Emotional experience and emotion regulation of future teachers: Findings of two studies in the practical semester and the preparatory service

Everyday school life in the practical phases of teacher training can be highly emotionally charged for future teachers due to the diverse and challenging situations. Dealing with emotions in the various professional and private professional situations is particularly important for prospective teachers, as a lack of competencies in emotion regulation can lead to negative consequences. Private professional situations describe professional situations such as lesson preparation that relate to the teaching profession but occur outside the regular work environment. In this paper, we first present a diary study with teacher training students (n = 10) and then an experience sampling study with pre-service teachers (n = 13). Both studies examined professional and private professional situations, emotions, and applied regulation strategies. The students reported 126 and the pre-service teachers 387 situations of (professional) everyday life. In both studies, the future teachers experienced more positive than negative emotions. Regarding the use of emotion regulation strategies, both study groups reported expressing the emotion freely in most cases.