Characterizing physics and astronomy instructors’ emotions when reflecting on prior teaching experiences

Supporting student retention has been identified as a main challenge within STEM fields. Research efforts to address student retention have focused on developing student-centered instructional strategies to support student learning; however, the adoption of these instructional strategies has been low. To explore reasons for the slow uptake of these strategies, research efforts have mostly focused on identifying contextual factors that could influence an instructor's adoption of these strategies. While contextual factors have shown to play an important role in instructional decision making, individual factors should not be ignored. Individual factors such as instructors' emotions in the classroom have been associated to their adoption of student-centered or teacher-centered instructional strategies. Therefore, characterizing STEM instructors' emotions they feel while teaching could support instructional decision making in the classroom. This study characterizes the emotions expressed by 125 physics and astronomy instructors when reflecting on a prior teaching experience. This talk will discuss the results of the overall sentiment of the reflections, the common emotions instructors expressed, and the rationale instructors linked to their emotions they expressed in the reflection. Implications for further supporting instructors through professional development will be discussed.