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Cultural Studies of Science Education

, Volume 11, Issue 3, pp 629–652 | Cite as

Emotional experiences of preservice science teachers in online learning: the formation, disruption and maintenance of social bonds

  • Alberto Bellocchi
  • Kathy A. Mills
  • Stephen M. Ritchie
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

The enactment of learning to become a science teacher in online mode is an emotionally charged experience. We attend to the formation, maintenance and disruption of social bonds experienced by online preservice science teachers as they shared their emotional online learning experiences through blogs, or e-motion diaries, in reaction to videos of face-to-face lessons. A multi-theoretic framework drawing on microsociological perspectives of emotion informed our hermeneutic interpretations of students’ first-person accounts reported through an e-motion diary. These accounts were analyzed through our own database of emotion labels constructed from the synthesis of existing literature on emotion across a range of fields of inquiry. Preservice science teachers felt included in the face-to-face group as they watched videos of classroom transactions. The strength of these feelings of social solidarity were dependent on the quality of the video recording. E-motion diaries provided a resource for interactions focused on shared emotional experiences leading to formation of social bonds and the alleviation of feelings of fear, trepidation and anxiety about becoming science teachers. We offer implications to inform practitioners who wish to improve feelings of inclusion amongst their online learners in science education.

Keywords

Emotion Sociology of emotion Isolation Social bonds Online learning Science teacher education 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Maryam Sandhu who worked tirelessly as a research assistant in this study by assisting with data analysis and the generation of our emotion label database. We are indebted to her contributions. The Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, contract Grant Number: DP120100369, partly supported this research. A Queensland University of Technology Teaching and Learning Grant awarded to Kathy Mills, Alberto Bellocchi, and Stephen Ritchie also supported the research.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alberto Bellocchi
    • 1
  • Kathy A. Mills
    • 1
  • Stephen M. Ritchie
    • 2
  1. 1.Faculty of Education, School of CurriculumQueensland University of TechnologyKelvin GroveAustralia
  2. 2.School of EducationMurdoch UniversityMurdochAustralia

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