Teachers’ emotions: affection and anger as resources for disciplining

Abstract

This article explores what teachers say, think and feel about the management of discipline in the classroom and how this shapes the behavior and conditions the participation and performance of students. Using interviews, a field notebook and the critical evaluation of key informants, this qualitative study analyzes the practical educational thought (unconscious implicit ideological assumptions) present in the discourse of teachers, and compares such discourse to the dominant educational ideology (formal and imposed knowledge), highlighting the lack of coincidence and coherence between them. Such lack influences relationships in the classroom. The study intended not to discover something new, but to make it visible and to describe the mechanisms involved in it. Thus it confronts the widespread belief that bad classroom climate is due to undisciplined students, since teacher’s reaction determines the resulting relationships. Focusing on affection and anger, it observes how one creates a working environment, which turns these emotions into discipline tools – the first in a preventive manner and the second in a corrective way –, which become one more resource to control student behavior.