Rural English Teachers' Emotional Labor: A Case Study from a Chinese Middle School

Abstract

This study used a qualitative research method to explore rural English teachers' emotional labor strategies and the factors that influence their emotional labor through interviews. The study found that rural English teachers used more genuine expression strategies and surface acting strategies and less deep acting strategies; teachers used more genuine expression strategies in their interactions with students and colleagues and more surface acting in their interactions with parents and leaders, among which, since most rural students are stay-at-home children, teachers need more emotional labor to communicate with their guardians; therefore, teachers mostly used surface acting, but hardly used deep acting and genuine expression strategies. Factors that influence their emotional labor include teachers' personalities, teaching experiences, colleague relationships, school rules about teachers' emotions, and teacher faculty status. Based on the findings, this study proposes recommendations to improve rural English teachers' emotional labor in order to promote the development of rural English teachers.