Faking It or Feeling It? How Teachers' Emotional Labor Strategies Influence Classroom Dynamics

While the prevailing educational paradigm often assumes that "more teacher enthusiasm leads to better learning outcomes," this study challenges this oversimplified notion by investigating the paradoxical "over-enthusiasm trap" in teaching. Grounded in Emotional Labor Theory and Cognitive Load Theory, this study proposes a dual-pathway framework that elucidates how teachers' emotional labor intensity simultaneously enhances classroom emotional atmosphere while potentially overloading students' cognitive capacity. Through a multi-method study involving 345 teacher-student dyads across diverse educational settings, we employed structural equation modeling to examine the complex interplay between emotional labor, cognitive load, learning persistence, and academic outcomes. These results provide compelling evidence for the relationship between teacher enthusiasm and learning effectiveness, offering both theoretical advancements in understanding emotional-cognitive dynamics in education and practical implications for optimizing teachers' emotional labor strategies. The findings advocate for a more nuanced approach to teacher training that balances emotional engagement with cognitive considerations, particularly in content-intensive instructional contexts.