Managing Emotions: A Landscape Review of U.S. School Personnel in 2021
If 2020 was a year that brought tragedy and confusion to the United States (U.S.) education system, 2021 was the year where systems of government, politics, and education navigated substantial aftershocks, as well as a new set of unprecedented challenges and opportunities. This paper offers a landscape review of how school personnel in the U.S. were feeling during the year 2021; their affective experiences including their stresses, joys, and supports. Given that the education system in the United States is inextricably linked to the systems of society, government, politics, and healthcare in which it operates, contextualizing the affective experiences of school personnel
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Educators grappled with burnout and stress, high rates of attrition, and a lack of support (Brackett et al., 2010; Davidson, 2009); Frieson & Sarros, 1989). School personnel have reported common concerns being an overabundance of paperwork and extreme workloads, particularly for school leadership, which in turn leads to high levels of stress and exponentially increasing rates of burnout and attrition (Yu, et al., 2014). Teachers have furthermore reported being stressed by coworkers, students, and administration (Collie, 2021; Stang-Rabring et al., 2022), to say nothing of the economic stressors that are congruent to the role of school …show more content…
School personnel may substantially benefit from emotion management support, training, and resources, particularly now. Emotional intelligence has proven to be essential to the successful development and effectiveness of school personnel (Joseph & Carri, 2018). Emotion management has been shown to improve the social, professional, and mental well-being of school personnel (Brackett & Cipriano et al., 2020).
Within the context of this study, emotions are defined as responses that provide guidance and motivate reactions to situations. Emotions are unique signals that convey essential information about environments and relationships (Mayer et al., 2004). Emotions may be categorized using the Russell two-dimensional model of positive and negative valence and high and low arousal (1997). Emotions are not “bad” nor “good” but instead provide useful information and may be conceptualized as adaptive or maladaptive responses to one's environment (Clore & Parrott, 2020; Schwarz, 2012). Understanding the state of school personnel’s emotions, joys, and stressors may provide the foundation to better support their well-being. The rise and popularity of social and emotional learning in schools may be the opportune avenue to support emotion management and therefore well-being for school personnel (Schonert-Reichl, 2017). Social and emotional learning is