Early career science teacher experiences of social bonds and emotion management

High demand for suitably qualified, high‐quality science teachers is undermined by elevated teacher burnout/attrition rates within the early years of teaching. Effective emotion management can alleviate feelings of burnout and is also linked theoretically to sustaining positive social bonds. Scant attention has been directed at the importance of emotion management and social bonds in science education research. This study presents a methodology for studying emotion management and social bonds, delivering novel outcomes that elucidate how these two phenomena are interrelated. Video recordings of classroom interactions and reflective accounts in an early‐career science teacher's ninth grade class were analyzed through a combination of ethnomethodology and interpretive techniques. Situated actions that constitute emotion management at the classroom level impacted the status of bonds between the teacher and one of his students, ultimately leading to a breakdown in their relationship. Results of the study detail how social actions of numerous students and the teacher led to the co‐construction of emotion management and how this impacted social bonds. Theoretical and practical insights about the co‐constructed nature of emotion management and social bonds present novel perspectives that can help to avoid pathologizing the actions of individual students and teachers for sustaining positive social bonds. Implications for science teaching and teacher education are offered. Study outcomes extend previous perspectives on emotion management in science education, which treat emotion management as an individual cognitive phenomenon.