Emotional labour in a school of individuals

Abstract

The study examines Finnish discussions on student-centred school culture and teachers’ emotional labour from a sociological and historical perspective. It employs a thematic analysis of articles published in a Finnish teachers’ professional magazine from 1979 to 2011. In interpreting the data, the study draws from emotional labour research and Wouters’s studies on permissive culture. The results show that student-centred ideals retained their dominant position in Finnish schoolteachers’ professional discussions throughout the research period. However, the emotional stress involved in student-centred teaching evoked considerable criticism from teachers. Attitudes varied regarding the solutions to the problem of teacher stress: some of these solutions emphasised improving teachers’ emotional competence, whereas others centred on decreasing the amount of emotional labour in teachers’ work. The study also indicates the importance of teachers’ emotional labour in enabling students’ individual freedom at school.