Artist-Teachers Emotions: Fear of School

This paper reflects on the project „Oresteia”, aiming to empathize students with the piece by individual artistic approaches and presents the outcomes at the National Theatre. The piece itself is the most important and complete preserved Greek tragedy by Aeschylus, telling about the citizens of Athens, living on revenge and murder, the later trusting in rules of law instead of oracle. The students experience their first teaching lessons on the topic by “catching moods” with self-made tempera, enjoying the senses and vibes of colours and kites. How do they approach such a difficult but human topic with children aged between 10 and 15 years? What do they experience, fear and reflect? The self-reflection of the students evoked a survey on “fear of school” of artistteacher emotions in Austria. The analysis investigates in the question of what kind of fear is experienced in what kind of situations. 400 Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Peer-reviewed | Full paper


Introduction
This paper describes first school experiences of two artist-teacher candidates in Austria with the case study: "Oresteia".This project was led by the National Theatre in collaboration with schools and other institutions and was supposed to bring students and people from suburbs (districts) to the theatre.The school involved was a school where students are taught according to reform pedagogue Margret Rasfeld, which includes student-centred instructions and autonomous engagement of learning by the students.In Austria, students are trained as artists (designers) and teachers at the same time for at least four years.
Besides of reflections of the first in-school experience, this paper presents a primary research of "fear of school" of teacher candidates at art schools in Austria (n=87).
The authors used the platform Surveymonkey for the survey and the anonymous questionnaire was sent to all art universities in Austria.87 answers were received within one month.

Theoretical framework: Teacher emotions
Emotions matter -this is the conviction.Emotions are considered important components of overall psychological well-being but also of psychological suffering.But what can be understood by emotions?About the definition of emotion there is no general agreement.Cabanac (2002, p. 69;70) suggests that, "emotion is any mental experience with high intensity and high hedonic content (pleasure/displeasure)". Chen (2018, p. 2) termed according to Pekrun (2006, p. 72) "emotion as a dynamic and multicomponent psychological process which in-Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Peer-reviewed | Full paper cludes affective, expressive, cognitive and motivational components" and "a result of nervous activity, taking place in the brain".Farouk (2012, p. 491) stated that teachers' emotions are not "internalised sensations that remain inert within the confines of their bodies but are integral to the ways in which they relate to and interact with their students, colleagues and parents".
Many authors agree, that there is a need of more empirical studies on teachers' emotions "as subtle affective cues may serve similarly important functions for the regulation of behaviour as intensive moods or acute emotional reactions, particularly in the domain of learning and education" (Koriat & Bjork, 2005cited in: Fiedler, K. & Beier, S. 2014, p. 37).It is also important to differentiate between mood and emotion, as Schutz et al (2006, p. 344) note, "because in contrast to moods, emotions involve relations to some object (i.e., one is afraid of something, angry at something)".It is discussed that "emotion is a socially constructed, personally enacted way of being that emerge from conscious and/or unconscious judgments regarding perceived successes at attaining goals or maintaining standards or beliefs during transactions as part of social-historical contexts" as Schutz et al. (2006, p. 344-345) commented, "but in most cases there is both a social dimension of an emotional experience and also the person's enactment of the particular emotional way of being".The same authors suggest that the focus of inquiry on emotion should focus on the form of the activity setting where the person-environment transactions occur, as here the interaction can be analyzed.

Relevance of Emotion in Teaching and Teachers
Many articles about the fear of children going to school and emotions in education can be found, thus research into teacher emotion has attracted increasing attention in the last two decades (Chen 2018;Frenzel 2014;Frenzel et al 2016;Schutz and Zembylas 2009).
The relevance of emotion to teaching and teachers in both schools (Cheung et al 2011;Hagenauer et al 2015;Isenbarger et al 2006) and universities (Hagenauer & Volet 2014;Karim & Weisz 2011;Zhang & Zhu 2008) has been widely recognized.Emotion has not yet earned an equal place on the motivation agenda as influential motivation theories such as goal theory, self-efficacy theory or expectancy-value theory and should get more attention and research.
Many studies regarding emotions can be found within primary education and further educational research but none in subject specific occurrence (art/design education).
According to Becker et al (2015, p. 1) 'teachers' emotions are considered as an essential part of instructional settings and are related to a variety of important outcomes, such as teachers' well-being and health, classroom effectiveness, students' emotions and motivation as well as students' learning and performance.Becker et al (2015, p. 2) also summarized that there is a variety of emotions in the classroom such as pride, enjoyment, anger and frustration, anxiety and guilt.The question arises what kind of antecedents influence these emotions.Roseman & Smith (2001, p. 119) developed the model, grounded in appraisal-theoretical thinking, which asserts that emotional experiences are merely influenced by individual subjective interpretation and how teachers evaluate students' behaviour.Appraisals are significant for the environment of well-being, and includes the interaction between the "event" and the "appraiser" (Moors et al 2013, p. 120).Appraisals produce values for one or more appraisal variables, such as goal relevance and goal congruence.Schrittesser (2014, p. 36) remarks that although teacher candidates are eager to experience teaching practice, most are not so interested in analysing and reflecting the practice.This research focuses on the relevance of fear of school of artist-teachers at Art Universities in Austria.Most of the students constrict their possibilities within their studies by expectations of either becoming an artist or teacher, not including a researcher.Thornton (2013, p. 26) describes the identity conflict with the following words: "Some art teachers are artists, all art teachers are teachers therefore, some art teachers are artist teachers".It seems hard to live all three identities to a varying extent, depending on the time, the desire and circumstances.
"The green parrot on the blue background" or why new teaching strategies are often not adopted.
The most interesting phenomenon, which arises in artist-teacher education lies in the repetition of "the green parrot on the blue background", which indicates that students do not apply new teaching strategies within their first years, but repeat own experienced topics, technologies and strategies of their own school time.Many hypotheses are discussed within the university staff: "They are merely interested in becoming an artist and are not interested in becoming a teacher", "They are having fear", "They are overstrained" and discussions beneath students as "It is wrong what we are taught", "We need more practice" etc.However, teacher education research proves that the potential of traineeships turns out promising the other way round.
According to Schrittesser (2014, p. 36) practice also inherits danger of solidification of old routines, experienced in own schooldays.Knowledge, recently gained, appears fragile, not convincing, and is easily forgotten.Summarizing it can be observed that subjects of pedagogy or subject didactics are associated negatively, avoided as long as possible, moved to the end of the study time and is something that "one has rapidly to get over with", a deeper interest of main knowledge for the further work space seems missing.The question is, "why students decide for teacher education, which expectations, interest, skills they have" (Schrittesser 2014, p. 40, cf. Rothland 2011).Many years of practice do not guarantee excellent teaching skills.Students and commonalty consider practice as the most important experience, separated from research, which Berliner (2008, p. 59-91) calls "the great disconnect".Teaching supervisors supply rather with hints than research-led theoretical questions.Junction of theory and practice is widely understood as reading a book teaching methods.However this is an imagination of a model but not theory, Hackl (cf. 2014, p. 52) summarizes, as theory can only be built upon reflection of practice.
Avoiding central pedagogical subjects or subject didactics (art/design/textile didactics) maybe consists of the prestige of being an artist rather than a teacher.Many students consider the profession of an art teacher as a failure of being an artist.In general the prestige of studying to become a teacher isn't considered optimum.Chen (2018) remarks in her conclusion of the paper on Exploring the impact of teacher emotions on their approaches to teaching: A structural equation modelling approach, that: identifying pattern of relationships will contribute to understanding the reasons why new teaching strategies are often not adopted despite well-designed professional programs and educational reform and will provide implications for teaching im- Generally speaking, Chens model portrays that the more student-centred approaches are affected by teachers' positive emotions, and the more teacher-centred approaches are affected by teachers' negative emotions although there are three interesting links (joy to knowledge transmission; fear to student-teacher interaction, and anger to student focus).Although China might not be compared to Austria in education, as e.g.joy is associated with knowledge transmission because "the memorization approach adopted in the Chinese classrooms is not superficial rote learning but a kind of deep and constructive learning at the cognitive level" (DeHaan, 2008, p. 133-165;Tran, 2013, p. 57-65) and related to culture and socialization.Knowledge transmission exists in schools in Austria today too and is widely overemphasized.Participation and student focus has yet to be inserted.Frenzel et al.'s (2016, p. 494-519) developed a model, which believes that teachers' emotions are elicited by appraisals, which depend upon teachers' evaluations of how students' behaviours (objective classroom conditions) relate to their goals for students' behaviours.Becker et al. (2015) proved in their empirical study, that the more teachers perceived their students' behaviour as conductive to their goals, and the more they reported having things under control within one lesson, the more enjoyment and less anger they reported" and further that students' behaviours regarding motivation and discipline were more stable for one teacher (or class) than teachers' emotions or appraisals, yet they still varied considerably from lesson to lesson.This indicates that there is no such thing as classes that are always motivated and disciplined or teachers who are always capable of motivating and disciplining their classes (p.6-8).
Case Study: Oresteia brings students from suburbs to theatre and students to school.Fear at the beginning.First school experience of art teachers.
Most students from outer areas of the city have never visited a theatre yet.This chapter reflects on the project "Oresteia", which aimed to empathize students with the piece by individual approaches and let them exhibit, perform and present their outcomes at the National Theatre.
The piece itself is the most important and complete preserved Greek tragedy and was written by Aeschylus, who tells about the citizens of Athens, living on revenge and murder, the later trusting in rules of law instead of oracle.This project is a cooperation of the Art University, secondary school and the National Theatre and aims to democratize elitist theatre, create diversity.Actors visit schools in suburbs and engage in workshops with children.The art education students at the University of Applied Arts Vienna consider themselves as Artist-teachers (Thornton, 2013, p. 21-33), who are teachers, educated as artists and designers and then as pedagogues, visit schools in the country and engage in interpreting the piece from individual viewpoints with diverse strategies and methods.The analysis investigates the question of "what kind of impact can be expected in teaching by such an experience" and "how do students experience such a project?"Five students of the department of art/textile/design didactics for Teacher Education decided to engage in the project "Oresteia", which presents collaboration between the University of Arts Vienna, National Theatre and a school with a special reform-pedagogy called "Rasfeld-model".
The project has been supervised by a seminar at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.The students were asked to develop a teaching model according to their personal artistic approach and the interconnection to the topics of Oresteia.Subsequent they describe their personal artistic investigation and development of the idea to teach, their experiences at the school and their reflections about fear and learning experience, application of techniques and chosen methods.
The teacher proposed to the students to analyse the Greek tragedy "Oresteia", which is a very complex ancient piece, which unites Greek myths and legends with contemporary topics like murder, revenge, and democracy.To get the students in touch with these topics, the teachers made a role-play, where the most important protagonists were presented.Before facing the single workshops, the Rasfeld-model of the school has to be explained.
The "Rasfeld-model" or the initiative "school on departure" The Rasfeld model, also called initiative "Schule im Aufbruch" -school on departure, was started by Prof. Dr. Stephan Breidenbach, Prof. Dr. Gerald Hüther and Margret Rasfeld in 2012.(Rasfeld, n.d.-a)The initiative is not being seen as a reform pedagogical project but as a rethinking the culture of learning in general."School in departure stands for a holistic and transformative education how it is defined by the UNESCO within their world programme education for sustainable development" (Rasfeld, n.d.-b).On 28.11.2018 the initiative as a network was awarded the prize of education initiatives for sustainable development by the German UNESCO-commission (DUK) and by the Federal Ministry for Education and research in Bonn.(Rasfeld, n.d.-b)The initiative doesn't offer a prefabricated plan to transfer one school type into another like a recipes book, but a clear strategy of daily curriculum possibilities and it offers the possibility to collaborate, to rethink their view on school and to act.
The essential message of this initiative is the transformation of schools from places of knowledge into places of potential developments (AshokaDE 2019).
The aim is to individuate the students' potentials, to sustain their self-perception and to point out that they can have a meaningful impact on social community.This has in turn positive effects on the awareness of self-efficacy.Heterogeneity is seen as a treasure, so that diversity can grow on the basis of uniqueness (Rasfeld & Breidenbach 2014, p. 59).
after the three basic principles of the medical sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, that are called by them as understanding, contribution and effectiveness.Rasfeld & Breidenbach (2014, p. 69) emphasize on the concept of Antonovsky in which he argued that humans need three items for a healthy development of their personality: (i) he world and its innate structure must be understandable, (ii) humans have to feel that they can control their own acting, don't have a life of otherdirectedness and that tasks can be fulfilled to their own satisfaction, (iii) about this acting humans have to feel as part of a bigger picture.
On these beliefs Margret Rasfeld as the headmaster of the Evangelical School Berlin Center (Rasfeld, n.d.-c) applied her convictions in practice.
In heterogeneous groups the students learn through internal differentiation where they can follow their own learning speed and performance capability (Treier, n.d.-a).There exists learning offices, laboratories, project works, interdisciplinary teaching and mixed learning groups in higher classes from 7th to the 9th in the German school system.Up to the 9th class there doesn't exist the traditional appraisal form.The individual learning progress is accompanied by personal planning conversations, a yearly portfolio, an individual self and external assessment twice a year and many more.Beginning from the 7th class each student has to write a logbook, which helps them to list their own progression, difficulties and strengths.In the logbook are noted the topics in form of building blocks of the single subjects like German, nature and society, mathematics and English to reach within these three years.In the learning offices which consists in freely accessible classrooms for students, that can ask for help at the attendant teacher.(Treier, n.d.-b)So they become self-responsible autonomous learners.
As mentioned before not each school that follows the convictions of the Rasfeld-model is organized in the same way.The new secondary school of lower Austria, where the workshops were tested by the art teachers, doesn't offer the same programme as the evangelical school Berlin center.

The workshop "CATCH THE MOOD" by Simona Bergmann
Hereby the students were confronted with the wide range of emotions contained in the play.In a phase of reconstruction, the topic was discussed deeper, using mind maps on blackboard where they had to identify the corresponding colours referring to their psychological meanings.The artist teacher decided to use the technique of egg tempera in the creative process phase.The students were instructed step-by-step, and they should document their experiences during the examination process.They discussed the psychological meanings of colours and these should be involved in the representation of one chosen emotion.The students interacted with items and basic knowledge achievement like the mixture of egg tempera, the mixing of the primary colours to get secondary ones as well as reflecting their own art works.
After this work phase, all the individual paintings were merged to create a group work in the size of 110x110 cm.Each student was assigned one row of seven squares to design.The process of knowledge of methods and designs was transferred from one student to the other.
Reflections were made: There was i.e. the spiral of revenge (see fig. 6) , designed in orange with a specific movement of the brush, or the moment when the black and white stones (the elements of the democratic vote, here shown with their complementary colours red and green) were put in the urn (see fig. 7).

Reflection on the workshop "CATCH THE MOOD"
The reflection of the practice-based teaching evoked questions about the role of the teacher in the classroom and the classroom management.Another pedagogical reflection was: How can a teacher involve the whole group members in reflective questioning made by one single student belonging to subject related topics?Here they could find excerpts of books on colour mixing but also about the psychological meaning of colours, a research sheet was handed out, to facilitate their individual research.However, different as expected, the students were not used to work autonomously, although this school (Margret Rasfeld model school) should be expert -or at least ought to be on the way to becom-ing a model.In fact the provided research materials remained nearly untouched.So the question was: How to educate adolescents to be self-reflective, self-responsible, and autonomous learners?
One big challenge for the art teacher during teaching lessons was the strict timetable.After working with the first group of students, the teacher noticed that she planned too many activities for the lessons held on one or two days.She explained the egg tempera technique, also the "painting in action" and discussed artists like, Yves Klein, Janine Antoni, Jackson Pollock and Maria Lassnig.The teacher started hurrying through, slowing down.She changed the structure of the lesson after each day.She decided to choose the simple and safe way of teaching techniques instead of discussing historical art works or artist's positions.She made this decision because of her fear of having a lack of spontaneous retrievable theoretical knowledge regarding art history for adapting her teaching concept ad hoc.
Regarding the subject related needs described below, this behaviour fits with the request for more techniques or the wish of recipes and elaborated teaching materials that could be used ad hoc, and allows an interpretation, why apparently more green parrots on blue backgrounds than content-full teaching occur in Austrian art classrooms.Bergmann describes that artistteacher candidates are concentrated at the initial phase on pedagogical issues because of the few practice experiences in schools.She believes that subject didactical issues can take place when pedagogical matters are controlled.Therefore she requests more practice phases during the university program and believes that this would allow less "fear of school" beneath artistteacher candidates.This shall be discussed by the paper from Frenzel & Götz (2007, p. 293).
On the side of the teacher's personality Frenzel & Götz (2007, p. 286) see the teachingexperience and the conviction of controls as important predictors.Conviction of control means the conviction of teachers and their influence to lead situations.The two "Locus of Controls" foresee that the external conviction of control favours anxiety whereas internal conviction encourages experiencing joy (Frenzel & Götz 2007, p. 286).They assume that the teachers' emotions are correlated with the three concepts of teachers' self-efficacy after Tschannen-Moran & Hoy (2001, p. 783-805): the self-certificated competence of communicating comprehension, those of encourage students' engagement and in the end classroom management.
Frenzel & Götz (2007, p. 287) supposed that throughout their study on "teachers' emotions" the following positions evolve as "indicators for a higher level of joy and a fewer level of anxiety: teacher experience, internal conviction of control and the subjective impressions of the teachers regarding to comprehension, motivation and discipline".The study shows that a higher internal conviction of control of the teacher lead to more joy, less anxiety and less anger.The supposed students' output level instead correlated with a positive value of experiencing joy and a negative value of experiencing anger but with no relevance for experiencing of anxiety.The presumption that the students were motivated caused more joy, less anger and was irrelevant for anxiety.Disciplined students caused joy.The study revealed also that anxiety is the emotion that depends most on individuals.

The workshop "Flying emotions" by Violeta Hinojosa
For the project "Flying emotions", the wind was the starting point of a pedagogic idea.There is a part in the story of the Oresteia where the wind was urgently needed to transport the fleet of Agamemnon from Greece to Troy.Based on that, this project tried to transport something as well; emotions."Flying emotions" taught the students how to build a kite by themselves, create a design for it by sensitizing their emotions and expressing them through colours.The students had to build a wooden structure for their kite, paint a design with acrylics on kitepaper and attach both so that the kite could fly.For the designs, they went through a process of colour-feeling recognition.First, they had to establish a link between the feelings used by the characters of the Oresteia and the images from paintings of Wassily Kandinsky that were shown to them.After they chose a feeling for each image they explained their reason of decision -making: What colour scheme or image did I choose for what kind of feeling?In the end, they had to choose one or more feelings, create a design for their kite, assemble everything together and let it fly.
Process and reflections on the workshop "Flying emotions" Once the pupils were split in smaller groups, the goals of the workshop were explained as well as the materials and the instructions on how to proceed.In this first part of the workshop, the students needed some time to warm up, since the groups changed every day, they had to adjust to the art-teacher and they had to open up to this new idea of showing their emotions through colour.Some of them adapted easily, some were just listening and paying attention.When asking about the feelings that had a connection with them, many wrote love, hate, grief, desperation, happiness, hope, etc.
When they saw the images of the paintings from Wassily Kandinsky, they immediately started to connect feelings and colours.
Some of the students also looked at the book of Eva Heller and studied her statistical charts about feelings and colours (Heller, 2015 p. 49ff).Then they started to do the structure of the kite.For that, the pupils had to read carefully the worksheet, which contained the exact measurements and example-images of the process of building the kite.There were some students that were very interested in working with wood, however some needed extra help.The art teacher made students, who finished their task, to her assistants.They helped the slower ones so that they could all finish at the same time.This was a spontaneous idea (after having fear: what shall I do if some finished their work and are bored and others still need time) to keep all pupils busy all the time and it worked in favour of the art teacher's well-being.One pupil got Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Peer-reviewed | Full paper injured while cutting the edges of the kite, which influenced his experience of building a kite negatively.
After they were done with the structure, they moved on to the design and painting part.
Based on the feedback, they enjoyed the painting and the expressive part of the project the most.The atmosphere when working on the kites changed constantly since there were new students every day.To motivate them the art teacher decided to play music all the time.According to the feedbacks from the students, this helped them relax and concentrate in the assignment.
The cleaning up of materials in the end was a bit problematic, since the teacher didn't have much experience in being strict with the students, but it got better with every group every day.
Question would be: What is she afraid of?
By doing this project, one learns a lot about directing an art project and making it happen.
The preparations before going into the field were very intense and included a lot of research about the design and building of a kite.Students learned a lot of skills, like being exact, tiding the wood breaks?Or the paint doesn't dry?These are small problems that can be solved but is always good to be prepared and anticipate them.Having extra material just in case, or extra cord, or a hair dryer can save a lot of time.It would be also helpful to plan a slot for more art history.The student also learned a lot and documented the reflexions and feedbacks from every day at the workshop.All in all, the making of a project like this, can bring a lot of fun!
The exposition at the National Theatre Aim of the project week Oresteia at this school was to bring more young people in contact with theatre and cultural activities.The pupils have had the possibility to expose their art works at the National Theatre.The preparation for this event included the assembling of all art works was made by the art-teacher candidates, the greater was the delusion of the absence of the pupils during the whole exposure time.Here enters the question if the project failed and if, why.One reason could be the long distance of travel.However the director of the school came to visit the presentation.

Emotional primary survey of artist-teacher candidates in Austria
Caused by discussion about the project, a totally anonymous survey was made, and questions  To test didactic in a practical way, create (short) concrete teaching ideas/concepts so that you have many ideas for teaching concepts and not only few ones elaborated as seminar papers.
provement through teacher emotion (p.a).She indicates the reason in student-teacher relationships and interrelations between emotion and teaching strategies (student-centred or teacher-centred).Although Chen (2018) researched primary circumstances in China, and fear of school there is merely connected with: Fear of 1. Putting pressure to students (due to pedagogy reforms and PISA-tests), 2. Improving their achievement, 3. Feeling pressurized of heavy workload, 4.Not gaining opportunities for improvement, 5. Competition among colleagues, 6. Feeling pressurized by irrational parents, her findings can be interesting for other settings in other countries (p.7).

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Mind map of emotions on the blackboard c Simona Bergmann

Figure
Figure 2: Student fixing a drawing sheet c Simona Bergmann

Figure 8 :
Figure 8: Building the kites c Violeta Hinojosa

Figure 15 :
Figure 15: Flying the kites c Violeta Hinojosa were asked like Age, Study semester, Study Subject(s), Are you teaching already?, Fear of school, Specific description of what kind of fear they are having, Fear of first school-day, Specific fear in general, What do you need to cope with this fear?Do you have any idea for future education at the art universities?5 questions were purely quantitative, the other 4 qualitative.

Figure 17 :
Figure 17: National Theatre c Simona Bergmann and teacher -how does it fit together (1) For facing the fear in a better way: clear guidelines how shitty it is for my employment possibilities if I post naked photos on Instagram?Or one in which I hold a joint?What am I supposed to do in my art?When I'm hurting myself and if I made the documentation of this accessible for everyone?11.06.201800:52 F) Others (1)Better specialized and concrete formation.I could widen my knowledge on my own outside of de passage),Macdonald (2017) reflects in his article A diptych of dilemma: becoming an artist and a teacher the double-identification and membership' and concludes that In recognizing the criticality of prioritizing becoming a teacher, we would ultimately better position ourselves to address the disparity evident between our preservice teacher knowledge and beginning teacher competence.In doing this, we identified the need to be mindful that an existing artist practice has the potential to either cloud or clarify the in-between space (p.173).Biographical work facilitated professionalism the recent years (cf.Mateus-Berr and Poscharnig 2014), where clouds dissipate, and clarification is made.Thornton (2013) suggests living triple identities.Both approaches could help early clarification of professionalization process of artistteachers.