Papers by Alberto Bellocchi
Journal of Sociology
The contradictory work environments of new economies in late modernity are associated with a rang... more The contradictory work environments of new economies in late modernity are associated with a range of emotional experiences, requiring diverse emotion management strategies. Late modernity offers the capacity to pursue happy, safe, rewarding, and meaningful work for the privileged few; a potential trade-off between stressful meaningful and boring precarious work for a greater number; and the prospect of non-meaningful, precarious work for many in the new economy characterised by short-term contracts, gig work, precarity, and anxiety. This study draws on data from the 2015–16 Australian Social Attitudes Survey to examine workers’ emotions in various combinations of meaningful and precarious employment, and the degree to which these emotions are managed. It finds that it is best to have secure meaningful work, worst to have highly precarious work, and slightly better to have safe but alienating than risky meaningful work, in terms of avoiding often hidden negative emotions.
Emotions and Society
Scholars studying emotions in social life typically work mono-logically, within a paradigmatic ca... more Scholars studying emotions in social life typically work mono-logically, within a paradigmatic camp, drawing on distinct theories of emotion. In isolation, each offers a singular conceptualisation of emotions in social life. Working multi-logically, in contrast, offers richer, comparative insight into the layered meanings of emotion relevant to a social context. Rather than treating them as incommensurate, we not only argue for the benefits of drawing on multiple paradigms, methods and theories of emotions in social life, we offer a worked example of a post-paradigmatic methodology for analysing emotions in social life that values multilogicality and epistemic flexibility. Setting aside debates about what emotions are, we work from the premise that different conceptualisations of emotions do things: shape what we see and ignore, and discursively position people. We show how multiple theories and concordant methods can – and should – be applied to studying emotions in social life in ...
Emotions: History, Culture, Society
The teaching profession offers meaningful, stimulating work that accords with teachers’ sense of ... more The teaching profession offers meaningful, stimulating work that accords with teachers’ sense of professional pride and identity, but is also synonymous with high levels of stress, conflict (and associated emotions such as anger and shame) and ultimately, attrition. The degree to which teachers within a national population ‘up-manage’ the former or ‘down-manage’ the latter emotions is unknown. This study utilises new data from the Australian Survey of Emotions and Emotion Management (SEEM) to examine emotions and emotion management among teachers, and workers in comparable service roles, such as health care and customer service, in contemporary Australian society. It finds that teachers exhibit great natural happiness, but also experience and hide (through surface-acting) high levels of stress. Teachers also experience high levels of anger compared to other professions, though they usually manage this successfully through deep acting strategies. These findings imply that teachers ar...
Cultural Studies of Science Education
Cultural Studies of Science Education
Journal of Research in Science Teaching
Teaching and Teacher Education
This systematic search and review of international literature finds links between emotion managem... more This systematic search and review of international literature finds links between emotion management and gender (in 1/2 the studies), and teaching attrition outcomes (1/3). Results contextualise these connections, suggesting female teachers use deep acting strategies, though experience more emotional exhaustion and unpleasant emotions. Male teachers practice distancing and surface acting, and experience depersonalisation, but also success in controlling disruptions and stimulating subject interest. Studies are limited by self-reported data and omission of school context, but highlight important teacher organisational identifications, suggesting future research use observational methods for understanding emotion management as an embedded, interactionist phenomenon.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching
High demand for suitably qualified, high-quality science teachers is undermined by elevated teach... more High demand for suitably qualified, high-quality science teachers is undermined by elevated teacher burnout/attrition rates within the early years of teaching. Effective emotion management can alleviate feelings of burnout and is also linked theoretically to sustaining positive social bonds. Scant attention has been directed at the importance of emotion management and social bonds in science education research. This study presents a methodology for studying emotion management and social bonds, delivering novel outcomes that elucidate how these two phenomena are interrelated. Video recordings of classroom interactions and reflective accounts in an early-career science teacher's ninth grade class were analyzed through a combination of ethnomethodology and interpretive techniques. Situated actions that constitute emotion management at the classroom level impacted the status of bonds between the teacher and one of his students, ultimately leading to a breakdown in their relationship. Results of the study detail how social actions of numerous students and the teacher led to the co-construction of emotion management and how this impacted social bonds. Theoretical and practical insights about the co-constructed nature of emotion management and social bonds present novel perspectives that can help to avoid pathologizing the actions of individual students and teachers for sustaining positive social bonds. Implications for science teaching and teacher education are offered. Study outcomes extend previous perspectives on emotion management in science
Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2016
Teaching and Teacher Education
This systematic search and review of international literature finds links between emotion managem... more This systematic search and review of international literature finds links between emotion management and gender (in 1/2 the studies), and teaching attrition outcomes (1/3). Results contextualise these connections, suggesting female teachers use deep acting strategies, though experience more emotional exhaustion and unpleasant emotions. Male teachers practice distancing and surface acting, and experience depersonalisation, but also success in controlling disruptions and stimulating subject interest. Studies are limited by self-reported data and omission of school context, but highlight important teacher organisational identifications, suggesting future research use observational methods for understanding emotion management as an embedded, interactionist phenomenon.
J Res Sci Teach, 2014
The role of emotion during learning encounters in science teacher education is underresearched an... more The role of emotion during learning encounters in science teacher education is underresearched and under-theorized. In this case study we explore the emotional climates, that is, the collective states of emotional arousal, of a preservice secondary science education class to illuminate practice for producing and reproducing high quality learning experiences for preservice science teachers. Theories related to the sociology of emotions informed our analyses from data sources such as preservice teachers' perceptions of the emotional climate of their class, emotional facial expressions, classroom conversations, and cogenerative dialogue. The major outcome from our analyses was that even though preservice teachers reported high positive emotional climate during the professor's science demonstrations, they also valued the professor's in the moment reflections on her teaching that were associated with low emotional climate ratings. We co-relate emotional climate data and preservice teachers' comments during cogenerative dialogue to expand our understanding of high quality experiences and emotional climate in science teacher education. Our study also contributes refinements to research perspectives on emotional climate.
Science Education, 2015
ABSTRACT The role that specific emotions, such as pride and triumph, play during instruction in s... more ABSTRACT The role that specific emotions, such as pride and triumph, play during instruction in science education is an underresearched field of study. Emotions are recognized as central to learning yet little is known about the way in which they are produced in naturalistic settings, how emotions relate to classroom learning during interactions, and what antecedent factors are associated with emotional experiences during instruction. Data sources for the study include emotion diaries, student written artifacts, video recordings of class interactions, and interviews. Emotions produced in the moment during classroom interactions are analyzed from video data and audio data through a novel theoretical framework related to the sociology of human emotions. These direct observations are compared with students’ recollected emotional experiences reported through emotion diaries and interviews. The study establishes links between pride and triumph within classroom interactions and instructional tasks during learning episodes in a naturalistic setting. We discuss particular classroom activities that are associated with justified feelings of pride and triumph. More specifically, classroom events associated with these emotions were related to understanding science concepts, social interactions, and achieving success on challenging tasks.
Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2016
International Journal of Science Education, 2016
School of Curriculum Faculty of Education, Apr 1, 2015
Sociological approaches to inquiry on emotion in educational settings are growing. Despite a long... more Sociological approaches to inquiry on emotion in educational settings are growing. Despite a long tradition of research and theory in disciplines such as psychology and sociology, the methods and approaches for naturalistic investigation of emotion are in a developmental phase in educational settings. In this article, recent empirical studies on emotion in educational contexts are canvassed. The discussion focuses on the use of multiple methods within research conducted in high school and university classrooms highlighting recent methodological progress. The methods discussed include facial expression analysis, verbal and non-verbal conduct, and self-report methods. Analyses drawn from different studies, informed by perspectives from microsociology, highlight the strengths and limitations of any one method. The power and limitations of multi-method approaches is discussed.
Faculty of Education, 2006
Personally constructed teaching metaphors have been successful in initiating and sustaining chang... more Personally constructed teaching metaphors have been successful in initiating and sustaining change in practice for both experienced and pre-service teachers. Yet few studies have focussed on the teaching metaphors used by beginning teachers in their first year of ...
Children Youth Research Centre School of Curriculum Faculty of Education, Oct 1, 2014
ABSTRACT This study explores the affordances of multimodal design, in particular, walking with a ... more ABSTRACT This study explores the affordances of multimodal design, in particular, walking with a video camera, to represent emotions and appraisal associated with experiences of different places. Digital video production, combined with the use of a think-aloud protocol about their videos, provided an opportunity for the primary school children to represent their emotions and appraisal of places, such as business and recreational areas, in one of Australia’s most socially disadvantaged urban areas. Applying a typology from Martin and White’s theory “Language of Evaluation” (2005), we identified that the emotional responses to place through the children’s gaze tended toward happiness, security, and satisfaction. The findings have new implications for understanding children’s emotions and appraisal in response to local places in a disadvantaged urban community context, while highlighting the potentials for teachers to use digital media production for children to actively reflect on their experiences of places and their emotions and aesthetic responses.
School of Curriculum Faculty of Education, 2015
ABSTRACT The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally c... more ABSTRACT The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.
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Papers by Alberto Bellocchi