Exploring the ecological determinants of teachers’ effective emotional expression: insights from primary and secondary schools in China

This study investigates the ecological determinants of effective emotional expression among Chinese primary and secondary school teachers. Grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory and informed by Emotional Labour and Emotional Contagion perspectives, we used a sequential mixed-methods design: interviews (n = 30) conceptualised the construct and a survey (n = 312) examined ecological predictors. Effective emotional expression was organised into three dimensions: educational intentionality, emotional appropriateness, and moral sensibility. Regression analyses identified ten significant predictors: teacher characteristics, student characteristics, classroom conditions, parental attitudes, collegial support, teachers’ family climate, students’ family climate, school climate, teacher workload (negative), and educational policy; social recognition was not significant. By distinguishing effective emotional expression from emotion regulation and emotional labour, and by mapping predictors across ecological levels, the study clarifies a previously blurred construct and its contexts of enactment. We propose a dual-process account in which distal pressures and proximal classroom interactions may translate into teachers’ emotional expression through emotional labour and emotional contagion. Findings show teacher emotion as a culturally embedded, ethically guided, and pedagogically strategic practice, with implications for teacher training, emotional support policies, and culturally responsive school leadership.