Although the association between teacher-student relations, teacher emotions, and burnout has been proven on a general level, we do not know the exact processes underlying these associations. Recently there has been a call for intra-individual process measures that assess what happens from moment-to-moment in class in order to better understand inter-individual differences in emotions and burnout between teachers. This paper explored the use of process measures of teachers’ heart rate and their interpersonal behavior during teaching. Our aim was to illustrate different ways of analyzing and combining physiological and observational time-series data and to explore their potential for understanding between-teacher differences. In this illustration, we focused on two teachers who represented contrasting cases in terms of their self-reported teaching-related emotions (i.e., anxiety and relaxation) and burnout. We discuss both univariate process analyses (i.e., trend, autocorrelation, stability) as well as state-of-the-art multivariate process analyses (i.e., cross-correlations, dynamic structural equation modeling). Results illustrate how the two teachers differed in the nature of their physiological responses, their interpersonal behavior, and the association between these two process measures over time. Along implications and suggestions for further research, it is discussed how the process-based, dynamic assessment of physiology and interpersonal behavior may ultimately help to understand differences in more general teaching-related emotions and burnout.

Interpersonal aspects of teaching have repeatedly been linked to teacher emotions and well-being on a general level. However, it is unclear how teachers’ moment-to-moment interpersonal behavior is associated with their physiological arousal during teaching and how this contributes to their lesson-focused emotional outcomes. Eighty secondary education teachers with a mean age of 43.7 years (SD = 11.5) and 13.4 years of teaching experience (SD = 9.7) participated during one real-life lesson. We coded teacher behavior from an interpersonal perspective on the dimensions of agency (i.e., social influence) and communion (i.e., friendliness). Teachers’ physiology (in terms of heart rate) was measured as a proxy for their affective arousal. Teachers differed widely in their behaviors and in how behavior and physiology were associated from moment to moment. Being generally agentic was associated with higher levels of self-reported positive emotions after the lesson, also when being agentic went together with a high heart rate. In contrast, the stronger and the more positively a teacher’s physiological arousal was associated with displaying communal behavior, the more likely a teacher was to report negative emotions. We conclude that combining moment-to-moment data of teachers’ interpersonal behavior and physiological arousal has the potential to explain differences in teachers’ emotional outcomes. Such an approach might ultimately provide teachers and teacher educators with the fine-grained and personalized information needed to foster teacher well-being.

Background Student perceptions of teachers’ interpersonal closeness positively affect their emotions. If closeness is, however, effortful for the teacher (i.e., emotional labour, signalling less genuine closeness), this may undermine these positive effects. We tested this assumption by using student reports and external observations of teacher closeness and ambulant measures of teacher heart rate, to gauge teachers’ physiological effort connected to being close during class. Aims We investigated the association between teachers’ physiological effort connected to closeness and students’ lesson-focused emotions. Sample 75 teachers and their students (N = 1645) participated during one real-life lesson. Methods Teacher interpersonal closeness was continuously coded based on a video recording and teachers’ heart rate was measured continuously as an indicator of physiological effort. Students reported their emotions and perception of teacher closeness at the end of the lesson. Results Multilevel models with student emotions as DVs and students’ perceptions of teacher warmth (L1 predictor) and teachers’ physiological effort when being close (i.e., an intra-individual cross-correlation, L2 predictor) were tested. As expected, students reported more positive and less negative emotions when they perceived more teacher closeness. The physiological effort connected to being close was not directly associated with student emotions; however, such effort moderated the effect of perceived closeness, especially with regard to negative student emotions (i.e., cross-level interactions). The more effortful teacher closeness was, the less closeness protected students from negative emotions. Conclusions In line with extant research on faking enjoyment and emotional labour, students seemed to be affected when teacher closeness was physiologically effortful, and overall positive effects of teacher closeness were undermined.