often considered as merely the affective product of teaching, but by

theorising emotion as being formed in social relationships and significant in the
development and maintenance of teacher self-esteem, its role in (science) teaching
is constructed at a much deeper level. As such, emotion may be seen as constitu-
tive of the activity of teaching. Past emotions and memories may be experienced
consciously or unconsciously in the present, and are ongoing in the maintenance

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18 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

of self-esteem and identity. More than the product of individual personalities and
experiences, they are constitutive of social settings that comprise interpersonal re-
lationships of power and control in institutional settings. Emotions shape learning
and teaching experiences for both teachers and students, and the recognition of their
significance merits further consideration in science teaching.
In conclusion, the account presented here on some emotional issues in science
teaching might give us a promising route for science teachers’ efforts to construct
ways to empower themselves and overcome the feeling of personal inadequacy and
powerlessness. Transformation in one’s feelings of shame and low self-esteem occurs
when the emotional salience or power of one’s experiences changes. School dis-
course is embedded in particular images of knowledge, history, power, and agency.
To theorise about self-confidence, science teaching, and teachers’ emotions is to
describe how teachers experience these discourses, how they struggle to reject nor-
mative discourses and how they find their own voice.
Within this discourse of theorising about the emotional issues in science teaching,
teachers may come to discover empowering tools to know their teaching, themselves,
and others. This requires the establishment of what I call emotional affinities with
others, in other words, connections or bonding based on coalitions and friendships.
An attempt to theorize the place of teacher emotion in science teaching may encour-
age science educators to ask such questions as: What are the different ways science
teachers might create emotional affinities? What might motivate science teachers as
individuals and as groups to engage in such coalitions? What might science teachers
(both as individuals and as groups) gain and lose by creating emotional affinities in
their workplace? How might possibilities of reform in the schools and in the teachers’
workplace change as a result of these emotional affinities? All of these and more are
crucial questions to ask, if science educators take seriously the complexities of the
emotional issues embedded in science teaching.

Notes

1. Ernest (1995) points out that social constructionism resembles social construc-
tivism – in that the individual subjects and the realm of the social are regarded as
interconnected – but prioritizes the social above the individual. Prawat and Peterson
(1999) argue that an individual person’s knowledge construction is “constructivist,”
while the creation of culture through social interaction is “constructionist.”
2. The triop is a kind of shrimp, a tadpole shrimp (scientific name = Triop
longicaudatus) inhabits freshwater, ephemeral ponds ranging from 50◦ N latitude
in western North America through Central America and into South America. In the
U.S., triops are found in desert habitats. They live in small pools that accumulate
after flash floods in the summer. Since these pools are rather short-lived, the tadpole
shrimp consequently have short lifespans, completing their life cycles in a mere
20–40 days. However, several companies sell triop eggs that can be hatched for
research and educational purposes.

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 EMOTIONAL ISSUES IN TEACHING SCIENCE 19

Correspondence: Michalinos Zembylas, Intercollege, 46 Makedonitissas Ave.,

P.O. Box 24005, 1700 Nicosia, Cyprus
E-mail: zembylas@msu.edu

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