The Reciprocal Relations Between Professional Identity and Teacher Emotions: A Longitudinal Study on Pre-Service and Novice Teachers

Sun Mengmeng; Ji Yajing; Wu Yinlin; Ying Kuilin; Chen Xuhai

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240108

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (1) : 61-69. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240108

The Reciprocal Relations Between Professional Identity and Teacher Emotions: A Longitudinal Study on Pre-Service and Novice Teachers

Sun Mengmeng, Ji Yajing, Wu Yinlin, Ying Kuilin, Chen Xuhai

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Abstract

With the gradual development of education reform, normal university students have become the reserve army of teachers. The new wave of education reform driven by "double reduction" has put forward new requirements for teachers, and it is urgent to further explore the formation mechanism and development characteristics of teachers' professional identity, so as to provide reference for teacher cultivation in the new era. Previous studies have shown that teacher emotions and professional identity are the key factors affecting teacher career development, and pleasant emotional events confirmed their identities and others elaborated the unpleasant emotional events which caused them to confront and adjust their emergent identities. In addition, some studies have found that there was an interactive effect between novice teachers' emotional experience and professional identity. Not only professional identity affects teachers' emotional experience, but also teachers' behaviors and emotions affect the formation of their professional identity.
However, most studies only examine the influence of teachers' professional identity on their emotions or the influence of teachers' emotions on their professional identity. Few studies have investigated their bidirectional relationship. But it is worth noting that Jiang et al. (2021) provided a series of vivid and dynamic pictures for teachers' emotions and professional identity through a three-year longitudinal case study, which revealed the process of creating new or multiple professional identities, and the generation process of teacher emotions could be intertwined and developed together. Therefore, we designed a three-year longitudinal study to investigate the relations between teachers’ professional identity and emotions.
In order to explore the mutual predictive relationship between teachers’ professional identity and positive and negative emotions from junior normal students to novice teachers, four theoretical models are proposed by the method of cross lag analysis. The models are compared with χ²(df), CFI, TLI, RMSEA, and SRMR. Participants were junior normal university students located in various parts of China. Data were collected at three time points in 2018, 2019, and 2020, creating a lag of approximately 1 year. Each participant completed the Professional Identity Scale and the Teacher’s Emotions Scale. After deleting invalid questionnaire, a total of 284 valid questionnaires were obtained. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and Mplus 7.0, including repeated measurement of variance analysis, correlation analysis and path analysis of cross lag model.
The results are as follows: (1) Pearson correlation analysis shows that participants' professional identity, positive and negative emotions all have moderate positive autocorrelation at several time points, indicating that these variables had certain cross-time stability. Participants’ professional identity is positively correlated with positive emotions, but not with negative emotions. (2) Paired sample T test finds that novice teachers’ positive and negative emotions are significantly lower than that during internship. The professional identity score shows a trend of rising first and then falling. One-way repeated measurement ANOVA finds that the main effect of measurement time is significant, and the post-experience comparison shows that the professional identity during internship is significantly higher than that in Time 1 and Time 3, and there was no significant difference between the latter two. (3) Cross-lagged analysis shows that professional identity at Time 1 can positively predict their positive emotions, but not negative emotions at Time 2. Professional identity at Time 2 can positively predict their positive emotions, but not negative emotions at Time 3. Positive emotions at Time 2 can positively predict their professional identity at Time 3, but negative emotions at Time 2 cannot predict their professional identity at Time 3.
Therefore, these results suggested that teacher positive emotions and professional identity had an interactive promoting effect. Teacher education should grasp the critical period of pre-service to novice to enhance teacher professional identity and emotional competence, so as to promote the development of teachers.

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teacher education / teacher emotions / professional identity / cross lagged analysis

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Sun Mengmeng, Ji Yajing, Wu Yinlin, Ying Kuilin, Chen Xuhai. The Reciprocal Relations Between Professional Identity and Teacher Emotions: A Longitudinal Study on Pre-Service and Novice Teachers[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(1): 61-69 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240108

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