Emotions and arousal of higher education teachers

PGL research group advances research on university teachers emotions in teaching related events with modern biometric (smart ring) and experience sampling (LearningTracker smartphone application) measurements. On the 12th of September 2018 PGL group presented a research paper in EARLI SIG 14 Conference (Geneve, Switzerland) on the topic of “Emotions and arousal of higher education teachers in various teaching-related events”.

This study investigated how engineering higher education teachers (N=12) physiological levels of arousal (electrodermal activity) and perceived emotions (experience sampling) were related to self-reported teaching activities (planning, teaching, tutoring, prof. dev., assessment) during the time period of 8-13 days.

Results indicated that teachers‘ level of arousal was higher than average in all self-reported events. Lowest activity levels were recorded during tutoring sessions. Results indicate that activity during the events is not related that much on the level of interaction with other(s). Participants self-reported mostly positive and activating emotions in teaching-related events (corresponding also to a higher level of arousal), but also negative activating and deactivating emotions were reported (latter corresponding to the lower level of arousal).