Abstract
Blended classroom assessment (CA) has become commonplace in the post-pandemic era, offering advantages but also presenting challenges for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. These challenges can impact teachers’ emotional experiences, distinct from face-to-face or purely online environments. However, scant research exists on how EFL teachers employ emotion regulation (ER) strategies in blended CA within EFL contexts. This qualitative study examines how eight EFL teachers at a university in southwestern China employed ER strategies in blended CA. Drawing on Gross’s ER theory, the study identifies ten intrinsic and extrinsic ER strategies, either antecedent-focused or response-focused, utilized by EFL teachers. These strategies helped teachers maintain resilience amidst challenges posed by blended CA, including low completion rates of online learning tasks prior to face-to-face instruction, interaction in blended CA, blended assessment design, managing the workload of blending online and face-to-face assessment, and addressing issues of plagiarism and cheating. The study enriches our understanding of EFL teachers’ emotions in blended CA and underscores the significance of ER competence in assessment literacy. Implications for equipping teachers with strategies to enhance their emotional well-being and resilience in blended CA are also discussed.
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Notes
Danmu is a subtitle system that originated in Japan and was popularized through video streaming in Mainland China, allowing internet users to post moving comments that are synchronized to the video timeline. In the F2F assessment of the current study, it refers to the practice of using real-time comments on a screen to engage students and gather immediate feedback on their understanding and progress.
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Acknowledgements
We express our gratitude to the three reviewers for their invaluable feedback. Our sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Zhicheng Mao for his constructive suggestions on the initial manuscripts. We extend our thanks to the participants of this study, who generously shared their authentic emotional experiences and discussed their strategies for emotional regulation within their blended assessment practices.
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Appendices
Appendix 1
Guiding Interview Questions (Examples)
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What emotions did you experience when performing blended classroom assessments? (Int1).
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Can you explain why you had the emotions at those moments? (Int1).
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You mentioned different emotional experiences, could you further elaborate on why you had different emotions in online and F2F classroom assessments? (Int2).
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How did you regulate your emotions when giving blended classroom assessments? (Int2).
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Why did you manage your emotions in such ways? (Int2).
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What kinds of emotional support did you have? (Int2).
Appendix 2: Emotion Regulation Strategies in the Coding Scheme
Categories | Codes | Working definition | Interview or email excerpts |
|---|---|---|---|
Intrinsic antecedent-focused | Forecasting (new) | Forecasting is a strategy that teachers use to predict future emotions. | If I thought the task was depressing, or embarrassing in previous classrooms, I’d cut it out in advance. (Jack, Int2) |
Reappraisal | Reappraisal is reevaluation by interpreting the negative emotional impact. | It is the students’ problem if they do not cooperate, and I don’t have to let them affect how I feel about myself. (Helen, Int2) | |
Distraction | Distraction is a strategy teachers use to lessen the impact of their negative emotions by diverting their attention away from a situation. | If something makes me angry or makes me feel like I can’t handle it at the moment, I don’t deal with it temporarily. (Laura, Int2) | |
Intrinsic response-focused | Expressive suppression | Expressive suppression refers to teachers’ efforts to hinder the behavioral expression of felt emotion. | I think I will try my best not to release negative energy to the students. (Helen, Int1) |
Masking | Masking refers to the strategy by which teachers hide the expression of a felt emotion but fake the display of an unfelt emotion. | Sometimes I am quite depressed, but when I enter the classroom, I still have to cover up my feeling. (Penny, Int2) | |
Self-care | Self-care is a strategy teachers use to take care of themselves by attending to physical and emotional aspects of well-being. | I love gardening. Cultivating flowers makes me very happy. (Hank, Int2) | |
Extrinsic antecedent-focused | Empathy | Empathy is a strategy used by teachers to show understanding by putting themselves in students’ shoes. | I wonder why there are so many classes for students nowadays. They have over 30 lessons a week and all kinds of activities… (Sally, Int1) |
Detachment | Detachment refers to teachers’ reluctance to connect with demotivated students on an emotional level. | How could I have time to care about this? Therefore, if students did not respond after I had given feedback, I just left it alone. (Hank, Int2) | |
Extrinsic response-focused | Genuine expression | Genuine expression is an ER strategy by which teachers communicate their emotions directly to others without suppression, faking, or masking. | You can shed your tears, and express any feelings you have. (Laura, Int2) |
Other-care (new) | Other-care refers to actions taken by teachers to help students cope with their emotional experiences by providing reassurance and comfort. | I like your last few sentences. It is not necessary to have self-body shaming, but if you want to become the person you like most, I give you my full support. If you want to change your body for others, don’t do that! (Rose, email) |
Appendix 3: Challenges in Blended Classroom Assessment and Emotion Regulation Strategies
Challenges in blended classroom assessment | Number of ER strategies | Emotion regulation strategies | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Intrinsic antecedent-focused | Intrinsic response-focused | Extrinsic antecedent-focused | Extrinsic response-focused | ||||||||
Forecasting (new) | Reappraisal | Distraction | Expressive suppression | Masking | Self-care | Empathy | Detachment | Genuine expression | Other-care (new) | ||
Low completion rates of online learning tasks before F2F instruction | 9 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
Interaction in blended classroom assessment | 6 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
Design of blended classroom assessment process | 4 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||
Heavy workload of blending online and face-to-face assessment | 3 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||||||
Plagiarism and cheating in blended classroom assessment | 2 | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||
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Su, X., Lee, I. Emotion Regulation of EFL Teachers in Blended Classroom Assessment. Asia-Pacific Edu Res 33, 649–658 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-023-00761-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-023-00761-x