Editorial: The role of teacher emotion in education

First, it clarifies how emotions and emotion regulation relate to teacher exhaustion, mental health, and career motivation. Second, it shows how teachers' emotional appraisals and identity work can either reinforce deficit narratives or support more compassionate interpretations of students' needs. Third, it highlights relational pathways through which teachers' emotional competence and bonding practices connect to classroom climate and student social outcomes.Several articles show that emotional experiences are closely tied to teacher wellbeing and persistence, particularly during the transition into teaching (Ingersoll & Strong, 2011). Huber and Haupt (this issue) examined novice teachers' emotional profiles and emotional exhaustion during their first school year. Positive emotions were reported more frequently than negative emotions during induction. Notably, traditionally trained novices reported higher levels of negative emotion and emotional exhaustion than non-traditional novice teachers, underscoring the importance of induction contexts in shaping emotions and supports.Abt and colleagues (this issue) likewise examined how internship resources relate to emotional exhaustion and career motivation among student teachers. They showed how personal and contextual resources-including reflection, occupational insight, and mentoring supportshaped both exhaustion and motivation through self-efficacy and internship satisfaction. Their findings underscore how emotion-related outcomes are both individual matters and reflect the quality of learning-to-teach environments. Fuentes-Vilugrón and colleagues (this issue) investigated stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout among early childhood education teams in Chile. Although overall levels of stress, anxiety, and depression were low, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization were positively related to these indicators; however, personal accomplishment was negatively related. Their model strengthens the case for prevention efforts that address the emotional loads of these groups.Additional contributions showed how emotions are shaped by teachers' interpretations of classroom situations and broader discourses. Gaines and colleagues (this issue) focused on the post-pandemic return to "normal" schooling and examined how teachers' appraisals of perceived changes in students intersect with deficit-oriented "learning loss" narratives. Teachers often interpreted post-pandemic changes as gaps in content knowledge, self-regulation, and socialemotional development, eliciting frustration, inefficacy, and stress from teachers. Teachers who engaged in cognitive reappraisal (Gross, 1998;Zhang et al., 2023) and empathic perspectivetaking were more likely to sustain positive emotional experiences and resist deficit framings.Tang and colleagues (this issue) studied Chinese preschool teachers with histories of childhood abuse and neglect and find that these experiences are associated with greater expressive suppression and reduced cognitive reappraisal. They also identify resilience and current student-teacher relationships as a pathway that supports cognitive reappraisal, pointing to intervention opportunities that combine individual, relational, and workplace supports.Across contexts and career stages, papers in this Research Topic also emphasize that teacher emotions are deeply entangled with professional identity. Dağtaş and Zaimoğlu (this issue) show how emotional diversity, regulation, and "emotional alignment" shape identity work within institutional and cultural settings, reinforcing the idea that professional identity is not only cognitive and discursive, but also affective and dialogic.Several contributions to this Research Topic explore how teacher emotion matters for students, often through relational pathways rather than direct effects. Rauterkus and colleagues (this issue) examined teachers' emotional competence, teacher-student relationship quality, and students' social integration in German elementary schools. They found no significant direct associations between teachers' emotional competence and social integration indicators, but they did identify a significant indirect pathway through teacher-student closeness for students' selfperceived social integration. This pattern shows how teacher emotional capacities may shape student experiences particularly when translated into relational practices that students perceive as warm, responsive, and understanding.Beyond documenting emotional experiences, this Research Topic also advances practical tools for emotionally informed education. Forero Díaz and colleagues (this issue) investigate emotional activation in science teacher education in Colombia. Their findings revealed emotional activation and self-efficacy as dynamic and context-mediated, shaped by prior experience, perceived control, and task value. This study reinforced the importance of intentionally integrating affective dimensions into teacher preparation. Porter and Donaldson (this issue) contributed a motivational process perspective by distinguishing motivating emotions-care, curiosity, community/cooperation, and challenge-from outcome emotions such as pride and frustration. Their model draws attention to emotions as drivers of agency and pedagogical action and offers useful language for leaders and teacher educators seeking to support adaptive practice.Finally, Vargas Pana and colleagues (this issue) worked to move the field toward intervention by designing and piloting a training program focused on emotional validation and affective bonding in early childhood education. They reported increases in interactions linked to bonding and validation, suggesting that emotionally supportive education is teachable through professional learning. Along similar lines, Simkhada and colleagues (this issue) used narrative inquiry to illuminate "professional anxiety" among secondary mathematics teachers in Nepal, drawing attention to how stress can persist and intensify under certain employment conditions and accountability demands. This work shows that teacher emotion is a matter of working conditions and professional dignity, and not solely a matter of individual coping.The articles in this Research Topic position teacher emotion as a central pathway linking teacher preparation and professional learning, school-working conditions, relational practice, and student experience (Hargreaves, 1998(Hargreaves, , 2000;;Newberry, 2013;Newberry & Allsop, 2017;Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). The collection of articles also points toward several next steps:Strengthening multi-level designs that connect organizational conditions to teachers' appraisals and emotions; expanding intervention research that targets emotion regulation and the relational practices through which emotional competence becomes visible to students (Zhang et al., 2021;Zhang et al., 2023;and developing approaches that capture the temporal and situated nature of emotions across diverse contexts and career stages.We hope this Research Topic encourages scholars, teacher educators, and educational leaders to take teacher emotion as a professional resource to be understood, cultivated, and protected and not as an individual weakness to be managed. Doing so is essential for sustaining teacher wellbeing and creating learning environments where both teachers and students can thrive.