A Quantitative Exploration of Two Teachers with Contrasting Emotions: Intra-Individual Process Analysesof Physiologyand Interpersonal Behavior

Abstract

Although the association between teacher-student relations,teacher emotions,and burnout has been proven on a general level, we do not know the exact processes underlying these associations. Recently there has beena call for intra-individual process measures that assess what happensfrom moment-to-momentin classin order to better understand inter-individual differences in emotions and burnout between teachers. This paper exploredthe use of processmeasuresof teachers’ heart rate and their interpersonal behavior during teaching. Our aimwas to illustrate different ways of analyzing and combining physiological and observational time-series dataand to explore their potential for understanding between-teacher differences. In this illustration,we focusedon two teachers who representedcontrasting cases in terms of their self-reported teaching-related emotions (i.e., anxiety and relaxation) and burnout. We discuss both univariate process analyses (i.e., trend, autocorrelation, stability) as well as state-of-the-art multivariateprocessanalyses (i.e., cross-correlations, dynamic structural equation modeling). Resultsillustrate how the two teachers differed in the natureoftheir physiological responses, theirinterpersonal behavior,and the association between these two process measuresover time. Along implications and suggestions for further research, it is discussed howthe process-based, dynamic assessment of physiology and interpersonal behavior mayultimately help to understand differences inmore general teaching-relatedemotions and burnout.