Teachers’ Emotions in Educational Reforms: Self-Understanding, Vulnerable Commitment and Micropolitical Literacy
Item
Title
Teachers’ Emotions in Educational Reforms: Self-Understanding, Vulnerable Commitment and Micropolitical Literacy
Abstract/Description
Based on narrative-biographical work with teachers, the author argues that teachers’ emotions have to be understood in relation to the vulnerability that constitutes a structural condition of the teaching job. Closely linked to this condition is the central role played by teachers’ “self-understanding”—their dynamic sense of identity—in teachers’ actions and their dealing with, for example, the challenges posed by reform agendas. The (emotional) impact of those agendas is mediated by the professional context, that encompasses dimensions of time (age, generation, biography) and of space (the structural and cultural working conditions). Finally, it is argued that the professional and meaningful interactions of teachers with their professional context contains a fundamental political dimension. Emotions reflect the fact that deeply held beliefs on good education are part of teachers’ self-understanding. Reform agendas that impose different normative beliefs may not only trigger intense feelings, but also elicit micropolitical actions of resistance or proactive attempts to influence and change one's working conditions.
Author/creator
Date
In publication
Volume
21
Issue
8
Pages
995-1006
Resource type
Research/Scholarly Media
Resource status/form
Published Text
Scholarship genre
Reflection/Retrospective
Synthesis/Overview
Open access/full-text available
No
Peer reviewed
Yes
ISSN
0742-051X
Citation
Kelchtermans, G. (2005). Teachers’ Emotions in Educational Reforms: Self-Understanding, Vulnerable Commitment and Micropolitical Literacy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 995–1006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2005.06.009
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