Emotions, attributions, and identity change when teachers learn drama pedagogy for ELT

ABSTRACT This article investigates the correlation between emotion and eventual identity change of five teachers learning drama for ELT, a project that involved the author as a drama expert and researcher. It argues that the participants' attribution patterns, regulated by their teaching beliefs, lead to particular emotional responses to the teaching situations, which in turn leads to certain teaching behaviours. Identity change is only possible if the emotion-attribution-action pattern is subverted. Such subversion is unlikely to happen unless emotions are expressed and held for reappraisal, and when teachers are emotionally affected from within during the learning and implementation process.