“Learn to Conserve Your Passion and Care”: Exploring the Emotional Labor of Special-Post Teachers in Rural China

Abstract

In recent decades, the growing trend of post-structuralist research on teacher emotional labor has offered a discursive lens to elucidate rural teachers’ identities and their teaching practices. To date, however, few studies have explored the emotional labor of special-post teachers in rural China. Through a post-structuralist framework, this study aimed to explore the emotional labor of special-post teachers. Ethnographic qualitative data from a rural primary school in northern China showed that special-post teachers experienced various emotional conflicts embedded in multiple discourses. As teaching experience increases, special-post teachers obtain agentive emotional and practical responses to lighten their negative emotional burden for work. The findings suggested that the role overload and conflicts of special-post teachers were especially prominent in the social context of the urban–rural dichotomy. Emotional reflexivity and vulnerability of special-post teachers in their identity construction as educator, professional-service-provider, and also passer-by were also discussed.