Emotional Labour and Teaching The Moderating role of Emotional Intelligence on the relationship between Emotional Labour and Psychological Wellbeing of Teachers. Carmen Adaja

Abstract

Teachers can be seen as emotional practitioners, they constantly practice emotional labour which is supposed to be related to burnout complaints. Burnout is a large health problem within the Dutch education sector compared to other occupations. Surprisingly, the majority of teachers do feel engaged in their job. Therefore, this study among 238 Dutch teachers investigated the association between on the one hand the two different aspects of emotional labour, surface acting and deep acting, and on the other hand burnout complaints and work engagement. Surface acting is displaying the required emotions for the job that are not actually felt. Deep acting is trying to really feel the required emotions for the job. Furthermore, the moderating role of emotional intelligence for these associations was investigated. The results of this research provide partial support for the hypotheses. As anticipated, surface acting is positively related to burnout complaints among Dutch teachers and negatively with work engagement. Unexpectedly, deep acting is not significantly associated with burnout and work engagement. Furthermore, emotional intelligence did not influence these associations. So according to this research, emotional intelligence does not help teachers to cope with surface acting. Implications for further research, and possible explanations of the results, are discussed.