The Research on Emotion Regulation in Teaching: A Narrative Synthesis of Antecedents, Strategies and Outcomes

Abstract In recent years, many researchers have explored emotion regulation (ER) and emotional labor (EL) in teaching. Yet, although some scholars reviewed the state of the art, they reviewed the research on each concept separately despite the similarity between them and focused on the nature of the research design more than the products of this research. This review aims is to systematically collect, document, scrutinize and critically analyze the current research on ER) and EL in the teacher’s role to unearth the major themes found in this research. Based on narrative synthesis approach, the current review identified three major themes in the literature about ER/EL in teaching: (a) Antecedents of ER/EL, (b) ER/EL strategies, and (c) and varied effects of teachers’ ER/EL. Consistent with professional disciplines, the knowledgebase about ER/EL in teaching is fragmented, inconsistent, and lacks systematic accumulation of knowledge. It focuses mainly on the impact of these emotion strategies and pays little attention to the factors affecting them and the practical aspects of these strategies in the reality. Several empirical insights for future research are provided.