Emotional labour,burnout and job satisfaction in UK teachers: the role of workplace social support

Although teaching has been described as a profoundly emotional activity, little is known about the emotional demands faced by teachers or how this impacts on their well-being. This study examined relationships between ‘emotional labour’, burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and personal accomplishment) and job satisfaction in a sample of UK teachers. Also examined was whether workplace social support moderated any relationships found between emotional labour and strain. The relationship between job experience and emotional labour was also investigated. Six hundred and twenty-eight teachers working in secondary schools in the UK completed questionnaires. Significant associations were observed between emotional labour and all outcomes, with a positive relationship found between emotional labour and personal accomplishment. Some evidence was found that social support mitigates the negative impact of emotional demands on emotional exhaustion, feelings of personal accomplishment and job satisfaction. More experienced teachers reported higher levels of emotional labour. Findings highlight the need for teacher-training programmes to raise awareness of the emotional demands of teaching and consider ways to enhance emotion regulation skills in experienced as well as recently qualified staff.     

Control and professional development: are teachers being deskilled or reskilled within the context of decentralization?

Many researchers have identified a process they call ‘deskilling’, which they use to describe the daily experience of teachers who have been gradually losing control of their own labour within ‘low‐trust’ workplaces. Conversely, other scholars have found that under similar conditions, some teachers have their own ways of dealing with it which leads them towards a process of ‘reskilling’. This study is an attempt to explore the actual teachers’ perceptions towards their daily practice within the context of educational decentralization, a neglected area of research which needs to be further discussed and explored. This paper uses data gathered from seven schools in Guangdong Province, China as a case study to show that educational decentralization in China not only results in teachers being deskilled because indirect control is still being maintained, but also provides a small number of teachers with a competitive working environment to reskill their pedagogical techniques and educational knowledge, and to pursue good practices in teaching under the pressure of competition. All in all, educational decentralization provides a context in which teachers can experience either deprofessionalization (deskilling) or reprofessionalization (reskilling).     

‘Intelligent capitalism’ and the disappearance of labour: Whitherto education?

This speculative paper enquires into the discourse of the ‘end of labour’ or ‘disappearance of labour’ as a result of the development of ‘intelligent capitalism’ clearly seen in ‘intelligent manufacturing’ systems that are now pursued and developed as Industry 4.0 strategy in East Asia, Germany and others parts of the world. When ‘intelligent capitalism’ becomes the norm rather the exception what happens to labour as a factor of production and what happens to economy and society based on capital and labour? The paper briefly reviews the sociology of labour from a Marxist view to examine conceptions of Fordist and post-Fordist capitalism, and explore the advert of ‘intelligent capitalism’ to pose the question concerning education.     

Revitalising assessment design: what is holding new lecturers back?

This paper reports on a survey study exploring new lecturers’ views on assessment design (using a questionnaire called the Assessment Design Inventory) with 586 newly qualified or still qualifying lecturers from UK universities. A factor analysis established two factors labelled ‘desirable practice’ and ‘constraints’. Participants felt that their university teaching programmes had changed their views on assessment design and that assessment practices could be improved. Over 50 % agreed that there were practical restrictions on assessment design. Findings revealed a perception that there is little incentive to innovate in assessment and that students may not welcome such innovation in any case. Further statistical analysis specified the ‘external’ variables of institution and discipline to be important in shaping desirable practice and perception of constraints. ‘Individual’ variables of gender, length of teaching experience and qualification status showed a statistically significant effect. These analyses demonstrate some key influences on new lecturers’ views of assessment design and suggest reasons why they do not always feel able to put what they learn about assessment into practice.     

Sustaining care: cultivating mindful practice in early years professional development

The practitioner’s own self is a resource in early childhood education and care (ECEC). It is proposed that an experiential training focusing on the ‘professional self’ helps to raise awareness of how psychological dispositions may impair or enhance quality of provision. A key concept in such training is emotional labour, explored with students through examples of ‘relational pedagogy’ and ‘attunement’ to the needs of children. The argument of this paper, underlying the training, is that the expectation of attunement encapsulates both the best and worst aspects of such labour. The research focuses on the introduction of mindfulness exercises into the training in order to sustain this attunement. It seeks the students’ responses to them and to the experience of the training overall. The paper concludes by recommending that such practices be incorporated into professional development whilst acknowledging that such interventions can only succeed where working conditions reflect a compassionate culture.     

Routes through higher education: BME students and the development of a ‘specialisation of consciousness’

With changing demographics and the advent of mass higher education, there has been a significant impact on graduate transitions which has led to greater inequalities in access to social support during the transitionary period between undergraduate study and entrance into the labour market. This article explores the experiences of students in their final year of undergraduate study by drawing on 43 interviews with Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students. Using Bourdieu, we argue that BME students preparing to enter the labour market display a ‘specialisation of consciousness’: a set of practices framed by their prior background and experience, choice of university and the support derived from attending university. ‘Specialisation of consciousness’ is an ongoing process in which BME students identify and understand racial inequalities in higher education and accept the limiting consequences these have on transitions into the labour market or further study.     

Work Experience Schemes and Part‐time Jobs in a Recruitment Context

Abstract

This paper examines the significance of work experience schemes and part‐time jobs for school pupils within the context of recruitment to youth jobs. Specifically, it focuses on the role played by work experience and part‐time jobs in the recruitment of young people to engineering apprenticeships in a Midlands town during the recession of the early 1980s. The employers gave greater importance to holiday jobs, Saturday jobs and paper rounds than work experience in recruiting apprentices. The former were viewed as a more effective guide to applicants’ work attitudes. Work experience lacked the element of ‘sacrifice’ and other aspects associated with ‘real’ work Despite this, work experience proliferated in the 1980s, whilst pupils’ part‐time work has been neglected as a learning resource.

Additionally, this paper presents the more general argument that a strong vocationalist perspective on work experience, where it is viewed as being grounded in the labour‐power demands of employers as expressed in recruitment criteria, yields unacceptable (racist and sexist) consequences.     

Measuring labour market success: a comparison between immigrants and native-born Canadians using PIAAC

Canadian society is characterised by a plurality of immigrants and Canadian migration policy and corresponding recognition approaches are strongly geared to economic criteria, qualifications and skills. This paper addresses the question how immigrants who have acquired their highest qualification outside Canada are able to use their foreign qualifications and skills in their current job. The analyses are conducted to verify the assumptions of human capital theory as well as the lack of transferability of human capital across country borders. To answer these questions a labour market success index is developed, which is used as a dependent variable in regression models. The results show that traditional operationalisations of human capital (years of education, years of work experience and skills) have a positive effect on individual labour market success. At the same time, being born abroad and having acquired one’s highest qualification abroad in comparison to Canada, especially in a Non-Western country, has negative effects on the overall labour market success of an individual. Detailed comparisons regarding different indicators of labour market success also prove these comparatively negative effects. The results demonstrate the limited explanatory power of human capital theory and the necessity to complement it with Bourdieu’s concepts of social and cultural capital.     

From reproduction to learning cultures: post‐compulsory education in England

This paper examines recent empirical work on the lived experience of learners in post‐compulsory education. The starting point is a brief examination of the socio‐economic context of the sector. Despite the sophistication of analyses of learning cultures, a more radical approach is needed. Failure to do so renders these analyses amenable to appropriation by ‘new labour’ modernisers.     

The management of ‘emotional labour’ in the corporate re-imagining of primary education in England

The last 20 years has witnessed the spread of corporatism in education on a global scale. In England, this trend is characterised by new structural and cultural approaches to education found in the ‘academies’ programme and the adoption of private sector management styles. The corporate re-imagining of schools has also led to the introduction into the curriculum of particular forms of character education aimed at managing the ‘emotional labour’ of children. This paper argues that character education rests on a fallacy that the development of desirable character traits in children can be engineered by mimicking certain behaviours from the adult world. The weaknesses in the corporate approach to managing ‘emotional labour’ are illustrated with empirical data from two primary schools. An alternative paradigm is presented which locates the ‘emotional labour’ of children within a ‘holding environment’ that places children’s well-being at its core.     

’The Cream Team’: an ethnography of BTEC National Diploma (Catering and Hotel Management) students in a tertiary college

This is an ethnographic study of vocational students in a tertiary college in England who intend entering a service industry which expanded in the 1980s and is predicted to expand into the next decade. The students are outwardly highly conformist with upward mobility aspirations. They are ‘labour market‐wise’ and know the importance of educational qualifications. At this level they are highly committed to the course. However, they are also very critical of the college provision. In such a situation they are highly instrumental, they want the Diploma without ‘the education’. The students are obsessed with getting good grades and passing the examinations. Paradoxically, although college is ‘boring’ and ‘a waste of time’, the students do not reject education/training/credentials and the majority go on to higher education. This overall lived experience is an ideal preparation for work in their chosen industry and life.     

Education and school‐to‐work transitions in post‐communist Poland∗

Abstract

Unemployment in Poland rose throughout 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 but the proportion of school‐leavers among the unemployed peaked in 1990. Unlike in most western market economies, the best‐ educated young people in Poland did not prove the least vulnerable to unemployment. This paper uses evidence from studies of young people in Gdansk, Katowice and Suwalki to argue that one reason why young people from professional and vocational secondary schools have not borne a heavier share of Poland's unemployment since 1990 has been the flexibility and responsiveness of these schools to Poland's new labour market conditions. Since the reforms many of these schools have contracted drastically. Some have closed. But others have thrived The latter have often benefited from favourable local labour market conditions, but their success has usually been at least equally due to their own resourcefulness in introducing new courses which teach skills that are in demand, and securing various kinds of sponsorship from employers. Three reasons are offered to explain the responsiveness of education in Poland to the changing labour market conditions: general support for ‘the reforms’, the schools’ experience of making informal deals with employers under communism, and the post‐communist authorities’ willingness to force unsuccessful schools to close and to see teachers made redundant.

     

The art of self-making: identity and citizenship education in late-modernity

Taking the English National Curriculum as its main example, this article argues that an overly nationalistic, normative and ‘fact-based’ citizenship education curriculum is failing to engage the dimensions of young people’s identities which they experience as deeply meaningful. There is thus a chasm – albeit a false one – between official discourses and pedagogies of citizenship and what young people consider to be their ‘real’ selves. I argue that citizenship education must develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of how identities are formed and performed, especially in light of globalisation and increasing migration. I also make a somewhat unorthodox argument for conceptualising ‘relating-to-otherness’ in the same way that we think of music consumption. This has implications for how we experience, interpret, value and create ‘others’. The article also makes some recommendations for how these ideas can begin to be implemented in educational settings.     

Strengthening and sustaining professional learning in the second year of teaching

The data discussed in this paper derive from post‐lesson and end‐of‐year interviews with 17 teachers in their second year of teaching. They form part of a longitudinal study which first tracked these teachers through their initial postgraduate teacher education programme and induction year. In the light of earlier analysis, which had highlighted both the enduring importance of individuals’ dispositions towards their own learning and the profound sense of professional isolation that some teachers experience once the support of their induction year is withdrawn, this paper focuses specifically on the interplay between teachers’ orientations towards their own professional learning and the nature of the learning environments in which they are working. The complex interrelationships between these two dimensions are illuminated by six case studies, which offer strong support to those who have challenged exclusive conceptualisations of ‘learning’ as either ‘construction’ or ‘participation’. The findings have important implications for all those responsible for the professional education of beginning and early career teachers, especially as they respond to the government launch in England of a new ‘national framework’ intended (eventually) to offer opportunities for Masters level professional learning to all newly qualified teachers.     

Complicating the entrepreneurial self: professional Chinese immigrant women negotiating occupations in Canada

A core mode of governance in the era of neoliberalism is through the production of ‘entrepreneurial self’. This paper explores how the ‘entrepreneurial self’ is produced for 21 Chinese immigrant women in Canada. The women displayed extraordinary entrepreneurialism by investing in Canadian education. Becoming entrepreneurial, however, is more than an individualised ‘choice’. It is imbricated with the ideology of meritocracy cultivated in China, the ‘credential and certificate regime’ in Canada, and the gendered expectations in the host labour market and at home. Given the ideological confluence, and the material conditions the women lived, a feminized and racialized labour is reproduced.     

Making sense of the glass ceiling in schools: an exploration of women teachers’ discourses

There is extensive evidence of a ‘glass ceiling’ for women across the labour market. Though schools have widely been described as ‘feminized’ work environments, the under‐representation of women at school management level is well established. Based on a study of women teachers’ careers and promotion in the English school sector (in early years, primary and secondary schools), this paper draws on a critical discourse analysis of 44 individual interviews conducted with women teachers to explore their views of the ‘glass ceiling’. Despite significant evidence of the barriers to management positions faced by women teachers, interpretative frameworks drawing on discourses of individualization and personal choice are most prominent among these to make sense of the low proportion of women in school management. However, the paper also identifies the existence of alternative discourses recognizing the existence of gender inequalities.     

Busting the myth of low-skilled workers – destabilizing EU LLL policies through the life stories of Danes in low-skilled jobs

In the EU, ambitious objectives have been set for education and training since the adoption of the Lisbon Agenda in 2000. The policies aim among other things to empower the individual through participation in lifelong learning which is seen as both a right and a duty: ‘People need to want and to be able to take their lives into their own hands – to become in short, active citizens’ (CEC, 2000, p. 7). However, not all citizens are taking part in lifelong learning and consequently the EU and its member states have set up policies with a ‘particular focus on active and preventative measures for the unemployed and inactive persons’ (CEC, 2006, p.1). ‘Inactive’ persons comprise different groups which are marginalised in terms of participation in lifelong learning, among others ‘low-skilled’ who have a lower participation rate in education and training activities (Cedefop, 2013). In this article, the aim is to destabilize the political discourse on ‘low-skilled’ through individual narratives of being in low-skilled jobs. Whereas the problem of being low-skilled from a political perspective is represented as psycho-social problems of the individual, the narratives point to the complexity of people in low-skilled jobs and the role of structure to ‘low-skilledness’. The narratives open up issues of power and the historical arbitrary distinctions between skilled and unskilled in the Danish labour market. It opens up for how the educational structures produce ‘low-skilled’ people, especially in the transition from basic vocational education and training into an apprenticeship. The article points to the narrow focus of policies on the ‘supply’ side of lifelong learning and less on the ‘demand’ side of a ‘needy’ global labour market in which precarious jobs are no longer limited to low-skilled. The article draws on Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ (1999, 2009) and narrative inquiry.     

Casualised academic staff and the lecturer-student relationship: Shame, (Im)permanence and (Il)legitimacy

Abstract

This paper is based on findings from an email interview study with 20 academics (17 women, 3 men) in the UK on short-term, insecure or ‘casualised’ contracts. The paper focuses on their perceptions of the effect their contract status has on the lecturer/student relationship: particularly in regard to student perceptions of their legitimacy and status. Using a poststructuralist theoretical lens, we explore lecturers’ concerns or anxieties as to whether they may be interpreted as less legitimate than permanent staff; and the emotional labour involved in the work done to ‘cover’ for the difficulties that a lecturer’s contract status causes for the quality of their teaching content and organisation. We also explore the considerations of some participants to voluntarily ‘disclose’ their status to students and the possibilities of such acts as a form of resistance to dominant discourses of the legitimate academic.     

Completing a PhD by publication: a review of Australian policy and implications for practice

There is increasing impetus for higher-degree-by-research students to publish during candidature. Research performance, including higher degree completions and publication output, commonly determines university funding, and doctorates with publishing experience are better positioned for a career in softening academic labour markets. The PhD by Publication provides a pathway for candidates to foster and demonstrate their publishing capabilities. It also provides existing academics a means of achieving doctoral status while managing the ‘publish or perish’ milieu endemic to their work. This paper clarifies the precise nature and significance of the PhD by Publication pathway in the Australian context and discusses the associated benefits and problems, enriched by personal experience. It summarises factors pertinent to assessing the pathway's suitability. The review of current policy suggests institutional guidelines in universities nationwide are inadequate for producing theses of comparable quality to conventional dissertations and capitalising on the pathway's significant benefits.