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Giving shape and form to emotion: using drawings to identify emotions in university teaching

Academia is generally not considered a place for expressing emotions, yet emotions are inevitably present in complex activities such as teaching. We investigated whether drawings could be used as a means of gaining access to emotions in university teaching and how. The data consisted of academics’ drawings of themselves as university teachers (n = 86). We examined emotions in university teaching through thematic analysis. Positive, neutral, negative and mixed emotions were identified. Our findings suggest that emotions related to university teaching are contextual. Positive emotions were typically conveyed in a seminar and group work setting. Neutral emotions were mostly connected with lecture settings or had no context depicted. Only four drawings were interpreted as portraying negative emotions, and, with one exception, these were placed in lecture settings. We suggest that drawings can be a helpful exercise for facilitating reflection in academic staff development.