Incremental beliefs about teaching ability predict teaching satisfaction through positive teacher emotion

Abstract

Teaching satisfaction, a domain-specific subjective well-being that involves teachers’ integrated judgment of the work they do, play an important role in pre-service teachers’ decision to enter and remain in the teaching profession. Hence, it is important to investigate factors that affect pre-service teachers’ teaching satisfaction. In this study, we examined the indirect effect of implicit beliefs about teaching ability (i.e., incremental and entity beliefs) on teaching satisfaction through teacher emotions (i.e., enjoyment, anger, and anxiety) in a sample of Filipino pre-service teachers (N = 413). Appraisal theories of emotion posit emotions as adaptive responses reflective of one’s appraisal of experiences significant for one’s well-being. Considering that implicit beliefs consist of core assumptions from which an individual views the world, we propose that pre-service teachers’ implicit beliefs about teaching ability would predict their emotions. Moreover, broaden-and-build theory postulates that while negative emotions following one’s assessment of personal meaning narrow an individual’s momentary thought-action repertoire, positive emotions broaden it, which can build an individual’s enduring personal resources. Thus, we also propose that teacher emotions, specifically enjoyment, would, in turn, predict one’s teaching satisfaction. Results of structural equation modeling provided support for a model of incremental beliefs about teaching ability predicting teaching satisfaction through teacher emotion of enjoyment. The findings of the study underscore the important role of implicit beliefs about the malleability of teaching ability and positive emotions toward the teaching experience in pre-service teachers’ teaching satisfaction.