“You Can’t Teach ‘Em ‘til You Love ‘Em”: Emotional Labor, Bureaucracy, And Teacher Burnout In The American Education System
- ASU Author/Contributor (non-ASU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- Grayson Bodenheimer (Creator)
- Institution
- Appalachian State University (ASU )
- Web Site: https://library.appstate.edu/
- Advisor
- Pavel Osinsky
Abstract: Drawing on a series of interviews and a survey of North Carolina teachers, I examine teacher burnout in the American K-12 education system. I show how, because of the structure of education, teachers feel conflicted between the emotion norms of diverse professional expectations – including objectivity and affection – during interactions with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators. Ideologies shape teachers’ perspectives towards their roles: self-responsible teachers invested pride in student outcomes and struggled against the affective neutrality of standardized testing, while communal teachers’ dilution of educational responsibilities served as a beneficial negative case. Both ideologies expressed disillusionment over accountability measures that prescribed emotional labor in professional interaction. Self-responsible teachers were pre-disposed to occupational burnout due to their investment of pride into their role and student success. My findings suggest how low-level administrators have a fundamental role in shaping local organizational culture and teachers’ experiences with burnout, specifically by recoupling professional expectations of emotional labor with teachers’ day-to-day actions. This study exhibits the value of sociologically approaching interaction and burnout from the intersection of emotions and organizations.
“You Can’t Teach ‘Em ‘til You Love ‘Em”: Emotional Labor, Bureaucracy, And Teacher Burnout In The American Education System
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Created on 1/24/2018
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Honors Project
- Bodenheimer, G. (2017). “You Can’t Teach ‘Em ‘til You Love ‘Em”: Emotional Labor, Bureaucracy, And Teacher Burnout In The American Education System. Unpublished Honors Thesis. Appalachian State University. Boone, NC.
- Language: English
- Date: 2017
- Keywords
- Burnout, emotions, education, ideology, organizations