Article
The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 7, Issue 2, DIP: 18.01.061/20190702
DOI: 10.25215/0702.061
http://www.ijip.in | April - June, 2019
© 2019, Lal, R., & Sekhri, R.; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Study of Emotional Challenges in Teaching Profession
Lal, R.
1
*, Sekhri, R.
2
ABSTRACT
It is the supreme art of the teacher to inculcate joy in creative expression and knowledge,
rightly said by ‘Albert Einstein’. Teaching profession is one with the highest requirements for
emotional labour, since the communication with the clients (the students, the parents,
representatives of the community) is invariable and last more than any other type of client-
employee interaction. Teachers are considered as professionals and technical occupation
needs high emotional labour (Adelman, 1989). Research on emotional labour among teachers
can equip them with certain strategies and skills to manage their own emotion, promote their
and youth’s mental health. As we know that teachers have a vital role in nation building
because the future of India is totally in their hands to change the character of future
generations. An attempt has been made to know how to channelize the emotional labour of
teachers (discordant-congruence/felt-displayed emotions) that can have a direct impact on the
mental health of students. The study is an effort to increase the current level of knowledge of
the existing literature on emotional labour by proposing a model that can facilitate the
teachers to display ‘Just Right Emotion’ at their workplace. Ample research has revealed the
positive consequences of emotional labour while emphasizing the importance of congruent
emotional states: Deep acting and Emotional consonance. Research reveals that the genuine
acting of emotions leads to increased interpersonal acceptance in the workplace. Not only this
it has been observed that expressing the deep emotion to students have encouraged their
further connection with the teachers instilling the feelings of competence, achievement
motivation among students.
Keywords: Emotional Labour, Instincts, Emotional strategies, Emotional consonance-
dissonance, Deep ace acting
Emotional labour is the process by which employees handle their true feelings in order to
express organizationally desired emotional displays. Emotions are core components of
individual and collective processes in organization, including workplace motivation,
leadership (George & Brief, 1996), leadership (Gooty, Connelly, Griffith, & Gupta, 2010),
workplace attitudes (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), conflict management and negotiation
(Fulmer & Barry, 2004; van Kleef, De Dreu, & Manstead, 2004), and team functioning
(Barsade, 2002; Kelly & Barsade, 2001). The term emotional labour was coined by the
American sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. She was the one to initiate research on the
1
Associate Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
2
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Psychology, P.G.G.C.G-11, Chandigarh, India
*Responding Author
Received: May 15, 2019; Revision Received: May 30, 2019; Accepted: June 4, 2019