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.

The number of teachers leaving their professions due to high levels of stress is a growing worldwide concern. Previous psychological and physiological research has already identified potential classroom stressors: low student engagement and motivation, negative teacher-student relationships and interactions, as well as teacher-centered activities. The current study extends this research by examining the frequency and intensity of these stressors during actual classroom teaching. The heart rates of 40 teachers were recorded throughout one real-life classroom lesson as a proxy for teacher stress. Heart rate measurements were used to select potentially stressful and non-stressful classroom situations. We transcribed the interactions during these situations and coded the stressors according to the previously mentioned stressor categories. Multilevel regression analyses were conducted to predict teachers’ heart rates based on the occurrence of classroom stressors. Students’ low engagement and motivation, as well as teacher-centered activities, significantly predicted an increased heart rate. However, pronounced differences were observed between teachers in what they experienced as stressful. This points to significant individual differences in teacher stress triggers and processes. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

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.