The Purpose of Teaching and Teaching Experience

This research examines the negative feelings of teachers in Hong Kong toward teaching in order to provide recommendations to improve teachers' emotional experience in professional settings.Many teachers in Hong Kong have been reported as being stressed, anxious, and depressed while teaching (Chan, 2011).These emotional experiences significantly affect both the teachers' well-being and quality of teaching (Sutton, 2005).Drawing on sociological perspectives of emotions (Turner & Stets, 2005), teachers' emotional experience is regarded as socially constructed, meaning that teachers' emotional experiences are shaped by how the teachers think they can accomplish their career goals of teaching (Saunders, 2013).Research shows that if teachers perceive that they successfully accomplish their career goals they have positive feelings, conversely, they report negative feelings when they do not reach their career goals (Santoro, 2011).Moreover, teachers may have different career goals and different degrees of the accomplishment of the career goals in different career stages (Goodson, 2008).In other words, understanding why teachers in Hong Kong feel negative about teaching requires explorations of their values, their perceptions of how successfully they accomplish their career goals in different career stages.Since the research is still in progress, this paper only presents a preliminary data analysis in order to inform the future direction of the study.In particular, this article only presents the findings about the participants' career goals of teaching in different career stages.This study adopted a qualitative interview method since the method empowers the researcher to explore the meanings and social process.This was achieved through an in-depth investigation of participants' perspectives, feelings, and social interactions, with reference to social contexts (Seidman, 2006).By using maximum variation sampling and snowballing sampling strategies, the study interviewed 21 Hong Kong secondary schoolteachers who had different teaching experiences and taught different subjects and grades in 10 different Hong Kong secondary schools.The interviews were conducted between February and June 2012.According to the findings, the career goals of teaching among the participants could be categorized into intrinsic, including subject-matter, working with children, and making a difference, and extrinsic, including job security, salary, and safe haven.Most of the participants taught because of the intrinsic career goals rather than the extrinsic ones, although some of them aimed at both types of career goals (see Table 1).The analysis explored whether the career goals differed between the participants who had different amounts of teaching experience.Table 1 illustrates the teachers having 9-12 years of

Educational research · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Qualitative analysis · Qualitative research · Research methodology · Social science · Sociology · Teaching method · Evaluation of Teaching Practices · Online and Blended Learning · Psychology · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

• Teachers’ emotional experiences in professional development

  Open Access•Rachel Gaines, David J Osman et al.•Teaching and Teacher Education•2018

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• Good Teaching in Difficult Times

  Doris A Santoro•American Journal of Education•2011

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