Teachers’ negative experiences and expressions of emotion: being true to yourself or keeping you in your place?

摘要

This paper examines teachers’ experiences and displays of negative emotion as anmeans of partially exploring how identities at work might be formed andnregulated. It uses the concepts of emotional labour and subjectivation toninterrogate the negative emotions teachers may experience and/or express atnwork. It suggests that emotion display rules are developed and come to partiallyndefine the teacher self in tandem with overlapping, synthetically discussedndiscourses of the teacher as moral/caring agent, expert and purveyor of socialncontrol/social efficiency. The field of emotional labour is explored here using diarynentries of teachers who were between their second and fifth year of teaching innIrish primary schools. Teachers’ experiences are read with less of a concern for thenoriginal ‘authenticity’ thesis of emotional labour in order to foreground annanalysis of how certain truths about teachers’ emotions are legitimated andnsolidified in the labour cycle. It is argued that spaces for multiple teacher identitiesnand interrogation of emotional display must be carved out in teacher education.nThis space might include an acknowledgement of ambivalence towards thenprofession.