“Lying flat” not involuting: An ethnographic case study on teacher disappointment in Chinese rural context

Abstract

Teacher disappointment, as a negative emotion, has been understudied in existing research. This ethnographic case study examines the sources, expressions, and responses of Chinese rural teachers’ disappointment in their professional work. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, observation field notes, and archival documents, we identified three findings: 1) challenging interpersonal relationships were the primary source of teacher disappointment; 2) most teachers expressed their disappointment implicitly; 3) the teachers responded to disappointment with varying approaches. These research findings add new empirical evidence and theoretical insights to the international literature on teacher emotion. They also highlight the sociocultural dimension of teacher disappointment.