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Teaching can be very stressful. One in five teachers face emotional exhaustion and burnout. Emotional problems are often the result of an accumulation of negative interpersonal experiences in class. There is a need to better understand how emotions arise and how to deal with them. New methodological developments equip researchers with measurements of teachers’ interpersonal behavior and physiological responses as moment-to-moment, intra-individual processes during real-class teaching.

The aim of Monika Donker's dissertation was to study the dynamics of teachers’ emotional processes in depth by using these state-of-the-art methods and to explore the potential of observed interpersonal teacher behavior and physiology to explain teachers’ emotional outcomes connected to specific classroom lessons. 

Teachers were more likely to report positive emotions when they showed leading and friendly behavior in class (i.e., high levels of interpersonal agency and communion). Although being in the lead can require effort (i.e., many teachers had a relatively high heart rate at those moments), teachers who succeeded at leading reported more positive emotions. Negative teacher emotions occurred when it required effort for teachers to show friendly behavior or when teachers had to suppress emotions against their will.

It may be important for teachers to learn strategies to cope with stressful interactions. Making teachers more aware of their (often implicit) behavioral and physiological processes and preferences might also help to improve the teacher-student relationship. This could lead to more positive emotional experiences of teachers and students in class, which would ultimately boost teacher well-being as well as students’ motivation and achievement.