“you choose to care”: teachers, emotions and professional identity

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Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 117–126

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‘‘You choose to care’’: Teachers, emotionsand professional identity

Kate Eliza O’Connor�

Faculty of Education and Social Work A35, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Received 30 March 2006; received in revised form 11 November 2006; accepted 15 November 2006

Abstract

This paper discusses the findings of a qualitative interpretive study on secondary school teachers’ professional identities

and emotional experiences. Teachers’ work is emotionally engaging and personally demanding, yet the caring nature of the

teaching role is largely neglected in educational policy and teacher standards. This paper examines the reasons behind the

marginalisation of discourses of emotionality and discusses the lived experiences of three teachers. The caring behaviour

that teachers exhibit in their work is seen to have professional, performative and philosophical dimensions as individual

teachers subjectively negotiate the demands that are placed upon them in different situated contexts.

r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Emotions in teaching; Professional identity; Teacher beliefs; Teacher role

1. Introduction

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitativeinteractionist study that explored how three sec-ondary school humanities teachers actively andreflectively engaged in caring behaviour throughouttheir work with students. By making the choice tocare for their students, the teachers in this studywere able to construct and maintain a sense ofprofessional identity which cohered with theirphilosophical or humanistic beliefs about theteaching role.

In this study, caring is primarily defined as thoseemotions, actions and reflections that result from ateacher’s desire to motivate, help or inspire theirstudents. Whilst caring can be connected to

ee front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

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teachers’ pedagogical or classroom managementstrategies, it also exists and is demonstrated withinthe broader social context of teacher–studentinteractions in and out of the classroom situation.The results of the study reveal that teachers’experiences of caring are influenced both by theirneed to sustain positive professional relationshipswith their students and by their individual beliefsabout their role as a teacher.

Although emotions are at the epicentre ofteachers’ work (Hargreaves, 1994, 1998; Zembylas,2003), the intangible emotional and empathicqualities which make a ‘‘good teacher’’ from theviewpoint of the students cannot be measured andare thus ‘‘considered worthless’’ (Constanti &Gibbs, 2004, p. 247) by policymakers. The currentFramework of Professional Teaching Standards

(NSW Institute of Teachers, 2005) that are used toassess the performance of teachers in New South

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ARTICLE IN PRESSK.E. O’Connor / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 117–126118

Wales, Australia, are notable for their failure toacknowledge the emotional and empathic skillswhich are required for effective teaching. Withinthe current policy climate, caring can be viewed as achoice that is made by individual teachers to pursuea particular philosophy and set of professionalgoals.

In this paper, a distinction will be made betweenan individual’s identity and their professional role.Whilst the concept of role refers to the socially andculturally determined nature and commonly heldexpectations of an individual’s professional self, theidea of identity refers to the means by whichindividuals reflexively and emotionally negotiatetheir own subjectivity. Emotions inform and defineidentity in the process of becoming (Zembylas,2003, p. 223).

The purpose of this paper is to explore howindividual teachers use and manage emotions tocare for and about students in their professionalwork. The subjective and temporal nature of theteaching role in socially situated institutional con-texts is examined, as are the effects that differentprofessional environments have on teachers’ caringrelationships with students. Teachers’ emotions andprofessional philosophies are viewed as the meansby which they individually navigate, interpret andoccasionally resist the official ethos of the schools inwhich they work.

2. Identity, emotions and caring

Teaching and learning are socially situatedpractices that are deeply embedded in emotionalexperiences (Hargreaves, 1998). Discussing profes-sional identity, or the individual’s ability tonegotiate and improvise aspects of a professionalrole, requires an understanding of how emotionsguide our professional practices and decisions. Infact, reason and emotion are interdependent be-cause our reasoning depends on emotional choices(Zembylas, 2003, p. 223). Researching the complexand dichotomous nature of teachers’ emotionsrequires an understanding of how individuals dealwith and respond to professional situations indifferent school contexts.

Identity can be defined as the type of person anindividual is recognised as being in a given context(Gee, 2000, p. 99). Within this study, the concept ofidentity has reflective and active dimensions, en-compassing both an individual’s professional phi-losophy and their public actions. Individual

reflection and social communication with others isseen to be pivotal to the development of teachers’professional identities, and professional identitiesare viewed as the means by which individualteachers negotiate and reflect on the sociallysituated aspects of their role. An individual’sbehaviour will emerge from their interactions withothers (Mead, 1934, pp. 140–142), and emotions aresocially constructed and saturated (Blumer, 1969;Mead, 1934).

Teachers often possess a strong personal commit-ment towards their profession, and teachers’ emo-tions guide the formation of their identities (Nias,1986; Zembylas, 2003). Teaching involves ‘‘humannurturance, connectedness, warmth and love’’(Hargreaves, 1994, p. 175), and each teacher’sindividual beliefs about their role in caring forstudents form a crucial part of their identity.Kelchtermans and Ballet (2002) add that politicalinterests and personal values shape teachers’ emo-tions and function as a rationale for their profes-sional actions. This coheres with MacLure’s (1993)observation that teachers frequently use theiridentity or political belief system to justify the waythey choose to engage in their work. Teachers arepassionate beings (Hargreaves, 1998, pp. 835–836),and an individual’s professional philosophy ismediated by their personal belief system.

Teaching is ‘‘charged with positive emotion’’(Hargreaves, 1998, p. 835) and takes place at theintersection of personal and public life (Palmer,1998). The teachers in Nias’s (1986) study ofprofessional socialisation were seen to invest theirsense of self in their work, and to have similarpersonal and public identities as a result. Emotionsare the means through which teachers personallyinterpret the demands placed upon them, anddiscussing teacher identity ‘‘requires the connectionof emotion with self-knowledge’’ (Zembylas, 2003,p. 213). Research on teachers’ work has emphasisedthe importance of care and commitment, suggestingthat many teachers define themselves as peoplethrough the roles they play within their professionallives (Barber, 2002; Nias, 1989). It is important tonote that teachers’ work also consists of whatForrester (2005, p. 274) terms ‘‘non-work’’ in thesense that there is no economic benefit for caring,and such activities do not technically constitutework. However, the ethical and humanistic dimen-sions of teachers’ work frequently act as a source ofintrinsic motivation for individual teachers, andinspire them to remain committed to the profession.

ARTICLE IN PRESSK.E. O’Connor / Teaching and Teacher Education 24 (2008) 117–126 119

Teachers as people cannot be separated fromtheir craft (Nias, 1989, p. 203), and the act ofteaching requires individuals to possess a genuineemotional understanding and empathy towardsothers (Hargreaves, 2001, p. 1059). The role thatemotions play in teachers’ work is rarely acknowl-edged in public policy, and professional teacherstandards (NSW Institute of Teachers, 2005) tend todownplay or ignore the emotional dimensions of theteaching role.

3. Teacher standards and policy discourses

This study was conducted in an environment ofsocio-political change due to the recent implementa-tion of teacher professional standards (NSW Insti-tute of Teachers, 2005) in New South Wales,Australia. The perceived discrepancy between thetechnical rationalist assumptions presented in currentpolicy discourses and the lived experience of teachers’work was frequently and spontaneously mentionedby the participants throughout their interviews.Currently, the teachers in this study are working inconditions where caring is not encouraged by publicpolicies (Jeffrey, 2002), and where caring often comesat a professional cost. The ethical and emotionalnature of teachers’ work is consistently ignored inpublic policies that seek to assess teacher quality(Constanti & Gibbs, 2004, p. 207).

Dillabough (1999, p. 378) argues that institutio-nalised teacher standards often act to marginaliseand repress individual beliefs and experiences byviewing the private sphere as irrelevant andsubjugating the aims of the individual to those ofthe system. The prevalence of Enlightenment con-cepts of rationality in the notion of teachercompetencies is worrying, and Schon’s (1983)discussion of technical rationalism argues that therole of the reflective individual is sidelined intraditional notions of professional knowledge. Ifreflexivity is ignored, then only the active self isconsidered to be a worthy subject for discussion.Teachers’ emotions are intimately connected withtheir reflective selves, and studies that emphasise theimportance of caring behaviour can present acounter-discourse to the rationalist notions thatare presently being held up as a means by which todefine and regulate teachers’ professional work.

The study of teachers’ caring is the study of eachindividual teacher’s commitment towards theirwork and how their interactions with others shapethe identity that they take on as a professional.

Jeffrey (2002, p. 535) notes that the humanistdiscourse in education has been challenged by apolicy culture which emphasises ability and createshierarchical and depersonalised relationships. Thus,the market-driven managerial discourses that led tothe introduction of teacher standards have created aperformative culture which emphasises accountabil-ity and the public demonstration of professionalattributes above teachers’ ethical and emotionalqualities (Forrester, 2005; Jeffrey, 2002).

The nature of teaching cannot be expressedwithin ‘‘technical competencies’’, but centresaround human interaction and emotional under-standing (Hargreaves, 1998, p. 850). Technicalcompetencies cohere with the traditional view ofprofessional knowledge as being standardised andscientific (Schon, 1983, p. 23), and ignore theimportance of identity in professional decision-making. It is apparent that the current professionalteaching standards (NSW Institute of Teachers,2005) overlook the role that caring and personalvalues play in teachers’ work. Even the prescribedset of standards for ‘‘knowing students’’ (pp. 5–6)and ‘‘communicating with students’’ (p. 9) concen-trate solely on a knowledge of the diverse needs ofstudents and the communication of strategies andsubject matter. This is more a reflection of thereductionist nature of teacher competencies than anindication of problems with the standards them-selves. By their very nature, competencies aredesigned to prescribe, define and regulate aspectsof a professional role in a rationalist manner. Theyare not intended to recognise, affirm or deal with themore complex nature of teachers’ socially situatedand negotiated identities.

Teaching has traditionally been seen as a ‘‘car-ing’’ profession rather than a high-status one(Hargreaves & Goodson, 1996, p. 9), but teacherstandards have tended to ignore the caring aspectsof teaching. Emotions are bound up with individualexperiences of the political and of power within thesystem (Hargreaves, 2001, p. 1057), and studies needto adopt an idiographic perspective when discussingteachers’ emotions. Research on caring needs torecognise the impact that institutional structuresand discourses have on professional roles and onteachers’ ability to care for their students.

4. Methodology

This study aimed to discuss the professionaldecisions that are made by individual teachers in


relation to their affective interactions with students.The distinction that Ashley and Lee (2003) identifybetween exercising a professional duty of care(caring for) and genuinely loving and empathisingwith (caring about) students was pivotal to thedevelopment of the key research questions:

How do teachers care for and about theirstudents? What effect does their caring behaviourhave on their professional decisions?

To explore these questions, a series of two in-depth semi-structured interviews were conductedwith a sample of three participants. These inter-views, which ranged from one to two hours’duration, were structured around Seidman’s Phe-nomenological Interviewing Model (1998). Seid-man’s (1998, pp. 10–14) model uses interactionistideas as the basis for its structure and concentrateson enabling participants to explore and reflect ontheir life history. Noting that all behaviour needs tobe discussed in the context of an individual’s livedexperiences, Seidman (1998, p. 11) suggests that anyresearch which is based on interview data needs toinvolve more than a single interview. When analys-ing the interview data in this study, a generativeapproach to theory was adopted in the sense thatthe initial data gathered suggested areas of focus forthe second interview. This adheres to Kvale’s (1996,pp. 241–243) notion of ‘‘quality of craftsmanship’’,which suggests that effective research involves acontinual process of questioning and analysing thedata collected.

The interview questions were constructed aroundthe themes that Seidman (1998, p. 12) believes arenecessary for a phenomenological interview. Suchthemes include the life history of the participants,the details of their experiences and the meaningwhich such experiences hold for them. In thisrespect, the interview protocols used were similarto those adopted by Hargreaves (1998, 2001), whofollowed Hochschild’s (1983) procedures in askinghis participants to describe important events in theirprofessional lives. However, unlike Hargreaves(2001, p. 1059), conducting a series of two inter-views was crucial in giving the researcher anopportunity to collect and analyse data simulta-neously. By linking the processes of data collectionand analysis, it was possible to adjust the interviewschedule and construct new questions to reflectemerging issues and patterns of data. This ensuredthat the interviews were able to listen and respondto the voices of the participants, and allowed the

researcher and the participants to reflexively reex-amine particularly significant moments in theparticipants’ professional lives.

Research is an ontological endeavour (Koch &Harrington, 1998, p. 887) that enables us toinvestigate the beliefs and values of participants.Within this study, the interviews aimed to ‘‘establishtruth via people’s understandings’’ (Hosie, 1986, p.200). It is important to note that such reflectiveunderstandings are both subjective and influencedby temporal factors. This study was conducted at aparticular socio-historical moment, and the resultswere influenced by the fact that debates aboutteacher professionalism were taking place followingthe introduction of teacher standards. Mills (1959,p. 121) notes the importance of developing a ‘‘self-conscious’’ attitude to intellectual work, and thisself-consciousness should result in an acknowl-edgement of the limitations of research. The datagathered within this study has facilitated a descrip-tive qualitative analysis of the lives of three teachersbut cannot be used to reach generic conclusionsabout teachers’ work.

4.1. The participants

A purposive sampling strategy was used to selectparticipants from a range of schools and areas. Thisensured that all participants were mid-careerteachers who had taught in diverse school environ-ments and could thus reflect on the situated natureof their professional interactions. The small numberof participants enabled this interpretive study tosustain an in-depth focus on their professionalbeliefs and lived experiences.

The participants were at different stages in theircareers, and had worked in a variety of schoolsystems and in different geographical locations inSydney. They are all currently teaching humanitiessubjects in secondary schools and have been in theprofession for a period of more than 5 years. At thetime of the interviews, all three participants hadrecently participated in focus group discussions withthe NSW Institute of Teachers and were conse-quently engaged in thinking about issues of profes-sional accountability and autonomy.

Christina and Michael currently teach secondaryschool English, and Laura is a History teacher. BothLaura and Michael are Head Teachers in theirrespective subject departments, and both haveworked in the public education system for over 15years. Christina taught in a series of public high


schools in socio-economically disadvantaged areasfor 6 years before moving to her current appoint-ment at a private school.

5. Service providers: the choice to care

Teachers are personally and emotionally involvedwith their work (Nias, 1989) because much of thatwork involves caring for and about others.Throughout this study, the three participantsviewed the ‘‘kindness and caring’’ (Michael) theyshowed to others as both a professional choice andas a necessary part of their work. Laura noted that:

I choose to be involved [with my students]—andwhen I say involved, I mean only to a degree, andalways as a professional. It is a consciousdecision. You choose to care, because you seethe value of what you do because you care.

Whilst this choice led them to sometimes ‘‘getexhausted and think about certain kids all night’’(Christina), or be perceived in a disempowering wayas ‘‘a simpering mumsy sort of person’’ (Laura), allthe teachers in this study saw the caring work theyengaged in as being an integral part of theirprofessional identity. Michael’s need to ‘‘stopblaming and start empowering students’’ links hiscaring behaviour with his professional work, andLaura’s statement that ‘‘they’ll do the work if youconnect with them’’ demonstrates how caring aboutstudents enables her to reach pedagogical goals. Byviewing caring behaviour as a ‘‘deliberate choice’’(Laura) or a ‘‘personal decision’’ (Christina), theteachers in this study recognised that such work wasnot necessarily rewarded by ‘‘the powers that be’’(Laura).

Experiences have emotional as well as rationaland intellectual dimensions (Schmidt, 2000, p. 827),and caring is arguably one of the predominant andvisible emotions that teachers demonstrate in theirwork. However, policy conditions currently makecaring more difficult, resulting in many teachers‘‘sacrificing themselves’’ by caring for others (Har-greaves, 1998, p. 836). Examining the ways thatteachers ‘‘choose to care’’ (Laura) for their studentsinvolves discussing how teachers negotiate institu-tional and professional demands.

The organisational structure of the school guidesteachers’ emotional conduct and shapes theirperception of appropriate expressions (Zembylas,2003, p. 225). Christina believed that the privateschool she currently teaches in expected her to care

for her students ‘‘to show the parents they’re gettingvalue for money’’. Whilst Christina’s originalmotivation for teaching and her professionalphilosophy centred around a desire to effect changein her students’ behaviour through building perso-nal relationships with them, she disliked being‘‘expected’’ to provide a service:

It [teaching in an Independent school] is a veryservice-based industry. There’s the whole ideathat they [the parents] pay and you produce, andyou produce well. But I really do resent being onthis production lineyyou can’t care becauseyour Headmaster tells you to.

The results of this study are discussed in terms ofthe caring behaviour that the participants demon-strated in their professional work. Whilst someelements of caring behaviour are undoubtedly achoice, caring within a professional context is alsodetermined by the need to care for students ‘‘just todo your job’’ (Michael). Michael’s belief thatteachers should ‘‘only care so much’’, and Laura’sinsistence that she ‘‘will never cross that line and feeltoo much’’ are reminders of the fact that teachers’emotions are constrained and guided by rolerequirements.

Mills (1959, pp. 216–218) suggests that research-ers need to use a variety of sociological lenses inorder to explore a problem through differentperspectives and gain a more complete picture ofthe social world. In this study, three distinctsociological lenses emerged which encompassedthe different types of caring behaviour exhibitedby the participants:

�
performative—behaviour geared towards moti-vating students in order to reach pedagogicalgoals, � professional—the management and maintenance
of appropriate relationships with students inorder to maintain a professional role,
� philosophical/humanistic—making the personal
decision to care in adherence with a personaland individual philosophy or code of ethics.

Each lens is discussed in further detail below.Additionally, Christina’s emotional experiences andprofessional choices within different school contextsare investigated separately as an example of howteachers’ caring behaviour can be reinforced orconstrained by the practices and values of the schoolin which they teach.


5.1. Caring as performative

Michael and Laura both commented that themain determinant of a teacher’s success was theirpersonality and the combination of ‘‘enthusiasmand kindness’’ (Michael) which they were able toexude. To Laura, the human element of teachers’work meant that teaching is ‘‘an acting job’’ inwhich teachers needed to sustain positive feelings toengage their students and ‘‘make them feel involvedand excited by’’ the educational experience. Beingable to act as a professional and still sustain a senseof self within the role has emotional implications forteachers, and Laura made frequent comments aboutthe level of ‘‘emotional energy and sheer adrenalin’’which she felt she needed to maintain whilstteaching. The need to separate her work in theclassroom from her personal life has led Laura toview herself as a ‘‘performer’’:

I’ll just be very engaged with them [her students],and I will work with them as much as I can. But,at the end of the day, as soon as I walk out ofthat classroom I become myself again. I’veturned that switch off. I’m a performer now.

By comparison, Christina felt that the caringattitude she displayed towards her students was nomere performance. Like the subjects in Hargreaves’s(1998, p. 836) study, her reflections about her workare frequently expressed in terms of the ‘‘love’’ shefeels towards her students:

I do care about them [the students] as indivi-duals. I couldn’t do what I do and not care. It isnot really recognised here how important thatisyit’s just part of my job and I am happy forthings to be that way.

Teachers need to navigate the path between beingemotionally engaged with students as an individualand undertaking emotion labour to meet thedemands which their professional role places uponthem. Christina and Laura stated that such actingmust be based on genuine caring and regard forstudents, whilst Michael asserted that the need tocreate caring but professional relationships withstudents can depend on a degree of ‘‘intentionalcharm’’ or ‘‘deliberate charisma’’. Hochschild’s(1983, p. 7) vision of emotional labor argues thatworkers often have to perform or fabricate caringbehaviour, but many of the emotions that teachersshow throughout their work lie somewhere on acontinuum between professional behaviour and

‘‘genuine feeling’’ (Laura). Whilst the need toencourage and motivate students can becomedraining and performative, it is the humanisticnature of the teaching role which encouragesteachers such as Michael to persevere in their work:

There is always going to be one [student] wholooks at you, and you know that what you’resaying is important to them. So you keep on atit—because of, I suppose, this very real sharedimportance.

Is becoming a teacher synonymous with knowinghow to act in a given situation? The participants inthis study saw managing relationships to be a‘‘given’’ (Laura) in their daily work, and had tonegotiate between their own desire to ‘‘personallygo the extra mile’’ (Michael) and their need tomaintain a professional distance from their stu-dents.

5.2. Caring as a professional

Hochschild (1983, p. 7) believes that emotionallabour primarily involves an individual inducing orsuppressing different feelings at work to maintainan appropriate public and professional identity. Herdiscussion (pp. 37–39) of surface and deep actingpresumes that demonstrating emotions as a profes-sional always involves acting, and that this acting isessentially a contrived performance of self. Mi-chael’s belief that he needs to be ‘‘warmer and moreinteresting and outgoing’’ as a teacher than in therest of his life contrasts with Laura’s opinion of herrole as a teacher:

Even though I do think teaching is a perfor-mance, you still can’t pretend to be other thanwhat you actually are. But you highlight aspectsof yourself.

Do teachers need to create an artificial persona inorder to avoid becoming ‘‘too involved’’ with theirrole? Successful teaching requires teachers to createan atmosphere that promotes empathic understand-ing (Hargreaves, 2001, p. 1060), and Michael feltthat his work often involved ‘‘creating a senseof belonging with kids you don’t really know’’.Is being able to facilitate such an atmospherea valuable skill, or an intrinsically personalattribute? Palmer (1998, p. 13) argues that posses-sing the ‘‘capacity for connectedness’’ is inherent ineffective teaching, and teaching cannot be reducedto techniques precisely because of its emotional


dimension. Even so, it is evident that choosing tocare about students as a professional involves‘‘knowing how to care the right way and amount’’(Laura). Whilst the ‘‘right way’’ to care is individu-ally negotiated and regulated by professionalboundaries and institutional constraints, Lauraand Christina noted that limiting the ‘‘amount’’ ofcaring they did was important in order to avoidtheir work ‘‘taking over’’ (Christina) or ‘‘eating up’’(Laura) their personal lives.

For Laura, the ‘‘conscious decision’’ to careabout her students facilitates her teaching and addsmeaning to her work. Like Christina, the nurturingatmosphere which Laura aims to create in herclassroom is strengthened by her sense of profes-sionalism and her need to maintain a certain‘‘healthy distance’’ from her students. Christinastated that becoming emotionally engaged with theclasses that she is currently teaching has mitigatedthe effects of her ‘‘very tense’’ relations withcolleagues and allowed her to ‘‘find some integrityin what I do’’. The fact that her ‘‘integrity’’ as aprofessional stems from her caring relationshipswith her students is worthy of note. Christina seescaring as:

Something that I’m in there doingyand you seethat caring is important because it’s not some-thing every teacher does. You know, that smile,that comment to a kid, and when you become[like] a big sister or an aunty to themyit’s notlike I have to feel needed, but it’s those thingsthat make me know that what I do matters.

Caring is important to teachers precisely becauseof the fact that it is not represented in standards andcannot be quantified by any objective means. Whilstroles can be and are officially assigned to teachersby virtue of societal expectations and the imple-mentation of professional standards, the ‘‘intenseemotional experiences’’ (Mead, 1934, p. 274)through which professional identities emerge areguided by an individual’s reflective philosophy andaxiological motivations.

5.3. Caring as philosophical/humanistic

Teachers invest their selves in their work, and thismay mean that their personal and professionalidentities are very similar (Nias, 1986). Two of thethree teachers in this study explicitly espoused ahumanistic philosophy of teaching. In their inter-views, Michael discussed his desire to liberate his

students through improving their literacy skills, andChristina mentioned the importance of teachingstudents to ‘‘develop empathy by example’’. Tea-chers ‘‘invest in the values that they believe theirteaching represents’’ (Zembylas, 2003, p. 213), andboth Michael and Christina saw humanist values asbeing at the apex of their professional philosophy.MacLure (1993, p. 316) sees identity as a ‘‘form ofargument’’, or a reason for justifying and makingsense of behaviour and decisions. By viewingthemselves as ‘‘humanists’’, and by using such alabel as a justification for their professional actions,Michael and Christina position their caring work asbeing grounded in a particular and individual wayof thinking.

Hochschild (1983, p. 19) notes that the emotionswhich we display privately can be controlled bycorporations, but the participants frame theirengagement as a conscious decision that was notalways valued by their colleagues. Michael statedthat ‘‘concrete results rather than nurturing’’ tendedto be emphasised by schools, and some of Christi-na’s problems with her current school stem from thefact that her colleagues ‘‘don’t recognise that simplecaring is better than all the rah-rah encourage-ment’’. Her distrust of ‘‘rah-rah encouragement’’undoubtedly has a gendered dimension, and herpersonal conception of caring behaviour (which shedefined as individual attention and counselling-styleinteractions with students) often discounts the valueof encouraging positive group dynamics as asubstitute for nurturing individual teacher–studentrelationships. This is at odds with Michael’s notionthat creating ‘‘a sense of shared energy with a class’’is more important than devoting time to individualstudents. Both teachers see themselves as espousingan explicitly humanistic stance towards teaching,but their different orientations towards humanismserve as a reminder that each individual’s subjectiveunderstanding of a concept or paradigm differs.Whilst individual teachers will always reflectivelyadjust the roles they play in order to navigateinstitutional demands, such demands are negotiatedaccording to the individual’s professional beliefsand definition of a situation.

6. Christina: a case study

[I was going to] do all these wonderful thingsfrom 9 to 4, you know—just save all these livesand somehow make it home in time to live myown life.


Christina has undergone a self-styled ‘‘baptism offire’’ as a teacher, and the story of her professionalexperiences raises interesting questions about theemotional dimension of teachers’ work. Initiallyinspired by a desire for social justice and the beliefthat she could ‘‘save all these lives’’ by caring aboutstudents, Christina now places an emphasis onmaintaining a ‘‘healthy distance’’ between teachersand students. Developing the ability to perform arole in the classroom and ‘‘then walk out andbecome me again’’, she retained her desire to ‘‘dothe caring-sharing thing’’ but came to a morerealistic understanding of her own power to effectchange. After moving to a private school where‘‘everything’s calm’’, Christina now views emotionsas both the reason for her engagement with herwork and as part of the reason why ‘‘I mightn’t beteaching forever’’.

Whilst roles can be assigned to individuals,identity is determined by individual subjectivity.Christina’s reflective resistance against the ‘‘businessworld’’ ethos of the school she currently works at isperhaps crystallised by her discomfort with herHeadmaster’s insistence that his teachers shouldtake on the role of ‘‘service providers’’:

We have got a Headmaster that states veryopenly that ‘We are service providers’. That ourschool fees are $16,000 a year, and, rightfullyso, the parents deserve something for theirmoneyy[but] I say to myself, ‘Yeah, but I’ma teacher. That doesn’t change whereverI am.’yso I have to do what I can live with.

Christina positions herself professionally as beingat the nexus of a chain of interactions. Theframework which she is required to adopt for theseinteractions, and the way her actions are mediatedby the ‘‘service provider’’ ethos her school promoteswill determine the nature of her caring behaviour asa professional. Christina’s insistence that her role‘‘doesn’t change’’ is somewhat mitigated by herrecognition that feeling like a service provider at hercurrent school ‘‘impacts’’ on her work in and out ofthe classroom. Zembylas (2003, pp. 224–225)believes that the connection between teacher iden-tity and emotion is the result of agency, and isdetermined by the individual’s ability to reflect ontheir professional actions. Christina’s emotionstowards the ethos of her school have enabled herto develop and sustain an identity that reflectivelyresists the ‘‘service provider’’ label despite having topublicly perform such a role. Teachers’ emotions

can become the means for resisting the demands ofthe institution (Zembylas, 2003, p. 213), andChristina’s feelings of ‘‘dislike and disillusionment’’towards the official values of her school act as ajustification for her reflective resistance againstthese values.

The socially constructed nature of emotions andthe need for teachers to deal with or manage theemotions of others can lead Christina to ‘‘feel downwhen they’re down’’. Coping with the emotions ofother teachers and students has proved to bechallenging for Christina, and often requires herto adopt a ‘‘terribly cheerful’’ persona in order tofacilitate a positive classroom environment:

Most of all with teaching, it’s that it’s soemotionaly You cop so much from everyoneelse’s emotions, and then you have to create allthese positive emotions in students. You have tomotivate yourself to motivate them.

Whilst Christina felt that the emotional domainof teaching and the rewards she achieved throughestablishing meaningful relationships with studentswere one of her core reasons for staying in theprofession, she also acknowledged that having toengage in emotional labour (Hochschild, 1983) was‘‘the most exhausting part’’ of teaching. Addition-ally, she felt that it occasionally distracted her frompedagogical concerns into focussing on areas ofhuman relations which she felt unprepared for orunwilling to engage in:

I came in there, and I thought, ‘‘what on eartham I doing?’’ Because it’s not actually teaching—it’s not what we were told teaching was at uni. AndI came in there thinking it was about having a goodlesson, and then I realised that these kids didn’tneed a teacher because their emotional needsysortof took over their learning needsyYou wantedto make things better for them, but you also hadto teach them.

Christina’s ‘‘need to find out where they were at’’and her willingness to listen to and interact with herstudents outside of the classroom situation enabledher to understand their ‘‘difficult lives’’:

It took them awhile to talk to me—and eventhen, you had to figure out what they didn’tsayyit was only through chatting after class thatI ever got to put a finger on why they behaved theway they did. I’m not a counsellor, but I wouldtake in what they were saying as a teacher.


Christina was forced to take on a role that shewas unprepared for, and her desire to engage withand ‘‘save’’ her students conflicted with her reflec-tive resistance against the idea of the teacher-as-counsellor. Her belief that emotional engagementwas ‘‘not actually teaching’’ seems paradoxicalwhen juxtaposed with her original motivation forentering the profession. Whilst drawing a linebetween teaching and caring, Christina later statedthat her positive interactions with students meantthat they ‘‘will do things for you because they’regrateful to you’’.

Christina recognised that her belief in theimportance of caring led her to spend more timedeveloping relationships with students and ‘‘lesstime angling to get a promotion’’ that might takeher out of the classroom. Despite this, she felt thatthe emotional connections she has with her students(whilst undervalued by the school administration)are what motivated her to continue teaching:

I’m here for the kids. And for no one elseyIalways say [to my students], ‘‘I could walk out ofhere tomorrow if it wasn’t for you guys. If I’mhere for you, you’ve got to do something forme.’’

Nias (1989, p. 32) states that teachers often adoptan image of themselves as being a ‘‘crusader’’, andderive both pleasure and professional satisfactionfrom their emotional involvement with students.Whilst Christina’s ‘‘big moments’’ came from herinteractions with students, she also believes thatmaintaining a ‘‘healthy distance’’ and playing acaring yet professional in her students’ lives is theanswer to dealing with the emotional nature ofteachers’ work:

You need a healthy distance, which I didn’t reallyunderstand at first. Because you have to beeffectivey[On] so many nights, I come home andI cry, I absolutely cry. Because I’m just dealingwith all these other people’s emotionsy Everyman and his frigging dog is coming up to me andtelling me just what it’s like for them. So manyparts of me just get all wrung out.

Christina sees managing relationships to be acrucial part of her job, and her choice to care for herstudents enables her to motivate them to participatein the classroom. Like Laura, who said she had‘‘become more caring and patient’’ after joining theprofession, Christina continually made commentsabout how taking on the teaching role had affected

her sense of personal identity. The idea that ‘‘I’vehad to get used to being in that role as part of me’’was reflected in her comments about her profes-sional journey:

I guess it’s that you don’t just wake up and say‘‘Oh, I’m a teacher’’. Like, when Soula [herdaughter] was born, I didn’t just wake up andsay, ‘‘Oh, I’m a Mum now.’’ Although those firstfew moments or days or whatever are really,really surreal in being a mother or a teacher. Butyou become. You don’t have to go through thisprocess of becomingya waiter or someone whoworks in an office, but you become a teacherbecause it becomes part of youy

It is interesting that Christina has made aconscious connection between a professional roleand a personal lifestyle choice such as motherhood.Christina consistently viewed her professional iden-tity as being pervasive and as involving a process ofbecoming as opposed to merely being, or just playinga role within a given situation. The ‘‘surreal’’moments between taking on the teaching role andallowing it to slowly become ‘‘part of you’’ areperhaps the most crucial moments in a teacher’sprofessional development. In fact, the link betweenthe professional and the personal must surely implythat there cannot be any real professional develop-ment without personal development. Teaching andlearning are emotional and social practices (Har-greaves, 1998, 2001), and examining the role ofemotions in the development of professional iden-tities leads to a richer and more complete under-standing of teachers’ work.

7. Conclusion

The teachers in this study have used theiridentities to guide and shape their professionaland emotional decisions. Caring for and caringabout students was an important part of all theparticipants’ work and frequently acted as both amotivation to continue teaching and a ‘‘terriblyexhausting’’ (Laura) professional demand. By view-ing caring through performative, philosophical andprofessional lenses, this article has discussed thediverse ways that caring emotions affect teachers’professional actions and reflections.

Discussions of emotionality in teachers’ workform a counter-discourse to the technical rationalistemphasis on teacher standards. Whilst standardsseek to define and prescribe the professional role


that teachers play, teachers’ identities are complexand socially situated within lived experiences.Identity can be used as an analytic lens fordiscussing schools and society (Gee, 2000), and theparticipants in this study used their sense of identityas a justification for the caring behaviour theydemonstrate in their professional work.

Teachers’ identities have philosophical and ax-iological dimensions. Schools that seek to definetheir teachers as ‘‘service providers’’ (Christina)whose job it is to promote the needs and values ofthe institution have overlooked the personal andindividual nature of teachers’ work. Whilst teacherslike Laura and Christina struggle with the need tonegotiate emotional closeness by managing ‘‘profes-sional boundaries’’ (Laura) and caring for theirstudents within ‘‘sane limits’’ (Christina), teachers’caring behaviour frequently cannot be measured orevaluated. Although the personal and intrinsic valueof caring behaviour lends meaning to teachers’ workand acts as a justification to remain in theprofession for some teachers, the importance ofteachers’ emotions is under-recognised in educa-tional policies. This study demonstrates the need forfuture research to discuss how and why teacherschoose to care for their students, and to analyse theeffects of this choice on their professional identity.

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“you choose to care”: teachers, emotions and professional identity

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