Emotional Geographies of Teaching, Empathic Communication, Democratic School Climate, and Teacher Burnout

Emotional geographies are the patterns of proximity or distance in social encounters and connections that help build and shape the emotions we experience about ourselves, our world, and each other. Concerning schools, scholars identified several emotional geographies, including sociocultural, moral, professional, political, and physical. These may create extreme emotional distance between teachers and key stakeholders like parents and students. At the same time, the literature suggests that empathic communication is particularly effective at overcoming these emotional geographies. The chapter uses new measures of emotional geographies and empathic communication in schools to evaluate the influence of these constructs on democratic school climate and teacher burnout.