Special education teachers working in primary schools with an adapted programme with a lower educational standard are involved in many daily interactions with pupils with different deficits, barriers and disabilities. The different problems of pupils, especially in the social and behavioural areas, can contribute to the emergence of very diverse, challenging, unpredictable and conflicting situations. In these situations, special education teachers may experience, express and regulate different emotions; this may be linked to their mental health. In this empirical study, I was interested in how intensely special education teachers experience particular emotions in their work, how often they use particular strategies to regulate unpleasant emotions, and what are the characteristics of their mental health. For special education teachers in primary schools with an adapted programme with a lower educational standard, I also researched whether the intensity of experiencing selected unpleasant emotions was associated with the frequency of using particular emotion regulation strategies, and whether the quality of their mental health was associated with the use of particular emotion regulation strategies. The study used a quantitative research approach and involved 60 special education and teachers from different regions of Slovenia who teach in primary schools with an adapted programme with a lower educational standard. Participants completed an online questionnaire covering three domains: intensity of emotion experience, emotion regulation strategies and mental health. The results of the survey showed that special education teachers in primary schools with an adapted programme with a lower educational standard on average experience all selected pleasant emotions (joy, pride, love) quite or very intensely at work, while selected unpleasant emotions (anger, hopelessness, exhaustion) are experienced moderately or less intensely. Of all the coping strategies for unpleasant emotions, the most frequently used are: distraction, seeking social support and cognitive reappraisal of the meaning of the situation. The survey also showed that 28% of the participants reported minor and 8% major problems with their mental health, and that these problems were dominated by feelings of uselessness at work, difficulty concentrating and inability to enjoy everyday activities. The study also showed a significant positive correlation between the intensity of experience of all the selected unpleasant emotions (anger, exhaustion, hopelessness) and the frequency of use of coping strategies such as avoiding situations or reframing the response through experience. The association between the frequency of use of each coping strategy and the presence of mental health problems was not significant in most cases.
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