This study aims to understand teacher emotions through interviewing 25 and surveying 1492 primary teachers in China using a mixed method. Deductive content analysis was employed to analyze the data allocating the five nested ecological system – microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macro-system, and chronosystem. Results show that the number of emotions that teachers reported decreased as the distance from the teachers increased. The highest intensity of teacher emotions, especially with regard to teacher-student interaction and classroom management, was reported at the microsystem level. Given the powerful role that emotions and relationships play in teaching and learning, it is critical for teacher education in both preservice and inservice settings to support the development of knowledge and skills for emotional self-regulation, the nurturing of relationships in classrooms, and the improvement of their will-being.

This study investigates the emotions experienced by primary teachers in Hong Kong and Mainland China schools and develops a Teacher Emotion Inventory (TEI). Through surveying 254 teachers in a pilot study and 1830 teachers in the main study, a 5-factor TEI (i.e., Joy, Love, Sadness, Anger, and Fear) is identified using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. This model portrays primary teachers enjoying positive interactions with students and colleagues, recognition from school, family and public, but experiencing negative emotions in relation to unfair treatment, competition among colleagues, imbalance of work lives, and pressure from society, policy, and educational change.
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