Research project Teacher personality, emotion and performance: A dynamic perspective (TEPEPDYN) is funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (Grant No. IP-2019-04-5472) and lasts from 1 January 2020 to 31 August 2024. Principal investigator of the Project is Prof. dr. Irena Burić from the Department of Psychology at the University of Zadar. This research project is a continuation of the installation research project Teachers’ emotions and emotion regulation strategies: Personal and contextual antecedents and effects on motivation, well-being, and relationships with students (Grant No. UIP-2013-11-5065, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation), which was successfully implemented from 2014 until 2017 and led by Prof. dr. Irena Burić.
The aim of this project is to explore the role of emotions and emotional regulation strategies of teachers in explaining their job performance, while taking into account the effects of stable personality traits and changing situational characteristics, but also the dynamic nature of teachers' emotional experiences.
In recent years, there is increase of the research on teachers’ emotions and emotional regulation. It has been recognized that teacher emotions and emotional regulation strategies are related to teacher well-being (Burić & Frenzel, 2019; Burić et al., 2019; Chang, 2013), their job performance (Frenzel, 2009), and student outcomes (Frenzel et al., 2018). Despite these significant insights, several important questions still need to be answered. For example, empirical evidence on the role of teachers’ emotions and emotional regulation in predicting teaching quality and student cognitive, affective, and motivational outcomes are still rare and mostly based on cross-sectional designs that cannot determine underlying causal mechanisms. In addition, since personality traits affect emotions and emotional regulation (Carver &Connor-Smith, 2010) and teacher performance (Kim et al., 2019), research on the role of more stable teacher personality characteristics in predicting their emotional processes and job performance is of great importance. Finally, even though contemporary theories of emotions clearly emphasize their dynamic and malleable nature (e.g., Kuppens, 2015) as well as the dynamic integration of traits, contexts, and current psychological states (e.g., DeYoung, 2015), teachers' emotions and emotional regulation have so far been largely measured as stable traits.
Thus, data from teachers and their students will be collected and sophisticated longitudinal methods will be implemented to identify underlying causal mechanisms that could explain the relationships between teacher personality, emotion, and performance. The results of our research could make a significant contribution theory development, but also serve as a basis for creating practical guideline for improving professional well-being and performance of teachers, which can ultimately contribute to raising the quality of education as a whole.
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