Science teachers’ emotions and their association with secondary students’ academic performance, behaviour, and participation in Malaysian classroom

Emotions in the classroom can impact learning because a good bonding between teachers and students is possible when they know the importance of education. Teachers’ emotions are as important as students’ in reaching the goals of acquiring knowledge. The implementation of the Science curriculum has triggered mixed unpleasant emotions among teachers, who feel happiest when students benefit meaningfully from their teaching. In contrast, in between students’ cognitive abilities, teachers feel happy when their students show hard work and effort. Thus, this study focuses on science teachers’ emotions and their association with students’ academic performance, behaviour, and participation in the classroom while comparing novice (≤5 years’ experience) and senior (>5 years) teachers. It is indeed significant to identify the common emotion regulation strategies among science teachers for maximizing their personal and social well-being. To achieve these objectives, a survey of questionnaires and a semi-structured interview were administered among science teachers at secondary school in the state of Selangor. The questionnaire used includes 12 TES items and 24 items with additional items developed by the researcher to examine the influence of students’ academic performance, behaviour, and participation, 10 items from the ERQ and 7 semi-structured interview questions are used. By selecting teachers who teach two different classes; high-performing and low-performing, it is then possible to see whether the differences between academic performance, behaviour, and participation among students from two distinct classes have an impact on their emotional state. Findings from surveys and semi-structured interviews found that science teachers experienced positive emotions, such as self-efficacy and satisfaction when teaching students who were actively participating, regardless of their academic performance. Also, factors like administrative workload, limited resources, and challenges in implementing HOTS within time constraints affect teachers both academically and emotionally, especially novice teachers who are still vulnerable to stress. In contrast, negative emotions reported by teachers such as frustration and helplessness were more common when teaching low-performing students when they show disruption and behavioural issues. Nevertheless, teachers felt at their lowest when burdened with administrative workload rather than teaching itself. Despite these challenges, some teachers found emotional rewards in witnessing effort and persistence among struggling students. Teachers commonly employed emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression to regulate their emotions in the classroom. This study provides an extension from previous studies where instead of focusing on curriculum or students’ academic performance, this study reveals that active student participation can contribute to positive teacher emotions, while behavioural issues even though from among high-performing students lead to frustration. Another finding showed administrative workload emerged as a major contributing factor to nonteaching-related stress. This study aims to deepen the understanding of science teachers’ emotions, examine student-related influences, explore emotion regulation strategies, and provide practical insights through qualitative findings.