“At worst it leads to madness.” A phenomenographic approach on how early childhood education professionals experience emotions in teamwork

Abstract

Teamwork is a key part of almost any person’s working life. At its best, teamwork embodies a good team spirit and increases employee well-being, but at its worst, a team is characterized by mistrust or competition between members where action and development is not possible. In this study we explored what types of emotions early childhood education professionals experience during teamwork. These questions are answered with the help of a phenomenographic approach. As a theoretical frame, in this study, we utilize Warr’s (2012) Affective circumplex model. According to our results the ECE professional’s experienced emotions can be mostly described through the categories of enthusiasm, anxiety, and depression. A worrying result was also identified. The respondents described emotions around the category of comfort only a few times, which are related to job satisfaction.