Emotions and Teacher Identity: A poststructural perspective

Abstract

This article illustrates the significance of teachers' emotions in the construction of teacher identity by invoking a poststructuralist lens in discussing the place of emotion in identity formation. In suggesting a poststructuralist perspective of emotions and teacher identity, it is argued that teacher identity is constantly becoming in a context embedded in power relations, ideology, and culture. In theorizing about teacher identity two ideas are developed: first, that the construction of teacher identity is at bottom affective, and is dependent upon power and agency, i.e., power is understood as forming the identity and providing the very condition of its trajectory; and second, that an investigation of the emotional components of teacher identity yields a richer understanding of the teacher self. This discussion is motivated by a desire to develop analyses that investigate how teachers' emotions can become sites of resistance and self-transformation. The emphasis on understanding the teacher-self through an exploration of emotion opens possibilities for the care and the self-knowledge of teachers and provides spaces for their transformation.