Developing a theoretical framework to understand teacher’s subjectivities and emotionality
2.5 Subjectivity, ethics and emotions
2.5.2 Hargreaves’s theory of the emotional process of teaching
Emotions and experience play a critical role in our everyday lives with emotional practices being ingrained in our thinking, attitudes and actions, influencing our experiences (Denzin, 1984). Hargreaves contends that “we know much less about how teachers feel while they teach, about the emotions and desires which motivate and moderate their work” (1994, p.
141). For Hargreaves, research on emotions of teaching has been predominantly from the perspective of researchers’ theoretical agendas focusing on “pride, commitment and uncertainty”; instead of from teachers’ point of view which focusses on emotions of “anxiety, frustration and guilt” (1994, p.141). According to Hargreaves (2000, p. 812) “emotions are an integral part of education”. In other words:
Teaching is also and always an emotional practice of engagement with learning, relationships with students and adults, and attachment to the purposes and the work that teaching achieves.
(Hargreaves, 2000, p. 117)
Hargreaves (2000; 2003) echoes Denzin (1984) and argues that teaching is an emotional practice, incorporating teachers’ feelings about their profession, students and efficiency.
However, both stress that teaching is not an entirely emotional practice, concurring that emotions are critically linked to cognition and action, which allow us to make choices and judgments, and act in accordance with our values and beliefs. As an emotional practice, teaching arouses certain emotions in teachers and those with whom they interact. For
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Hargreaves, teaching is ‘inextricably emotional’ since teachers can stimulate or turn off their students, be friendly or unsociable and trust or doubt parents and colleagues (2001a, p. 1057).
By this, he means that teachers, as emotional practitioners, can create inspiring or boring classroom settings.
According to Hargreaves (2001a), appropriate expressions of emotional experiences vary among different cultures and professions and distinctively influence identities and relationships. Teachers’ working conditions and relationships are entrenched in their emotional experiences, resulting in significant positive and negative emotional episodes which they have to manage in their classrooms. He expands on these positive and negative emotions:
Teachers…at various times, worry, hope, enthuse, become bored, envy, brood, love, feel proud, get anxious, are despondent, become frustrated
and so on. (Hargreaves, 2000, p. 812)
Teaching, Hargreaves (2001a) argues, should be analysed through a wide-ranging, more contextualised emotional lens, which acknowledges the dynamic emotional contexts within which teachers work exploring their negative emotions of frustration, guilt or fear as well as positive emotions of trust, love or care. For Hargreaves (2000; 2001a), the concepts of emotional understanding and emotional geographies are essential to explore the shift in teaching contexts and deepening our understanding of how teachers’ emotions are ingrained in their interactions and contexts. An elaboration of these concepts follows.
2.5.2.1 Emotional understanding
Emotional understanding entails drawing on our past emotional experiences to understand and analyse the emotional experiences of others. According to Denzin (1984), emotional understanding highlights the cultural dimension of emotions which manifests when we spread our moods to others, empathise with others, share the joys and sorrows of our families and develop close relationships with others. For Denzin (1984, p. 137), emotional understanding denotes:
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An inter-subjective process requiring that one person enter into the field of experience of another and experience for herself the same or similar experiences experienced by another.
Hargreaves (2000) opines that the emotional experiences we accumulate from our culture, upbringing and relationships with others craft who we are emotionally. In accordance with Denzin (1984), Hargreaves (2000) contends that teachers constantly ‘read’ or scan the emotional responses of those with whom they interact. It is crucial for teachers, therefore, to establish close relationships with their learners, parents and colleagues as this enhances emotional understanding. Hargreaves (2000) goes on to suggest that when teachers form close bonds with learners and construct teaching conditions that stimulate emotional understanding, successful teaching and learning results. However, he argues that complex school structures and priorities, dealing with large class sizes as well as the hectic pace of teaching could discourage emotional understanding, since they decrease the time available for teachers to establish close relationships with their learners, parents and colleagues.
In the absence of close relationships and emotional understanding, Hargreaves asserts that it is possible for teachers to misread and misinterpret the emotions, feelings and actions of learners and parents. For example, a teacher could misconstrue hyperactivity for eagerness, or annoyance and boredom as diligent commitment. Hargreaves (2001a) cautions teachers against stereotyping learners’ emotions according to their grade or culture, or as extensions of their own emotions, and argues that emotional misunderstanding lowers standards and the quality of teaching and learning. For Hargreaves (2001a), emotional understanding among teachers, learners, colleagues and parents can be threatened by different forms of emotional closeness and distance, which he refers to as ‘emotional geographies’, a discussion of which follows.
2.5.2.2 Emotional geographies
Hargreaves (2000) conceptualises the notion of ‘emotional geographies’ in educational research and social science to illustrate patterns of closeness and distance in human interactions which delineate emotions and relationships. For Hargreaves, emotional
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geographies assist with recognising factors that promote or restrain close emotional bonds between teachers and those they interact with. Emotional geographies are linked to the culture and context of individuals and could be subjective or objective and represent:
The spatial and experiential patterns of closeness and/or distance in human interactions and relationships that help create, configure and colour the feelings and emotions we experience about ourselves, our world and each other. (Hargreaves, 2001a, p. 1061)
According to Hargreaves, emotional geographies allow teachers to actively constitute their teaching as well as be constituted by it. For Hargreaves, emotional geographies delineate the positive emotions of trust, care, love and support, as well as negative emotions of jealousy, fear, anger, shame and frustration. Hargreaves (2000) emphasises that gender, ethnocultural identity and the life or career phase of teachers influence the way in which they experience and express their emotionality. Nevertheless, he cautions against “the risks of embracing emotion in indulgent and romanticised ways” and instead proposes critical engagement with emotional interactions of teachers and how these influence teaching and learning (2000, p.
811).
Hargreaves identifies five key emotional geographies of teaching, namely: socio-cultural, moral, professional, political and physical (2000, p. 816). Socio-cultural geographies describe the differences in culture and class between teachers and learners that alienate teachers from their learners since they are unfamiliar with their learners’ cultural and class backgrounds.
Since many teachers teach in communities remote from their own, Hargreaves (2000) asserts that teachers are socio-culturally detached from their learners and parents, which could result in them stereotyping learners and parents or being stereotyped by them. Teachers need to foster better relationships with learners and parents, Hargreaves contends, to promote emotional understanding and “bridge the socio-cultural gap” between them (2001a, p. 1066).
Teachers’ emotions are inextricably linked to their moral purposes of teaching, and have a bearing on the choices they make about the curriculum they teach and their teaching strategies. Moral geographies, thus, explain how teachers’ actions and choices are influenced when their purposes differ from that of their learners. Hargreaves maintains that teachers
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experience robust negative emotions, such as anger and anxiety when their moral purposes are challenged by management or parents. On the other hand, when teachers get encouraging feedback about attaining their purposes; they experience positive emotions such as happiness and gratitude. Professional geographies delineate teacher professionalism as ‘classical’, representing traditional male-oriented professions and suggest that teachers should mask and control their emotions when interacting with learners and parents. However, teaching today is regarded as a profession with a ‘feminine, caring ethic’, presenting a dilemma for teachers who are expected to be caring, but in a “clinical and detached way” (Hargreaves, 2001a, p.
1069).The influence of hierarchical power or powerlessness on emotional and cognitive interactions between teachers, parents and learners comprises political geographies. In other words, political geographies denote the ‘emotional politics’ of teaching or the disparity in power and status between teachers, learners and parents which results in hierarchical relationships that could alter communication and protect or empower teachers. The
‘emotional politics’ of teachers’ relationships are such that learners are central to teaching but have less power, whereas parents and teachers have complex, ambivalent power relations which could influence teaching. Hargreaves (2001a) thus makes a strong case for teachers and parents to work together to shift the power dynamics in a negotiated relationship which promotes accountability and reward. For Zorn and Boler (2007), socio-cultural and political geographies are crucial to make sense of and analyse how emotions and educational practice are inextricably linked.
Physical geographies describe the proximity and frequency of teachers’ social interactions.
They incorporate a space and time dimension, since teachers could interact frequently, for longer periods and in close contact with learners and parents to foster better relationships.
Relationships between teachers, learners and parents, Hargreaves cautions, could be strained if there are “strings of episodic interactions” (2001b, p. 509). Therefore, intense, frequent, continuous and close proximity interactions between teachers, learners and parents promote emotional understanding and improved emotional relationships. Lasky (2000) contends that physical distance is more evident in secondary schools which are characterised by few, infrequent episodes of interactions between teachers and parents, which threaten relationships, communication and emotional understanding.
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Hargreaves (2000; 2001a; 2001b) contends that these five emotional geographies illuminate patterns of closeness and distance between teachers, learners and parents, and either support or threaten emotional understanding in the classroom. The foregoing discussion draws attention to the intricate connection between teachers’ emotions, their identities and their teaching. Next, I outline Zembylas’s genealogy of emotions in teaching as a framework to explain and analyse how teachers’ emotions influence their teaching about HIV and AIDS.