Team teachers' lesson-specific emotions and perceived instructional quality-Results of a diary study.

Abstract

Background: Team teaching is a common practice in many schools. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how teachers' positive and negative affect triggered by their team-teaching partners is related to the (perceived) instructional quality.

Aim: Therefore, our goal was to investigate how positive and negative affect correlates with relevant indicators of instructional quality at a situational (i.e., lesson-specific) level and whether spillover effects can be observed from one lesson to the next.

Sample: Forty-seven Austrian teachers participated in this longitudinal study, producing a total of 652 diary entries.

Methods: The teachers wrote diary entries after each team-teaching lesson. They rated their positive and negative affect, as well as four indicators of instructional quality (i.e., time management, clarity, differentiation and teacher-student relationship).

Results: Clear links between teachers' affect and the perceived instructional quality were found at the within-person level. The associations were less strong at the between-person level. Spillover effects were also found, confirming the reciprocity of affect and teaching behavior.

Conclusions: Emotions are evoked not only by students but also by team-teaching partners. It is therefore important to provide teachers who engage in team teaching with training on socioemotional skills (e.g., conflict management, emotional communication).