Wu Mengying, Yan Wenle
Research Institute for International and Comparative Education, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Aug 19;16:1618970. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1618970. eCollection 2025.
This study investigates how volunteer Chinese teachers (VCTs) in African Confucius Institutes navigate emotional labor and examines the emotional rules governing their strategic choices.
Through semi-structured interviews with 16 VCTs, we identified four categories of emotional rules that shape their emotional labor strategies: professional rules, organizational rules, socio-cultural rules, and personal rules, in descending order of influence.
Professional rules encompass adherence to language teaching guidelines, native cultural teaching norms, and linguistic proficiency requirements, each demanding significant emotional commitment. Organizational rules emphasize hierarchical respect, conflict avoidance, and cultural ambassadorship, particularly through internalized role identification. Socio-cultural rules reflect adaptation to local cultural norms and conformity to local perceptions of Chinese people, demonstrating the dynamic nature of cultural adaptation. Personal rules emerge from individual teaching experiences and student interactions, reflecting teachers' unique pedagogical approaches. In response to these rules, teachers employ various emotional labor strategies, including surface acting, deep acting, and expressions of naturally felt emotions, through which they apply techniques such as pretending, disguising, and cognitive restructuring. The findings reveal that novice VCTs often experience stress from professional demands and cultural adaptation, frequently managing these challenges through emotional regulation without adequate institutional support.
This study extends emotional labor theory by demonstrating how professional, organizational, sociocultural, and personal emotional rules interact in cross-cultural teaching contexts. The findings suggest that emotional rules are not merely external constraints but are actively interpreted and internalized by teachers through their professional practice. These insights provide valuable guidance for developing targeted support systems to enhance VCTs' emotional well-being and teaching effectiveness in cross-cultural contexts, particularly through pre-departure cultural sensitivity training and ongoing psychological support services.
本研究调查了非洲孔子学院的中国志愿者教师如何应对情绪劳动，并审视了支配其策略选择的情绪规则。
通过对16名志愿者教师进行半结构化访谈，我们确定了塑造其情绪劳动策略的四类情绪规则：专业规则、组织规则、社会文化规则和个人规则，其影响程度依次递减。
专业规则包括遵守语言教学指南、本土文化教学规范和语言能力要求，每项都需要大量的情感投入。组织规则强调等级尊重、冲突避免和文化大使职责，特别是通过内化的角色认同。社会文化规则反映了对当地文化规范的适应以及与当地人对中国人看法的契合，展现了文化适应的动态本质。个人规则源于个人教学经验和与学生的互动，反映了教师独特的教学方法。针对这些规则，教师采用各种情绪劳动策略，包括表层 acting、深层 acting 和自然情感的表达，通过这些策略他们运用假装、伪装和认知重构等技巧。研究结果显示，新手志愿者教师经常因专业要求和文化适应而感到压力，在缺乏足够制度支持的情况下，他们常常通过情绪调节来应对这些挑战。
本研究通过展示专业、组织、社会文化和个人情绪规则在跨文化教学背景中的相互作用，扩展了情绪劳动理论。研究结果表明，情绪规则不仅仅是外部约束，教师还通过专业实践积极地对其进行解读和内化。这些见解为开发有针对性的支持系统提供了宝贵指导，以提高志愿者教师在跨文化背景下的情绪健康和教学效果，特别是通过出发前的文化敏感性培训和持续的心理支持服务。
