Abstract
Facing the challenges of the learning environment and the influence of international education assessments, the cognitive and emotional load on teachers has been increased (J. Buchanan, 2020), leading to increasing pressure on teachers. In addition, teaching is a job involving teachers’ cognition and emotion, and teachers' emotion will affect students’ learning and teacher-student relationship. However, in reviewing the current research on teacher education, most of them focus on the cognitive aspect of teachers' professional development, which can cultivate teachers to have professional abilities for effective teaching, but cannot help them cope with the emotional pressure in work (Sikma, 2021). Teachers’ psychological health and emotion regulation seem to have been neglected for a long time. And Jin (2010) proposed the concept of “psychological displacement,” by sequentially using different personal pronouns “I,” “you,” and “s/he” to narrative the same event, it can help people self-awareness, reflection and calm emotions, contribute to psychological health. In addition, the growth of teachers needs the nourishment of the community, but the current research on psychological displacement mostly uses personal diary writing, and lacks a platform to write, read and respond to each other’s teaching stories. Therefore, this study uses the Knowledge Forum (KF) as an online community collaboration platform, allowing each participant to share experiences and stories on the platform, and read, respond and reflect on each other (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). To help teachers understand themselves, identify and regulate emotions, so as to improve the quality of teaching and learning. This study takes psychological displacement (e.g., using I, you, s/he, and back-to-I pronouns) as a reflective scaffold and through writing, reading, and responding in online communities to explore the pronouns characteristics of teachers in different psychological positions and the effects of psychological displacement on teachers’ emotional regulation. The participants of the study were 51 serving teachers in the master’s program. Participants were students (who were also in-service teachers) studying for a master degree program. The service duration ranges from half a year to 12 years. Men accounted for 13.7% and women accounted for 86.3%. The research field of this research is a course set up by the 心理位移促進教師位格特性與情緒 39 researcher, with a learning time of 18 weeks and 3 hours per week. This pedagogical design uses “psychological displacement” as a scaffold, encouraging participants to write critical teaching events online with personal pronouns “I, you, s/he, and back to I” in the 3rd, 8th, 13th, and 18th weeks respectively. Help teachers understand and heal themselves through psychological displacement writing. The data source of this study is the content of psychological displacement written by teachers on the Knowledge Forum, a total of 204 notes. This study adopts a mixed method research. In the part of analyzing “pronouns characteristics,” “grounded theory” (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and “consensual qualitative research” (Hill et al., 2005) are adopted. In the process of data processing from quality to quantity, this study uses sentences with complete meanings as the analysis unit (times), first sums up the times of each characteristic in each psychological position of all participants, and then calculates the ratio of the characteristics of each psychological position, so as to show the typical and atypical structural characteristics of the teacher in each psychological position. In the aspect of analyzing “emotion,” the “content analysis” (Wimmer & Dominick, 1997) is used. In the process of data processing from quality to quantity, first sum up the times of all kinds of emotions of all participants in each psychological position, and then calculate the ratio of each type of emotion in each psychological position. In addition, the data results of the emotional type analysis are further subjected to Z-test, so as to present the emotional changes of teachers in different psychological positions. Finally, the quantitative results and qualitative data are mutually verified and discussed. The results showed: (1) In terms of pronouns characteristics, the characteristics of “I” pronouns include: “Self-awareness, forming role identity” “Detailed description” “Retrospecting experiences” “Using symbols to express emotions” “Self-centered, narrow view;” the characteristics of “you” pronouns include: “Self-empathy and acceptance” “Self-questioning to analyze yourself” “Self-encouragement and motivation” “Self-suggestions and advice;” the characteristics of “s/he” pronouns include: “Farther perspective, self-discovery” “Objective observation, self-understanding” “Instillation of hope, self-affirmation” “Rational analysis leads to action;” the characteristics of “back to I” pronouns include: “Self-transformation, taking action” “Awareness of change, self-understanding” “Community support, expanding thinking” “Face the reality, self-adjustment” “Inner support generates positive energy.” (2) In the process of psychological displacement writing, teachers’ emotional responses are “up first, then down and then remain constant,” especially in the psychological position “s/he,” where teachers’ emotions show a “flourishing” state, which shows that teachers have a high degree of mental health. Therefore, psychological displacement writing can promote teachers’ emotional peace. (3) In “I pronouns,” by explaining the positioning and expectations of being a teacher, promote self-awareness and identification; in “you pronouns” encourage yourself and look forward to the future through self-talk, and give yourself the motivation to move on; and then in “s/he person,” from the perspective of a third party, give 心理位移促進教師位格特性與情緒 40 yourself affirmation and motivation in teaching, and bring yourself hope. Finally, in “back to I person” to gain comfort from partners along the way, allowing teachers to get emotional support in the process of self-discovery. After experiencing the above-mentioned characteristics, teachers are given inner support to enhance positive emotions. (4) In the process of psychological displacement writing, apart from gradually being less affected by emotions, the teachers observed themselves in the omniscient role in “s/he” pronouns, found out the problems and directions. And then returned to “back to I” pronouns, teachers can clarify the problem and make decisions, so that they are no longer trapped in the whirlpool, and the negative emotions will gradually slow down or converge, but they will not disappear completely. This shows that positive and negative emotions are not an either-or relationship, but coexist (Cacioppo et al., 1997). Therefore, in the process of psychological displacement writing, teachers’ negative emotions have not completely disappeared. Instead, with the perspective of psychological displacement, adjust the attitude and perspective of negative emotions, and transform them into the driving force for growth. (5) Use the community collaboration platform to write, and the companionship and support of partners can give teachers comfort in their hearts and enhance the effect of psychological displacement. (6) Psychological displacement guides teachers to focus on self-reflection and future actions, and is no longer limited to getting along with students, reducing teachers’ emotional reactions to students. Regarding the limitations of this study, the current characteristics categories under each psychological position are obtained from the grounded theory and consensual qualitative research of the corpus of 51 participants. However, due to the complexity of human psychological characteristics, it is impossible to exhaust all psychological characteristics, so it depends on follow-up research continues to enrich the discovery of the psychological characteristics of different personalities. Finally, according to the results of this study, teachers often refer to the relationship between teachers and students when writing psychological displacement, and with the transformation of psychological displacement, teachers’ emotions towards students change. It can be seen that the teacher-student relationship plays an important role in teachers’ self-reflection and emotion regulation. Hence, in the future, we can use psychological displacement as a scaffold to help teachers reflect on this topic (such as “frustrating experience in interaction with students”) for more focused discussions; Furthermore, in view of the fact that community collaboration discourse is conducive to the generation of multiple viewpoints and emotional support, it is suggested that the community collaboration platform can be applied to psychological displacement writing in future research to promote the effect of teachers’ self-reflection and emotional learning.