Abstract Book of the 9th International Academic Conference on Education
Year: 2025
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Anger in Learning — The Relationships between Teachers’ Aggressive Anger Expressions and Students’ Achievement Goals
Jana Chi san Ho
ABSTRACT:
This review paper examined the relationship between perceived aggressive anger expressions in teachers and students’ achievement goals by integrating findings from neurocognitive evidence on motivational directions and theoretical models of achievement goals in motivation. Previous research on anger and its motivational direction has not examined the specific characteristics of anger expressions and their impacts on motivational tendencies. Although anger is typically perceived as a negative emotion, different expressions (such as the presence or absence of threats) may lead to distinct outcomes, producing either positive or negative consequences. The evidence linking anger and avoidance raised concerns about the effect of fear triggered by threatening cues in anger expressions. Since threats appeared to mediate the relationship between teachers’ anger and students’ learning motivation, the nature of anger expression was considered a potential reason for inconsistencies in existing research on the motivational tendencies associated with anger. This review paper differentiated various types of teacher anger expression, focusing particularly on the presence or absence of threats. Aggressive anger expressions by teachers may create a sense of threat for students, potentially leading them to adopt avoidance-oriented goals. Findings suggest that the motivational direction of anger has often been overshadowed by its affective valence in much of the research in this area.
Keywords: teacher emotion, pedagogical practice, academic emotion, motivation, learning motivation