A Blessing or a Burden? Relating Motivation for Teaching to Emotional Engagement at a Canadian University

Abstract

This article examines how university faculty members with different teaching orientations view the emotional rules related to their occupation, how they invest in their work in an emotional sense, and how they experience their work. In our sample of 311 faculty members, we found that, relative to others, those who saw teaching as a blessing were: more likely to be aware of positive display rules than negative display rules and less likely to hide their feelings and fake expressed emotions. We also found that these faculty members were more satisfied and experienced lower levels of burnout.