MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION: REFLECTIONS ON TEACHER

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

Many years later, as you run into John (one of the many students you had
over twenty years of teaching) at an art exhibition, you are to remember
that distant morning when you took him and twenty other third-graders
on a field trip to discover wild flowers in the nearby forest. You smile
at him and a warm feeling of nostalgia for that day overcomes you. You
recall how everybody was amazed to discover the first wild flower next
to a small lake. A flower purple within and surrounded with white leaves,
a Narcissus, full of pride and poise despite the rain the day before. You
remember that you told them the story about how the flower bears the
name and preserves the memory of Narcissus, a beautiful youth who was
incapable of loving anyone but himself and was transformed to a flower.
You recall the enthusiasm you felt telling the story (it was one of your
favorites), looking at your students’ faces as they listened in confusion
trying to figure out how can someone be transformed to a flower. Then
John asked you innocently, “Will we become flowers too, if we don’t love
other people?” You recall the nervousness you felt for a moment, how you
froze, unable to decide how to respond and then the pleasant surprise that
took over as you were thinking how to reply to a remarkable question that
was clearly much deeper than what John intended it to be. The details of
the scene come back to you vividly and you recall how you struggled not to
say something that would confuse your students even more. On the other
hand, you remember how you didn’t want to shut down the metaphorical
possibilities left widely open by this question. Finally, after what seemed
like hours, you said with a mellow voice, rehearsing a line from Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: “Things in stories have
a life of their own. It’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.” And then
you added, “There are moments in our lives that we wish we could become
flowers when we treat each other with cruelty.”
You wondered for years whether that answer you gave and the idea
of the field trip were the best you could do under the circumstances and
you were never able to decide, especially given that other teachers in
your school used this occasion to accuse you once more that you were

Studies in Philosophy and Education 22: 103–125, 2003.

© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
104 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

“different” from them. That you didn’t teach your students how to prepare
for the third-grade state exam and instead you “took them to field trips
all the time” and “told them about ancient myths scaring them that they
would become flowers, if they didn’t love people!” You remember the
disappointment and sadness you felt for your colleagues’ reactions to your
teaching approach.
As you see John again after all this time and he reminds you that he
remembers exactly what you told him that day, your face becomes red,
just like it did almost two decades ago, as the nervousness of the moment
is relived and you recall the trouble your colleagues gave you. But you
are deeply touched by his words that your answer has stayed with him
forever and that he often refers to your response in the stories he tells to
his students.
This vignette serves to demonstrate two important features of teacher
emotional experience. One feature is the ways in which teacher emotion is
the product of cultural, social, and political relations. There is reference in
the vignette to a number of emotions: nostalgia, amazement, excitement,
nervousness, anger, embarrassment, sorrow, enjoyment. All of these are
produced in a sociopolitical context, through interactions with students and
teachers. Another important feature is the role of other people’s expecta-
tions about how one should do (and feel) and how these influence one’s
emotions.
Surprisingly enough, however, for some time the concept of teacher
emotion as a social and cultural phenomenon was not particularly
accepted among researchers, who tended to emphasize teaching prac-
tice as primarily a cognitive activity. Emotions were predominantly seen
as originating within the individual, confined to interior aspects such
as brain functioning and personality (Lupton, 1998). As a result, many
researchers in education viewed the study of teacher emotion as the
province of the “psy” disciplines, particularly cognitive psychology, rather
than as relevant to their own concerns. In the above vignette, for example,
cognitive theorists would be interested in the interrelationship between
bodily response, context, and the teacher’s recognition of an emotion
(Lupton, 1998).
Fortunately, over the last two decades there has been an increased
interest among educators for the role of emotions in teaching (Acker, 1992,
1999; Blackmore, 1996; Golby, 1996; Hargreaves, 1995, 1996, 1998a,
1998b, 2000, 2001; Jeffrey and Woods, 1996; Kelchtermans, 1996; Lasky,
2000; Nias, 1989, 1993, 1996; Little, 1996, 2000; Schmidt, 2000) as part
of the broad reaction in education against the oversimplified views that
prevailed in older conceptions of teaching as mainly a cognitive activity.
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 105

Researchers in education have begun constructing accounts about teachers’

negative and positive emotions and their role in teachers’ professional and
personal development.
These accounts are well considered; however, despite their insights,
they mostly frame the discussion around interpersonal components of
emotion. This leaves largely unrecognized the power relations involved
and the differences in culture and ideology. As the above vignette shows,
an important feature of teacher emotional experience is the role of
discourse that emerges in the classroom/school setting in which a teacher
works, and how this discourse influences the construction of emotions. An
account of teacher emotion must find a dynamic that also addresses the
social rules and codes around the communication of emotion within and
across peoples and cultures in teaching. I believe that the current emphasis
on the role of interpersonal relationships from a strong constructionist
position (I come back to this later) has monopolized attention in research
on teacher emotion. A new dynamic can be found in exploring the role
of discursive structures and normative practices through which teaching is
figured and practiced.
In this essay, an attempt is made to develop an account that creates
this new dynamic and encourages a missing conversation in the area
of emotions in teaching, by invoking a discussion of ideas that explore
how sociopolitical and cultural aspects define the experience of teacher
emotion. This account problematizes the “control” of emotions in educa-
tion and the process with which emotional rules are constructed, i.e.,
how power relations and ideology shape the expression of emotions by
permitting teachers to feel some emotions and by prohibiting them to feel
others. This essay offers a perspective on teacher emotion that is relatively
neglected in publications on education, in particular the view that emotions
are essentially embedded in school culture, ideology, and power relations.
In what follows, first, I provide an overview of current research on
teacher emotion in the past twenty years discussing its strengths but espe-
cially its shortcomings. Then, I review some ideas from feminist and
poststructuralist philosophies of emotion and how they inform a dynamic
framework that addresses some of the shortcomings of current research.
Finally, I explore the potential of feminist and poststructuralist ideas of
emotion to provide powerful tools for theorizing about teacher emotion
and for using this theorization to initiate and to sustain teacher self-
development. I will propose that feminist and poststructuralist thinking
has important implications that are politically meaningful in caring for
teacher emotion and teacher self-development. In particular, this thinking
106 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

investigates how teachers’ emotions can become sites of resistance and

self-(trans)formation.

OVERVIEW OF CURRENT RESEARCH ON TEACHER

EMOTION

A review of past attempts by educators to explore the importance of caring

for teacher emotion highlights the “neglect of a topic which is of daily
concern to practitioners . . . [because] as an occupation teaching is highly
charged with feelings, aroused by and directed towards not just people but
also values and ideas” (Nias, 1996, p. 293, added emphasis). Nias identifies
how problematic is this lack of caring about teacher emotion:
Despite the passion with which teachers have always talked about their jobs, there is
relatively little recent research into the part played by or the significance of affectivity in
teachers’ lives, careers and classroom behaviour. Since the 1960s teachers’ feelings have
received scant attention in professional writing. At present, they are seldom systematically
considered in pre- or in-service education. By implication and omission teachers’ emotions
are not a topic deemed worthy of serious academic or professional consideration. (1996,
p. 293)

In my view, there are three reasons for the lack of research on teacher
emotion. First of all, there is embedded in Western culture a deep preju-
dice against emotion. The traditional dichotomy of reason and emotion
is perpetuated in educational research, privileging research of teachers’
cognitive thinking and teacher beliefs. More often than not it has been
assumed that by studying teachers’ thinking (or teacher beliefs) – since
emotions have been judged to be misleading – education scholars can
understand teachers’ practices. Second, although there have been signifi-
cant efforts in the past to emphasize the role of teacher emotion (as I
show later in this section), researchers in education seem suspicious about
studying something that is so “elusive,” that cannot be measured objec-
tively. Research on affect, for example, has always been considered more
complex and difficult than research on cognition (Simon, 1982; as cited in
McLeod, 1988). Finally, issues of affect and emotions have been usually
associated with women and feminist philosophies and, therefore, they have
been excluded from the dominant patriarchical structures as worthwhile
and valid researchable issues (Boler, 1999). These three reasons assert
that we are convinced about the importance of emotions only at a general
abstract level (Beck and Kosnik, 1995). Embedded in Western culture is
the assumption that emotions threaten the disembodied, detached, and
neutral knower; consequently, emotions do not offer any valid knowl-
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 107

edge. It is not so surprising then that emotions have been systematically

“disciplined” all along.
During the last two decades, though, there have been an increasing
number of studies illustrating the role of teacher emotion in curriculum
and teaching. As researchers in education began to recognize the power of
emotion in teaching and asked what schools could do to take advantage of
it, a first wave of research (roughly the period in the 1980s and early 1990s)
focused on establishing awareness of the role of emotions in teaching.
The central argument of the relatively few studies undertaken during this
period was that “effective teaching and learning is necessarily affective,
that it involves human interaction, and that the quality of teacher–pupil
relationships is vitally important to the learning process” (Osborn, 1996,
p. 455). This first wave of research on teacher emotion focused also
on the broad ideas of stress and burnout, although the term “emotion”
was almost never used to theorize teachers’ experiences of career. With
the exception of discussions about “fatigue”, “frustration” and “nervous
tension,” researchers and theorists did not give much attention to how
teacher emotion was part of the school culture.
There is however a second wave of research on teacher emotion that
covers the period during the last decade. This second wave focuses on the
idea of social relationships, recognizing emotion as part of relationships
in the classroom and the school context. Theorists and researchers of the
second wave, inspired primarily by sociological thought (in particular,
social constructionism), suggest that educators construct an array of
positive and negative emotions in their teaching practice and assert that
the centerpiece of this research is an exploration of the social interactions
among teachers, students, parents, and administrators.

The first wave: Establishing awareness of the role of emotions in teaching.

The few studies during this period describe the importance of emotions
in teaching and learning. Salzberger-Wittenberg et al.’s (1983) much cited
study illustrates this issue. In undertaking the study, the researchers argued
that a better understanding of the nature of the emotional factors which
enter into the process of learning and teaching would help both teachers
and students “to work towards a more fruitful relationship” (p. ix). Their
study was based on the work done with a group of teachers who attended
the Tavistock Clinic (London) for a course called “Aspects of Counsel-
ing in Education.” Salzberger-Wittenberg and her colleagues described
cases in which the teachers’ emotional responses directly influenced the
emotional development of their students (e.g., showing them trust or
encouraging them). Their major contribution was the illustration of the
108 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

interconnectedness of teaching and learning. However, their emphasis

on the intrapsychic and intrapersonal relationships between teacher and
student (their theoretical framework was psychoanalytic) left many ques-
tions regarding the interpersonal and sociopolitical dimensions of these
relationships unanswered.
Nias’s (1989) work provides another dimension in the relationship
between teachers and students and the role of affect. This study was based
upon the personal accounts from interviews of teachers who participated
in courses for work in primary and middle schools. Her concern was
to understand how teachers experience the job of teaching and where it
fit into their lives. Using symbolic interactionism as a framework, Nias
argued that teaching, especially in primary schools, called for a massive
investment of the self. Many teachers, she asserted, invest their personal
identity in their work, emphasizing the holistic aspect of their personality,
erasing boundaries between their personal and their professional lives.
However, the changing times with the radical social, economic and legis-
lative changes created a sense of loss that made them feel “bereaved.” Nias
explored this further in her later work (Nias, 1993, 1996, 1999). Nias’s
work gives valuable insights which emphasize the central importance of
emotional interaction in teaching and learning. Osborn (1996) correctly
points out that the emotions of teaching identified in Nias work (commit-
ment, enjoyment, pride in teaching, affection, satisfaction, perfectionism,
conscientiousness, and even loss and bereavement) “are likely to continue
to play an important part to a greater or lesser degree in teachers’ work and
careers in the future” (p. 460). Her studies began to unravel the complex-
ities associated with the notion that teacher emotion interacted with the
demands of the school system, however, they continued to emphasize the
personal and social dimension of teaching and downplay the discursive
structures and normative practices through which teaching took place.
Although researchers in the first wave of research on teacher emotion
tacitly recognized the importance of emotion in terms of stress and burnout
they usually did not name it as such. Stress and burnout research demon-
strated that structural characteristics were central to the lived experience
of teachers and to their performance and satisfaction in teaching (e.g.,
see Dworkin, 1987; Truch, 1980; Farber, 1991; for more recent work see
Cherniss, 1995; Vandenberghe and Huberman, 1999). For example, stress-
related factors were cited as the reason for the trend that “dissatisfies”
might be beginning to outweigh the “satisfiers” (e.g., see Densmore, 1987).
The implications of this trend are now visible in increasing problems with
teacher recruitment and retention. Stress has served as a broad concept for
discussion of a variety of problems in teachers’ careers, giving a general
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 109

framework for research related emotional exhaustion and disengagement

from teaching. Burnout was subsumed under the concept of stress, but it
too featured a central focus on emotional exhaustion. Though it was not
called emotion per se, stress and burnout research brought the study of
teacher emotion into mainstream educational research.
The authors of the studies in this first wave provide an indication of
the importance of considering emotions in teaching and learning. These
studies hint a problem that will surface and be discussed in research
conducted during the second wave. It involves the interaction of teacher
emotion with other dimensions in teaching such as teacher performance,
teacher knowledge, and the social and political context of the classroom
and the school. The recommendations from this work point to a need
for teachers to examine their emotions and to negotiate an effective
teaching role based on emotional experiences gained with the students.
The research on the impact of teacher emotion regarding student learning
appears to be rather preliminary. My reading of the literature suggests that
studies in the first wave appeared mostly concerned with describing the
role of teacher emotion, something that was justified given the status of
this research two decades ago.

Second wave: Policy issues, social relationships and teachers’ emotional

experiences. During the last decade, the voices that came to embrace the
idea of teaching as an “emotional practice” increased and social rela-
tionships in the classroom and school context became prime candidates
for capturing the power of emotion in teaching. Recent research joins
previous efforts in bringing emotions to the forefront of current educa-
tional thinking. This research draws mostly on sociological research about
emotion and the nature of teacher’s social life to assume that a teacher’s
emotional responses occur in a context that is primarily social. Emotions
at the individual level are increasingly recognized as governed by social
interactions. A teacher’s emotions, then, are determined not only or even
primarily by internal individual (intrapersonal) characteristics, but rather
by relationships, a view known as social constructionism of emotion (e.g.,
see Harre, 1986).
Several researchers contend that emotions in teaching are unavoid-
ably linked to matters of school policy issues. Studies by Little (1996),
Kelchtermans (1996), Blackmore (1996), and Woods and Jeffrey (1996)
address this issue. The intersection of heightened emotionality and shifting
career contours among teachers engaged in large reform movements in
US secondary schools is examined by Little (1996). She draws on three
case studies that illuminate teachers’ experience of heightened emotion-
110 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

ality and its relationship to career discontinuity or career risk. Little shows
how emotionality rises in the relationships of teachers with colleagues,
administrators and other adults, in other words, “outside” the classroom. A
second contributor to heightened emotionality is a combination of multiple
pressures or the simultaneous loss of several sources of support. The
heightened levels of emotional distress isolate the teachers; on the contrary,
positive emotions enhance the rewards of the classroom. Little’s work (see
also Little, 2000) suggests that several context-specific dynamics of reform
work in schools influence teachers’ emotional responses.
Similar arguments to the above are made by Kelchtermans (1996)
who studied the main sources of teachers’ vulnerability and found that
administrative or policy measures, professional relationships in the school
and limits to teachers’ efficacy were significant sources of teachers’
feelings of vulnerability. Kelchtermans argues that there are moral and
political dimensions in teachers’ emotional experiences of their work.
Therefore, understanding this vulnerability is crucial for the develop-
ment of successful coping strategies. His study supports the notion that
emotions in teaching are unavoidably linked to matters of interests (polit-
ical dimension) and values (moral dimension), therefore, coping with
vulnerability means that the teachers need to engage in political action
to regain the social recognition of their professional self and restore the
conditions that ensure their good job performance. Kelchtermans suggests
that autobiographical reflection and story telling can effective contribute
to successful coping with the sense of vulnerability because they engage
them meaningfully with ideas, materials and colleagues, and it opens up
possibilities for viewing their experiences from alternative perspectives.
Similarly, Noddings (1996) suggests that the use of story telling in teacher
education can “both induce feeling and help us to understand what we are
feeling” (p. 435). Building a repertoire of stories, argues Noddings, can
enhance human relations and help to connect studies to the great existential
questions.
In a study of the “emotional labour” of women educators who had
leadership positions in Victoria, Australia, Blackmore (1996) took a
different approach and explored the interconnections between the market,
gender, and emotion. Blackmore considered how the construction of an
educational labor market intruded into and shaped educational practice.
She analyzed the “strategies of coping” that these women educators used
resulting from the emotional conflict between their approach of caring
and their role as administrators implementing state imposed educational
reforms premised upon market liberalism.
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 111

Jeffrey and Woods (1996) explored the social construction of emotions

during an OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education) inspection and
suggest similarly to Kelchtermans and Little that administrative pres-
sure due to the inspection created professional uncertainty with the
teachers experiencing anxiety, confusion, and doubt about their profes-
sional competence. One of the most negative emotional responses comes
from the assault on teachers’ self. This loss of self, according to Jeffrey
and Woods, takes the form of mortification, dehumanization, the loss of
pedagogic values and of harmony and changed and weakened commit-
ment. They suggest that one of the ways that teachers can avoid these
traumatic emotional experiences is by shifting identity and status from
professional to technician. In another study, Woods and Jeffrey (1996)
explored what made English primary school teachers especially creative
and “exceptional.” They found that these primary teachers went well
beyond following a set of techniques or standards and they invested
in creating emotional bonds with their students. The studies by Little,
Kelchtermans, Blackmore, and Jeffrey and Woods provide an indication
of what types of policy issues appear to have effect on teachers’ emotions
and vice versa. The findings build on earlier studies and indicate that
both intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of teacher emotion appear to
be significant factors in teacher development, school change and student
learning. Blackmore’s study appears to be an interesting exception in terms
of including the role of gender issues and alludes to the political meaning
of emotions in teaching.
In a series of articles based on the project The Emotions of Teaching and
Educational Change, Andy Hargreaves and his colleagues (Hargreaves,
1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001; Lasky, 2000; Schmidt, 2000) describe how
teachers’ emotional goals for and bonds with their students permeate
teachers’ orientations and responses to all other aspects of educa-
tional change – such as curriculum planning, teaching and learning,
and school structure. Hargreaves and his colleagues used Hochschild’s
(1983) sociological framework of “emotional labor” and found (mostly
through utilizing semi-structured two-hour interviews) that the teachers’
emotional commitments and connections to students energized and articu-
lated everything these teachers did: including how they taught, how they
planned, and structures in which they preferred to teach. This series of
articles suggest that the emotional politics of teaching and educational
change require that reform efforts embrace and engage the emotions
more positively. Hargreaves’ colleagues, Lasky (2000) and Schmidt (2000)
traced the emotions involved in teacher–parent interactions and in posi-
tions of leadership respectively. Lasky (2000) explored the cultural and
112 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

emotional politics of teacher–parent interactions and suggested that the

culture and organization of teaching influenced teacher values and their
interactions with parents. Schmidt (2000) analyzed the tensions between
teaching and leading, experiences of loneliness, emotional misunder-
standing and the resentment that came from feelings of powerlessness.
The work of Hargreaves and his colleagues support the general notion
emerging in the second wave that teacher emotions have wide implications
in the ways teachers do their work as well as in the policy agendas. A
major criticism I have of this work is that Hargreaves and his colleagues
do not acknowledge the interrelations among and connectedness of intra-
personal/interpersonal perspectives and discursive practices, although in
their work there is a concern for the political meaning of emotions (e.g., see
Hargreaves, 1995). Future research within this context will benefit from
becoming aware of the different levels of complexity and the elements that
can be formed by frameworks that enrich social-psychological literature on
emotion. Also, more attention needs to be directed at in-depth study (e.g.,
longitudinal case studies) of how discourses at school affect emotions in
teaching.
Studies by Golby (1996) and Tickle (1996) contend that professional
development of teachers needs to take into account the role of emotions.
In a study of the emotional life of two mature women teachers, Golby
(1996) found the profound commitments that they had to the students
they teach and the considerable emotional comfort and security they gain
from their students. Golby suggests that professional development needs
to provide opportunities for analyzing situations that provoke emotional
pleasure or distress. This approach, he argues, would contribute to a
fuller emotional commitment to the educational project. Similarly, Tickle
(1996) proposes the need for a curriculum for the emotions in teacher
education. His recommendation provides a starting point for productive,
educative dialogue about acknowledging the role of emotion in teachers’
professional development.
A major feature of the studies during the second wave is that they
document the complexity and range of emotions held by teachers. The
area appears fragmented with a wide array of avenues being pursued –
the area is new, thus one expects a certain degree of fragmentation – but
mostly those avenues are limited within sociological and psychological
frameworks (two of the strongest albeit not the only traditions in studying
emotions). However, I believe that this corpus of research during the
second wave, despite its weaknesses, has advanced the study of emotion
in teaching in important ways. The merits of any body of research can be
evaluated based on how well it enables researchers to see the area in new
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 113

ways, to develop new perspectives, and to push the ideas in new grounds.
The research conducted in the second wave has certainly done these things.

Critical commentary. One thing that is clear from the research on teacher
emotion within both waves of research on teaching emotion is that teaching
practice is necessarily affective and involves an incredible amount of
emotional labor. The emotional dissonance created by emotional labor
can arguably lead to stress and burnout and there is now a considerable
body of work which links teacher stress with teachers’ early exit from
the profession (e.g., see Huberman, 1993, 1999; Travers and Cooper,
1996). Given this realization, the study of teacher emotion becomes an
important area of research in curriculum and teaching. Different studies
focus on different ideas such as the influence of teacher emotion on one’s
self-concept, perception, and judgment, the relationship between emotion
and teacher identity, how students are influenced by teachers’ emotions,
and how teachers’ emotions influence curricular decisions and curriculum
reform. But all studies seem to agree on the relevance of teacher emotion
to teachers’ work and the need for more systematic research in this area.
However, two major problems remain unresolved in the area of research
on teacher emotion. First of all, the theorization of teacher emotion, espe-
cially in the second wave, is mostly inspired either by a sociological
(interpersonal) framework – especially social constructionist and contextu-
alized perspective – or a psychological framework. Most of the existing
research on teacher emotion during the last decade marks a shift from
earlier efforts aiming at establishing teacher emotion research as a legiti-
mate area of study to exploring the role of emotion in teachers’ social
interactions – with colleagues, students, parents and administrators (e.g.,
Nias, 1989, 1993, 1996; Hargreaves, 1998a, 1998b). However, missing is
an exploration of teacher emotion as embedded in school culture, ideology,
and power relations. Very few studies pay attention to political and cultural
issues – e.g., how different practices establish and regulate emotional
rules and require emotion management in the context of curriculum and
teaching. Teachers certainly engage in social relationships and emotions
are constructed within this context, but participants in the school context
also exercise “invisible” aspects of emotional work that impose certain
emotional norms (as the vignette shared at the beginning of this essay
shows). The intrapersonal, interpersonal and power relations features must
be seen as interconnected and regarded as examinable and problematic in
both research and practice.
Second, another issue that remains unresolved in the area of research on
teacher emotion is the need to develop pedagogies that promote empower-
114 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

ment and teacher self-development. Most work so far has been descriptive
in terms of identifying factors relevant to teacher emotion and how these
influence curriculum and teaching. Central to developing such pedagogies
are ideas that account for the political aspects of emotions. On the basis
of this notion, teachers’ emotions cannot be regarded only in their inter-
personal aspects; instead they need to be regarded as the very location of
the capacity to embrace, revise, or reject discursive practices of whatever
kind. Kelchtermans’ study (1996) is an exception that alludes to the
notion that part of developing such pedagogies is creating strategies that
promote self-awareness and empowerment (e.g., through autobiographical
storytelling and exchanging).

TOWARD A DYNAMIC FRAMEWORK USING FEMINIST AND

POSTSTRUCTURALIST IDEAS ON EMOTION

During the last two decades, feminist and poststructuralist scholars in

various disciplines but especially in anthropology have articulated theories
of emotion that are socially, culturally, and politically informed without
ignoring the interpersonal components of emotions (e.g., see Bartky, 1990;
Boler, 1999; Campbell, 1994, 1997; Code, 1996; Game and Metcalfe,
1996; Greenspan, 1988; Griffiths, 1988; Lupton, 1998; Lutz and Abu-
Lughod, 1990; Laslett, 1990; Rosaldo, 1984; Woodward, 1990). It is
my hope that educators can recognize the historical and political signifi-
cance of these theories of emotion, especially the politicization of teacher
emotion, and that such theories can inform the project of theorizing teacher
emotion in ways that power relations and ideology are not ignored any
more.
In this essay, the notion of poststructuralism emphasizes the role played
by language in the constitution of an emotional experience. Emotion talk
and emotional expression can be characterized by the notion of “discourse”
derived from the poststructuralist theories of Michel Foucault. Foucault,
beginning with Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison (1977) and
continuing in the first volume of the History of Sexuality (1978), argues for
a view of power so all-pervasive that there is no space left for an individual
to look for a “true self.” All aspects of an individual’s life are subjected
to disciplinary formation and the very experience of being a subject is,
in Foucault’s view, an outcome of discursive practices. It is important to
recognize the significance of Foucault’s work in raising questions about
the use of discourses of emotion. “How are these discourses used? What
role do they play in society?” (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983, p. xxv). How
do they change? These questions allow theorists to problematize assump-
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 115

tions and expectations about emotion talk and emotional expression and
pay attention to the role of power relations in the formation of emotion in
discursive practices.
In the struggles over the questions of how power is exercised, feminist
theorists, along with others in the ethnography of emotion, show us that
emotions are not constructed from nothing but are controlled, shaped, and
challenged in particular ways and for particular purposes. Here is precisely
where the political stakes come in. This work challenges the notion that
emotions, feelings, and bodies are in opposition to cognition, rationality,
and the mind. Feminist theories (although not monolithic) question the
political motivation behind such dichotomies and the hierarchical control
they imply. Any appeal to women’s reproductive powers or nurturing
roles or emotional sensitivity aims at disciplining women’s expectations
and controlling their efforts for self-realization. A major political goal
of feminist work then is to liberate women (and men) from constraining
expectations, rules, and assumptions.
Some of the work in the first two waves of research on teacher emotion
provides some points of linkage with the political aspects of emotion.
For example, in Hargreaves’ work the political aspects of emotions are
acknowledged and there is attention to the more “dangerous” emotions
like passion, love, etc. (e.g., Hargreaves, 1995, 1998b). As Hargreaves
argues, classrooms are necessarily socio-cultural constructs where teachers
work under societal and cultural constraints and dilemmas. If teachers
are denied input in their own professional development, they are likely
to become cynical and detached from school improvement efforts and
to reject what is experienced as imposition. Similarly, Blackmore (1996)
and Keltchtermans’ (1996) studies begin to acknowledge and address the
personal identities and moral purposes of teachers, as well as the cultures
and contexts in which they work.
Discursive, cultural, and political aspects of emotion have come into
focus recently in a number of ethnographies of emotion as well as in
theoretical formulations of the role of emotion discourses in society. I turn
now to three scholars whose work is informed by feminist and poststruc-
turalist ideas and which is indicative of attempts to form an integrative
and dynamic account of emotion in a very compelling and important way:
the philosophical work of Megan Boler in education and the ethnographic
work of Catherine Lutz and Lila Abu-Lughod in anthropology.
“Emotion,” writes Boler (1997a) “has more often than not been
maligned, neglected, and assigned as a property of the ‘other,’ as a
symptom of deviance. To study the history of such dualisms underpinning
Western philosophy,” she continues, “is to study the history of relations of
116 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

power, of what activities and qualities are valued and commodified under
what circumstance” (pp. 203–204). The notion of knowing is based on
knowledge as a manifestation of rationality; therefore, usually emotional
experience threatens the disembodied, detached, and neutral knower. This
notion also implies that knowledge is objective and fixed and thus needs to
become unproblematically available for others to “receive.”
Boler identifies four discourses of emotion in education: rational,
pathological, romantic, and political (1997a, 1999). First, the rational
discourses in various disciplines “often overlap with or include scientific
discourses which codify, categorize, and/or universalize emotions” (Boler,
1997a, p. 205). The goal of these discourses is to rationally contain
emotions; therefore, emotions are only legitimated when they are
“channeled,” as Boler says, in some rational way. Second, the patho-
logical discourses often “assume a normative model of ‘emotional equi-
librium’ ” (1997a, p. 205). In these discourses, individuals are considered
to be vulnerable to emotions, and they have no control over them.
Such discourses have historically emerged across the sciences, as Boler
explains, and are usually informed by medicine and biology, psychology,
social sciences, and neurosciences. Third, the romantic discourses refer
to both religious and artistic traditions. In these discourses, religion and
art are considered as appropriate sites for channeling visions or improper
emotions. Much work done in these three discourses can be characterized
as essentialist in its approach to emotion on the basis that kinds of emotion
are assumed to be predictable outcomes of universal psychobiological
processes (Abu-Lughod and Lutz, 1990). This strategy, argue Abu-Lughod
and Lutz has had several unfortunate consequences such as identifying
feelings as the essence of emotion thus ignoring the role of social inter-
actions; further, essentializing emotions has reinforced the assumption
of universality on the forms and meanings of emotions. Finally, Boler
discusses the political discourses which are the most historically recent,
“arising from the Civil Rights movements in the United States during the
1960s, and particularly with the practices of consciousness-raising that
formed the political and educational praxis of radical feminism into the
1970s” (p. 207).
Boler further observes that “what defines the discourses of emotion
most predominantly are silences” (1997b, p. 229). Within education insti-
tutions, “acceptable” or “professional” emotional behavior is defined
by the standards of Western rationality, namely, “balanced” and “well-
behaved” white males. Boler writes in a sad tone that “institutions
are inherently committed to maintaining silences (e.g., about emotion)
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 117

and/or proliferating discourses that define emotions by negation” (1997b,

pp. 230–231).
Like Boler, Lila Abu-Lughod and Catherine Lutz argue that power
seems to be an integral part of all discourses about emotions, because
“power relations determine what can, cannot, or must be said about self
and emotion, what is taken to be true or false about them, and what
only some individuals can say about them. The real innovation is in
showing how emotion discourses establish, assert, challenge, or reinforce
power or status differences” (1990, p. 14). Abu-Lughod and Lutz draw
on Foucault to argue that ideas about emotions, and perhaps emotions
themselves are discursive practices shaped by, and in turn supporting, rela-
tions of dominance such as those between men and women. For example,
Western analytic and common-sense ideas view emotions as uncontrol-
lable, dangerous, physical, precultural, and feminine (Lutz, 1988). The
association of females with emotion contributes to their subordination.
Taking off from the work of the late anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo,
Abu-Lughod and Lutz assert that what people feel physiologically as
emotions is generated in social, political, and cultural encounters. Power
relations, cultural principles and rules of behavior, together with intentions
others seek to implement, structure how people experience themselves
as both emotional and social beings and how they understand and talk
about emotions. How people manage their emotions in social interactions,
allowing them free expression some of the time and keeping a tight lid
on them at other times, reflects cultural norms, public values, felt commit-
ments, and “practices” – the term is derived from the theoretical writings
of Bourdieu, Giddens and others – that reveal the effects of power (as in
gestures of respect and shame in many cultures). For example, Lughod
(1990) asserts that US women’s way of speaking about efforts to control
their emotions actually create those emotions.
Furthermore, Abu-Lughod and Lutz (1990) – as well as Boler (see
especially, 1998b) – assert that focusing on emotion as discourse does not
mean that the notion of emotion as embodied is ignored. Using Bourdieu’s
thoughts on “body hexis” – he defines body hexis as a set of body tech-
niques or postures that are learned habits or deeply ingrained dispositions
that both reflect and reproduce the social relations that surround and consti-
tute them (see Bourdieu, 1977) – Abu-Lughod and Lutz argue that it is
important to recognize that emotion is embodied without being forced to
concede that it must be “natural” and not shaped by social interaction.
As they explain, “To learn how, when, where, and by whom emotions
ought to be enacted is to learn a set of body techniques including facial
expressions, postures, and gestures” (1990, p. 12). The move to ensure
118 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

that emotions remain embodied, continue Abu-Lughod and Lutz, should

be seen as more than an attempt to position them in the human body.
Embodying the emotions also involves theoretically situating them in the
social body of how discourses on emotion arise.
These ideas offered by the works of Boler, Abu-Lughod and Lutz,
systematically politicize emotions as a site of social resistance and trans-
formation. Boler describes this work as a “feminist politics of emotions”
referring to “the explicit analysis and resulting individual or collective
actions, that challenge the historical and cultural emotional rules which
serve to maintain capitalism and patriarchical hierarchy, particularly with
respect to the arbitrary gendered division of public and private spheres”
(1998, pp. 49–50). The ideas analyzed here do not simply lead to an inter-
personal account of emotion; instead they form an integrative account of
interpersonal components of emotion along with a consideration of how
emotions are embedded in culture, ideology, and power relations. Thus,
future research on teacher emotion can benefit from considering feminist
and poststructuralist ideas, because it will enable researchers in this area
to challenge the myths that deny the ways in which issues of power and
ideology are interconnected with teacher emotion. Feminist and poststruc-
turalist theorizations of the political nature of emotions, formed through
processes that cannot be merely characterized as either individual or social,
offer several analytic tools in initiating and sustaining a caring for teacher
emotion. It is to this analysis that I now turn.

IMPLICATIONS OF USING FEMINIST/POSTSTRUCTURALIST

IDEAS OF EMOTION FOR TEACHER SELF-DEVELOPMENT:
FROM THEORY TO POLITICS

In my attempt to formulate a dynamic framework of teacher emotion,

I follow Fraser’s (1992) call for a theory that conceptualizes “political
agents.” Acknowledging the politics of emotion encourages both men and
women to articulate their emotions and to develop alternative emotional
expressions that challenge oppressive ideologies. For example, the argu-
ment that characterizes women as “nurturing” or as “emotional” easily
becomes a position of constraining expectations that privileges men and
excludes women from particular social positions. The political goal of
resistance and liberation from such categories of exclusion calls for an
approach that recognizes the politics of emotion in education.
The critical task of using feminist and poststructuralist ideas of emotion
is the construction of an account of teacher emotion that invents strategies
of subversion of the emotional rules that determine how teachers should or
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 119

should not feel about curriculum, teaching, and themselves. Teachers know
these rules from how others or they respond to inferences of emotional
display. Emotional rules, just like other rules, delineate a zone within
which certain emotions are permitted and others are not permitted, and
can be obeyed or broken, at varying costs. Emotional rules reflect power
relations and thus are techniques for the discipline of human differ-
ences in emotional expression and communication. This may take place
through inscribing and recording of “appropriate” and “inappropriate”
emotions, managing and utilizing emotions according to these inscrip-
tions, and classifying emotional expressions as “deviant” or “normal.”
Emotion discourses establish arrays of emotional rules according to which
the emotional expression and conduct of self have been determined. These
emotional rules refer to 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.
In teaching these emotional rules police teachers’ emotions in terms of
an articulation of a very specific presence in their everyday life at school:
forms of language and embodiment of emotion that teachers are taught
to value and others that must be dismissed. For example, confronted on a
daily basis with a variety of emotions – anger, bewilderment, anxiety etc. –
teachers must learn to control emotions of anger, anxiety, and vulnerability
and express empathy, calmness, and kindness. In the act of controlling
emotions, through the obligation to produce verbal and nonverbal expres-
sions that are true to these rules, through the self-examination that precedes
and accompanies emotional expressions, teachers become subjects for
themselves (i.e., they play a large part in their own control). These self-
regulating techniques inhabit a space in which there is an intersection
of disciplinary mechanisms with subjectification. This space concerns
the different ways in which teachers have been urged and incited to
follow these rules, to define and regulate themselves according to them,
to establish principles for conducting and judging their professional lives.
Unavoidably then, the strategies that feminism and poststructuralism
can offer have a political character: How to disrupt the foundations of
traditional emotional rules that shut down new pedagogies (e.g., multi-
cultural education, caring for the emotions, pedagogies that are not fixated
to “teaching to the test” etc.). First of all, using feminist and poststruc-
turalist ideas of emotion provides a fruitful lens for interrogating the
traditional dichotomies between emotional/rational and personal/political
in the context of teaching. For example, the dominant values of the Western
culture imply that women schoolteachers are “emotional” and therefore
“irrational,” and they are naturally suited for caring and nurturing. Through
120 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

these power relations certain gendered representations are shaped and

particular emotional rules are internalized. Ultimately, the expectation is
that teachers need to self-police themselves. However, if teachers cease
to accept these dichotomies and school emotional rules are seen as stipu-
lating styles of emotional control that shape emotions, then power, politics,
and liberation regain their meaning. Under these circumstances, it is more
likely that teachers start viewing emotions as sites of social and political
resistance and transformation of oppressions. Those who feel more frus-
trated or excluded can more readily adapt new emotional rules that are
contending for domination.
Second, using feminist and poststructuralist ideas of emotion has the
potential to inspire educators in general to ask new questions that open
possibilities for enriching teacher emotional self-development and encour-
aging alternative expressions of emotions. For example: How can teachers
avoid internalizing certain emotions (fear, guilt, shame and humiliation) as
“appropriate”? How can they find the courage to resist the control imposed
by an educational environment governed by such strong sense of authority?
How can they create spaces to develop flexible ways of resistance involving
emotional depth and expressions that are not following norms prescribed
to them? All these questions call for the need to construct (empirical
and theoretical) accounts of teacher emotion that challenge the traditional
ways of thinking about teachers’ ethical self-formation. To the extent
that educators encourage the construction of new emotional rules – that
promote empathetic understanding with students and with the content, for
example – it is likely to nurture and advance new pedagogies that are more
successful in inspiring students and teachers to be learners (Zembylas,
2002).
Third, through theorizing emotions in this manner, teachers create
particular stories about social solidarity and the role of emotions. By
getting in touch with the multiple components of emotions and their
expressions, teachers can potentially recapture some aspects of identifi-
cation with others. The goal, however, is not self-preservation in any
sense, but the willingness to be vulnerable in empathizing with others and
exercising openness and flexibility in acting to transform these emotions,
acts, practices and thoughts. The feminist and poststructuralist ideas of
emotion explored here expose the marginalized, the excluded, the ignored
emotions from one’s present histories and trace genealogies of emotions
to past histories. This is precisely why empathy allows us to understand
the emotions of the “other.” For it is the presence of our emotions that we
bring in mind as we remember the other’s emotion.
 CARING FOR TEACHER EMOTION 121

Developing an awareness of their emotional responses as a valuable

source of information about one’s self, and using the power of emotion
as a basis for collective and individual social resistance, teachers can sort
their experiences, their anxieties, their fears, their excitements and learn
how to use them in empowering ways. Ways to increase awareness about
the role of emotions in teaching and create collective resistances through
the power of emotion are: (auto)biographical storytelling, the development
of mentoring relationships among teachers, the establishment of teacher–
teams as forums for creating emotional and professional bonding, and the
encouragement of teachers to engage in (action) research on their own
practices. These ideas, of course, are not without problems given that there
is a growing awareness of the inevitable micropolitical issues that play
in part in mentoring, forums etc. However, these ideas can be starting
points for teachers to perceive themselves as sites of agency and encourage
teachers to move away from being normalized.
Unraveling the different aspects of using feminist and poststructuralist
ideas of emotion both as analytic tools and as points of departures for
conducting research on teacher emotion as well as for taking actions has
the potential of enriching our knowledge about teacher emotion and its
impact on curriculum and teaching. By seeking ways to encourage teachers
to explore their own emotional experiences in teaching, they can develop
“philosophies and histories of emotions” (Rousmaniere et al., 1997; Wood-
ward, 1991) to inform their pedagogies. By conducting research informed
by such ideas we not only acknowledge what is lacking but also provide a
vision and hope for what might be done.

CONCLUSION

To date, much of the research in the area of teacher emotion has framed
approaches around concepts from psychological and sociological liter-
ature – an understandable focus, since intrapersonal and interpersonal
aspects of emotions are important. I believe that these approaches, however
important, will do little to improve further our knowledge about teacher
emotion. I argue that other features of a larger system must be recognized
as equally significant, and addressed, if research on teacher emotion and
teaching practice are to be improved. In this essay, I have suggested that
feminist and poststructuralist ideas are valuable, because they focus on
the interrelations among the connectedness of intrapersonal, interpersonal
and discursive elements of teacher emotion. Such ideas are not the only
ones that can enrich theorization in the area; the field can benefit from a
variety of other approaches. Researchers in this area need to find ways to
122 MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS

overcome the current problematics and develop pedagogies that account

for the intersections of teacher emotion, power relations, and ideology.
Also, using such ideas as analytic tools and inspirations for taking
action, teachers can explore how their emotions are “located” in educa-
tional histories (of institutions and individuals) in visible or invisible ways,
and challenge the prevailing emotional rules in curriculum and teaching. I
believe it is important that teachers identify how their emotions expand
or limit possibilities in their teaching, and how these emotions enable
them to think and act differently. Expressing, analyzing, and reflecting on
one’s emotions represents a considerable risk of vulnerability yet teachers
are constantly challenged in the professional lives to deal with visible of
invisible pain and powerlessness. Caring for teacher emotion can be vastly
empowered by developing accounts that recognize it as a site of political
resistance.

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Michigan State University

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