Measuring Teachers' enjoyment, anger, and anxiety : The Teacher Emotions Scales (TES)

Abstract

The emotions of teachers are considered relevant not only for their own well-being but also for the functioning of classrooms. Nevertheless, research on teacher emotions has been slow to emerge, and scales for their assessment via self-report are generally lacking. In the present research we developed four-item scales for three emotions considered most relevant in the context of teaching: enjoyment, anger, and anxiety (Teacher Emotions Scales, TES). Based on data of 944 teachers, we tested German and English language versions of the TES for reliability, internal and external validity, and cross-language equivalence, while exploring the utility of both a general and a student-group specific variant. All scales proved to be highly reliable, and confirmatory factor analysis supported internal validity by showing that three-factor models (enjoyment, anger, and anxiety) were superior to single-factor or two-factor (positive vs. negative affect) models. The external validation analyses provided consistent evidence for theoretically meaningful relations with teachers’ general affect, burnout, job satisfaction, and teacher self-efficacy. These findings were robust across multiple studies. In addition, consistent relationships with student ratings of teaching behaviors were found. Analyses of measurement invariance revealed that the English and the German language versions were fully structurally equivalent und displayed metric invariance.