Notes on:
Zembylas, M. (2003) 'Caring for teacher
emotion: Reflections on teachers self -
development'. Studies in Philosophy and
Education 22: 103-25.
David Harris
We begin with recalling an episode in teaching,
when a young man discovered all sorts of wonders
of nature, and the enthusiasm that greeted you
telling the story. We felt nervous as kids
ask questions, then we realized how remarkable and
profound some of them were [on hearing the story
of Narcissus, John asked whether he will become a
flower if he does not love other people]: we
responded by quoting a line from a novel.
You then reflected whether that was a good answer,
especially as other teachers accused us of being
different, not preparing kids adequately for
exams. We felt sad and disappointed at their
response [and did we leave schoolteaching as a
result?] . However, John recalls the episode
nearly 20 years later and we are 'are deeply
touched' (104).
Two important features of teacher emotional
experience are demonstrated here. First,
teacher emotion 'is the product of cultural,
social and political relations'. A number of
emotions were clearly displayed, but all were
produced by interactions with students and other
teachers in a socio political context.
Secondly, other people's expectations influence
your own emotions.
Teachers' emotions have been neglected by
researchers in favour of a cognitive emphasis on
teaching. Emotions were seen as individual,
as interior, and as the subject properly of
psychology. However there are clearly
cognitive aspects displayed in the above vignette,
including the relation with bodily response and
how we recognize emotions. There is now a
growing interest in emotions [with a big list of
references], and their role in teachers'
professional and personal development.
However, they still tend to focus around the
interpersonal components, with 'a strong
constructionist position', and do not recognise
power relations. However, the conventional
discourses of teaching clearly influence the
construction of emotions, as the teacher reaction
to his work shows. There are 'social rules
and codes around the communication of emotion'
(105). We need to examine 'discursive
structures and normative practices' which affect
teaching and its practice. This essay fills
in the gap, looking at the emotional rules,
how they control emotions, and how they are
'embedded in school culture, ideology, and power
relations'. Critical insights come from
feminism and post structuralism and this can help
us theorise 'to initiate and to sustain teacher
self development', and to develop 'site of
resistance and self - (trans) formation' (106).
Current research can be overviewed
critically. Emotions have been neglected
even though they are of daily concern in practice
[one of the authors here is Nias]. This
reflects cultural prejudice against emotion, a
dichotomy between reason and emotion which is
dominant in educational research. Emotions
are usually seen as being misleading and
threatening to reason. Emotions are elusive
and difficult to study. Affect and emotions
have usually been associated with women and
feminism, according to Boler. The knowing
person tends to be seen as 'disembodied, detached,
and neutral'. However, the power of emotion
in teaching has gradually become recognized.
Teaching is inevitably connected with affects and
interaction. Early work suggested that
stress and burnout was a consequence of not
attending adequately to emotion. Later work
sees emotion as central to social relationships,
and focuses on the effects of positive and
negative emotions and how they affect interactions
between teachers and others.
[The examples of the first kind of research are
cited, 107]. One study was based on teachers
attending the Tavistock to learn about
counselling. Examples were given of how
teachers' emotional responses 'directly influenced
the emotional development of their
students'. Teaching and learning was seen as
interconnected. However, the theoretical
framework was psychoanalysis which left out
interpersonal and socio political
dimensions. Nias interviewed students to see
how they experienced teaching and fitted it into
their lives: personal identity was involved,
boundaries between personal and professional lives
were erased, but this also led to a sense of loss
and bereavement after recent policy changes.
Job satisfaction and pride were important in
teacher work and careers, but the demands of the
school system increasingly downplayed the relevant
'discursive structures and normative practices'
(108). Stress and burnout resulted [lots
more references appear], and this also became a
major topic, and made teacher emotion
mainstream. This research alluded to the
connections between emotion, teacher performance,
teacher and knowledge, and the context of the
classroom and school. Teachers were urged to
negotiate their own emotional investments
effectively. Overall, though, the studies
tended to be descriptive.
The later work, in the last decade, increasingly
saw teaching as an emotional practice, and focused
on the centrality of social relations in the
classroom and school. Social interactions
became important for understanding individual
emotions, as in the 'social constructionism of
emotion'(109). Studies were shown of the
emotional issues in reform movements in U.S.
schools, for example, as pressure is increased,
and sources of support diminish. Teachers
were feeling increasingly vulnerable as
professional relationships changed, and only some
were able to develop 'successful coping
strategies'(110). Such studies clearly
showed how emotions in teaching were linked to
political interests and moral values. One
suggestion was to encourage students to engage in
'autobiographical reflection and story telling' to
combat vulnerability and build solidarity.
One study looked at the emotional labour of women
in teaching, which covers coping strategies, as a
way of resolving the conflict between caring and
administrating. Another study looked at the
effects of an OFSTED inspection and the
professional uncertainty, anxiety and confusion
that this produced. Some teachers
experienced it is an assault on the self leading
to 'mortification, dehumanization, the loss of
pedagogic values and of harmony, and changed and
weakened commitment'(111): one way to cope was to
reconsider themselves not as professionals but as
technicians [skilled workers was Ozga's
recommendation]. Another study of English
primary school teachers notice that they were
particularly creative and keen on creating
emotional bonds with their students, so that
policy issues have a particular effect. The
importance of gender and politics emerges clearly.
The series of articles were produced by Hargreaves
and his colleagues on how emotional goals pervade
teacher orientations and responses 'to all other
aspects of educational change', and to the whole
of teacher activity, including planning.
Obviously successful reform would engage the
emotions more positively. Emotional aspects
were discovered in teacher parent interactions and
in 'positions of leadership': the latter study
showed that loneliness, feeling misunderstood and
resentment from powerlessness were
widespread. This work is insightful, but
again does not emphasize sufficiently discursive
practices to connect up these issues: perhaps
in-depth longitudinal research is required.
Other studies have looked at the particular case
of two mature women teachers, and noticed the role
of emotion in terms of their commitment, and the
'emotional comfort and security they get back from
students' (112)—the implication is that
professional development should provide
opportunities for analyzing situations for their
emotional impact [Golby and Tickle are cited
here]. Overall, complexity appears in these
later studies, although even here the
possibilities are limited by sociological and
psychological frameworks deployed.
Overall, it seems obvious that teacher emotion is
crucial. Emotional dissonance can be created
by emotional labour, and this can lead to stress
and burnout. Different aspects of the role
of emotion have appeared in different studies, so
more systematic research is required. The
drawbacks include theoretical limits, imposed by
an interest in interpersonal frameworks in social
constructionism, missing the issue of how these
get embedded in school cultures ideology and
power. There is very little discussion on
how actual practices 'establish and regulate
emotional rules' (113). This would point to
certain invisible aspects of the development and
imposition of emotional norms, and these
connections with power should be developed in both
research and practice. In particular, we
need to consider how to develop empowering
pedagogies, to move beyond description.
Emotions must be seen as central, 'the very
location of the capacity to embrace, or revise, or
reject discursive practices of whatever
kind'(114), and this should lead to strategies 'to
promote self awareness and empowerment (e.g.
through autobiographical story telling and
exchanging)'.
Feminism and post structuralism have produced
suitable theories of emotion which are both social
and cultural and political as well as
interpersonal [a large list of work is
provided]. These might inform understanding
of teaching. Post structuralism in
particular emphasizes the role of language and
discourse [largely through Foucault], and a
widespread view of power with nowhere 'left for an
individual to look for a "true self"': the subject
is produced by discursive practices. We can
go on to ask how discourses of emotion are used in
regulation [deconstructing rival positions as
politics]. Feminist theories also show the effects
of struggles over power, challenging binary
divisions, like those between emotions and bodies,
rationality and emotions. An appeal to the
caring qualities of women can be seen as
disciplinary. Liberation from discursive
constraints and expectations is required.
Some of the earlier work can be seen as pointing
the way, with clear connections with political
issues, as we saw, and a number of recent
ethnographies of emotion are also
useful—especially the work of Boler in education,
and 'Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod in
anthropology' [see below]. Boler argues that
emotions have been marginalized and seen as
deviant, as a result of the dualisms of western
philosophy [idealism] which reflect differences of
power. They prop up the neutral knower and
objective knowledge. She has identified four
discourses of emotion in education: 'rational,
pathological, romantic, and political' (116).
Rational discourses developed universalist
codes and categories, and scientific
discourses. They contain and regulate
emotions. Pathological discourses
assume some normal emotional equilibrium, but see
individuals as vulnerable to emotions.
Medicine and biology, psychology and social
sciences often take this view. Romantic
discourses are found in religious and artistic
traditions, and here visions and 'improper
emotions'(116) are represented and seen as
essentially human [this is where the two
anthropologists come in]. Feelings become
the essence of emotion, and emotions are seen as
universal. Political discourses are
the most recent and are associated with radical
feminism and consciousness raising.
Silences are also important in the discourses of
emotions, for Boler, reflecting the dominance of
'western rationality', based on the conduct of
'"balanced" and "well - behaved" white
males'. This means that institutions are
often committed to maintaining silences about
emotions, or defining them negatively. Boler
and the anthropologists argue that power is
integral to discourses about emotions, since they
regulate what may be said, what counts is true,
and how power and status differences are
maintained. Foucault is important.
Emotions are inserted into discourses that see
them as dangerous, physical, feminine and
subordinates. Even feelings are produced by
social political and cultural 'encounters'
(117). There is an emphasis on practice as
understood by Bourdieu, Giddens and others, as
regulating 'gestures of respect and shame'.
In a particular twist, speaking about controlling
emotions can 'actually create those emotions'.
We also see emotions as embodied, as in Bourdieu
on the bodily hexis as representing learned habits
or dispositions [the anthropologists seem to like
Bourdieu]. This sort of embodiment should
not be misunderstood as being just natural.
This notion of embodiment clearly relates to the
social body as well. This work has led to a
feminist politics of emotions particularly.
We can draw on post structuralist and feminist
analysis to understand teachers self development.
Fraser talks about political agency, and this
includes being able to articulate emotions and
develop alternative expressions 'that challenge
oppressive ideologies' (118). The notion of
women in particular as being nurturing or
emotional might be challenged. The
techniques can also be used to try and understand
the construction of teacher emotion, the
development of emotional rules, and the strategies
of subversion that might be developed in
response. Teachers know these rules although
they are not explicit: they can be inferred from
responses to emotional display. They reflect
power relations and can be seen as disciplinary
techniques, often through classifying emotional
expressions as normal or deviant. Emotional
rules can cover 'specific language, the
ethical/emotional territory they map out, the
attributes of the person that they identify as of
"worth" or "significance," the pitfalls to be
avoided and the goals to pursue' (119).
Teachers therefore have to learn to deal with a
variety of emotions while controlling their own
and radiating 'empathy, calmness, and
kindness'. As they work on how to do this,
they become 'subjects for themselves', and subject
themselves to control and regulation. This
is often seen as part of a 'judging their
professional lives'. Inevitably this is
political, since the rules are often used to 'shut
down new pedagogies (e.g. multi cultural
education, caring for the emotions, pedagogies
that are not fixated to "teaching to the test"
etc.)'.
We might begin by challenging the traditional
dichotomies like those between the emotional and
the rational, or the personal and the political,
and the way in which these are assigned to
genders. We need instead to see emotions as
'sites of social and political resistance and
transformation of oppressions' and adapt to new
emotional rules. We can also ask more
positive questions about how to enrich 'teacher
emotional self development' (120) and encourage
alternative expressions. For example we can
ask how teachers come to internalize notions such
as 'fear, guilt, shame and humiliation', how they
might gain courage to resist authority, how they
might develop 'new emotional depth and
expressions'. There is already some
[official] encouragement for new emotional rules
'that promote empathetic understanding with
students' [likely to form into a new kind of soft
social control, as in human relations?]. We
might also help teachers create stories 'about
social solidarity and the role of emotions', not
so much as a process of self preservation, but
more as a matter of exercising 'openness and
flexibility in acting to transform these
emotions', recapturing and revaluing what has been
excluded, as in some feminist politics.
Empathy can help [later to be seriously modified
to avoid passive empathy]. Raising awareness
helps teachers 'sort' their experiences and
feelings, and learn to use them to empower
themselves, create collective resistance.
Autobiographical story telling, mentoring,
establishing 'forums for creating emotional and
professional bonding', and the development of
action research can all help, although they all
involve 'inevitable micropolitical issues' [they
are not free from displays of dominance and
hierarchy?]. The aim will be to 'develop
"philosophies and histories of emotions"… to
inform… pedagogies' [citing two other
writers]. [Luckily this gives a role for
educational researchers and theorists].
We should move on from the old approaches that
focus on interpersonal aspects to recognize the
effects of a larger system. Feminist and
poststructuralist ideas can help in displaying
connections between the interpersonal and the
discursive. Other approaches might also be
pursued researchers need to 'overcome the current
problematics and develop pedagogies the account
for the intersections of teacher emotion, power
relations, and ideology' (122). Analysis
will assist challenge. The emotions should
be seen as positive as well as negative.
Teachers do risk becoming vulnerable, but this is
a feature of their professional lives any
way. A good way of caring for teacher
emotion is 'developing accounts that recognize
them as the site of political resistance'.
References
The two anthropologists have apparently written a
book: Lutz, C. and Abu-Lughod, A. (eds) Language
and the politics of emotion.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. There
also seems to be a piece on women's emotional
labour in management: Blackmore, J. (1996)
'Doing "emotional labour" in the education
marketplace: Stories from the field of women in
management'. Discourse: Studies in the
Cultural Politics of Education, 17:
337-49. There are several pieces by
Boler. There is Golby, M. (1996)
'Teachers' emotions: An illustrated
discussion'. Cambridge Journal of
Education, 26:423-34. There are lots
of Hargreaves references. There is Nias,
J. (1996) 'Thinking about feeling: The
emotions in teaching'. Cambridge Journal
of Education, 26:293-306.
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