Pedagogical workers play an important role in academically educating students and enhancing students’ emotional and social skills so that individual students can function successfully in society. Thus, it is of great help if pedagogical workers are also emotionally competent- having the ability to recognise and understand their own and others’ emotions and regulate them in various circumstances. Unfortunately, the paucity of appropriate pedagogical resources on how emotions and emotion regulation (ER) strategies matter in an educational environment can leave pedagogical workers unprepared for modifying emotional responses and cause distress and unpleasant emotional experience at their work. In this current study, 42 social pedagogues who work in primary schools in Slovenia completed an online survey aimed to assess the intensity of their emotional experience, the use of the selected emotion ER strategies, emotion and ER knowledge, working load (i.e., number of students they daily work with) and the professional phase they perceive themselves in.
Findings indicate that joy, pride and love are the most intensely experienced emotions and social support is the most frequently used ER strategy among social pedagogues. In contrast, substance use is the least frequently used ER strategy in social pedagogues. Furthermore, the intensity of anger, exhaustion and hopelessness were positively correlated with the use of several ER strategies: situation selection, suppression, comfort eating, substance use, and experiential avoidance and negatively correlated with a cognitive reappraisal of the meaning of an event and situation modification. Also, previous knowledge of emotions and ER strategies of social pedagogues were highly and positively associated with pleasant emotions’ intensity and more adaptive ER strategies’ use. Other significant findings are about social pedagogues' workload and career phases in relation to their emotional experience and chosen ER strategies. Based on the results, the social pedagogues’ workload is positively correlated with the use of comfort eating, substance use, situation selection and cognitive reappraisal. Social pedagogues recognising themselves in career development phases, which include affirmative actions and positive attitudes towards the profession, are more prone to experience pleasant emotions, while those recognising themselves in career phases related to negative attitudes and behaviours towards the profession are more likely to experience unpleasant emotions. Implications based on this quantitative data may help raise awareness of the importance of pedagogical workers’ emotional experience and regulation strategies in educational settings.
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