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Teachers’ and teacher educators’ lives: the role of emotion
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Teachers' and teacher educators' lives: the role of emotion Christopher Day *, Ruth Leitch School of Education, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK School of Education, The Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland BT7 1HL, UK Received 25 August 1999; received in revised form 15 March 2000; accepted 18 May 2000
Abstract This paper reports research which focuses on ways of enhancing understandings by teachers of the key role that emotions play in their personal professional growth. It combines the narrative, autobiographical accounts of teachers attending part-time masters degree programmes in England (Continuing Professional Development and School Improvement) and Northern Ireland (Personal and Social Development) with an interrogation of the underlying values which a!ect the practices of their tutors. It reveals the e!ects of powerful and often unacknowledged interaction between personal biography and professional and social contexts upon teachers in schools and higher education. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Narrative; Emotion; In-service; Teachers' voice
1. Introduction The research reported here is grounded in the tensions within and between four interconnecting areas of teachers' lives: the cognitive}emotional and the personal}professional. The narrative groups of stories*by teachers from schools and colleges*and extracts from the collaborative dialogue of ourselves as university tutors*reveal the complexities of being and remaining a professional and the strategies used in order to maintain a sense of self; and they provide powerful testimony of the importance of attending to the much neglected emotional dimension of teachers' selves in continuing professional development, what has been
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #44-115-951-4423; fax: #44115-951-4435. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Day).
referred to as the &emotional geography' of teaching (Hargreaves, 1999a, 2000). Maintaining an awareness of the tensions in managing professional identity is part of the safeguard and joy of teaching. Often unacknowledged feelings of hurt, guilt, resentment, fear, injustice, and shame, for example, are common at the interface of the person of the teacher and his or her professional identity. In focusing upon the role of emotion, the assumptions upon which our thinking is based are that: (1) emotional intelligence is at the heart of good professional practice (Goleman, 1995); (2) emotions are indispensable to rational decision-making (Damasio, 1994); (3) emotional health is crucial to e!ective teaching over a career; (4) emotional and cognitive health are a!ected by personal biography, social context (of work and home) and external (policy) factors;
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(5) research which focuses upon the passion of vocation (Fried, 1995) in relation to person as well as professional is scarce.
2. The inquiry The motivation for this inquiry emerged initially from our professional concerns as teacher educators and our prior collaboration through teaching. These resulted in an ongoing re#ection and dialogue about our perceptions of the role that emotion plays in our teaching and professional lives generally, and how it a!ects our students who are themselves experienced teachers. The research was illuminating (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976) and designed to elicit answers to two key questions: (1) How is the professional self of the teacher a!ected by personal histories? (2) Can in-service courses assist teachers in adding self-knowledge as a means of increasing understandings of the ways in which emotion as well as cognition a!ect their teaching lives? The study was thus framed within three broad objectives: Personal: To develop and further our respective understandings of how we view our role as tutors in universities through the autobiographical exploration of the sources of our own beliefs and purposes which inform what we do and why in our work with teachers in their continuing professional development. Professional: To explore, through narrative inquiry, the ways in which teachers who were engaged in personal and professional re#ection and dialogue in two contrasting educational contexts articulated the relationships between their personal and professional sense of selves. Propositional: To determine through analysis and synthesis of their narratives and our own the role that emotions variously play in learning and change, how this was expressed and in what sense, if any, the methods used in the di!ering continuing professional development contexts produced di!erent outcomes. We are aware, and have guarded against, presenting fragments from others' personal and professional lives which are partial, selecting only that which we wish others to see and hiding
that which will prevent us telling the story in our way: 2when voices*as isolated and innocent moments of experience*organise our research texts, there is often a subtle slide towards romantic, uncritical, and uneven handling, and a stable refusal, by researchers, to explicate our own stances and relations with voices. (Fine, 1994, p. 20). The inquiry was carried out with opportunity samples of teachers attending courses in two di!erent geographical and university contexts in the UK: one in England and the other in Northern Ireland. The unifying factors were: (i) both sets of teachers were engaged in two-year part-time master's degree programmes in the respective universities; (ii) the overall focus of each university course involved re#ection on the teachers' continuing professional development; and, (iii) all teachers were informed in advance that part of each course requirement would involve engagement in various approaches to autobiography and narrative and agreed to provide written re#ections. During the period of the inquiry, the teachers in the English context were studying a module on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and School Improvement, the main objective of which was to broaden and extend their knowledge and understanding of issues concerned with CPD, its school and policy contexts. They were to consider how they were a!ected by these issues as individuals and additionally the ways in which they, as leaders, might support others in critical re#ection on experience. The main approaches adopted included discussion of pre-selected focused readings and exchange of experience, autobiography, critical incident analysis, narrative and collaborative dialogue. By contrast, the teachers in the Northern Irish context were studying a module on Personal and Social Development which required them to examine the interrelationship between personal development and social development, particularly in relation to the construction and maintenance of their own professional identities. Creative methods, including mask-work, dialogue, and creative writings were deployed alongside academic inputs and discussion. Thus although each module provided
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qualitatively di!erent emphases according to purpose, both were concerned with exploring the personal}professional, cognitive}emotional dimensions of teachers' lives. The inquiry focused upon twenty teachers in the English context and nineteen in the Northern Irish context. For the purposes of this paper, six narrative extracts have been purposively selected from the total available from both the English and Northern Irish contexts. They aptly illustrate the qualitatively rich responses to the two autobiographical (England) and mask making and wearing (Ireland) tasks which formed a core component for all students in each course and which provide the data upon which this research is based. It is important to note that this research does not set out to provide a comparative evaluation of the experiences and work of the two groups, but rather to illustrate the powerful e!ects of personal history and of the in-service approaches of the tutors upon the professional lives of both. In contrasting the two groups it was recognized that: (i) Northern Ireland is distinctive for its political and religious tensions (e.g. between Protestants and Catholics, Nationalists, Republicans and Unionists) and for the ongoing con#ict which has been, until recently, a feature of life for students and teachers; (ii) the orientations of the two courses were di!erent. The students' tasks re#ected this. Thus, whilst the English course sought to engage students in written and spoken narrative about the ways in which their personal and professional lives interacted, the Irish course focused explicitly upon the use of powerful enactive, symbolic means of experiencing through personal mask making and wearing. The six cases have been selected to represent gender, range of experience and phases of teaching which were present in the total number of students who attended both courses. The case participants, therefore, include three females and three males: two in Primary Education; three in Secondary Education: and one in Further Education. Two of these were in senior management positions, two were in middle management roles and two were main grade teachers with less teaching experience. From the outset of the modules in both university contexts, the teachers were apprised of the research dimension and its general purposes.
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Permission was speci"cally requested from those teachers whose stories were to be reproduced and each teacher was invited to authenticate their narrative and the emotional themes derived. The tutors' extracts are drawn from a continuing written and spoken dialogue over time which focused upon deliberate attempts to be re#exive, to ground ourselves in our present theory and action through critical deconstruction and reconstruction of past motives and present meanings.
3. Narrative and the emotional mind We use narrative as a means of understanding teaching and teachers on the assumption that there is no single objective truth. Rather, the goal is to understand, through the building of professional models of teaching and learning, in order to improve the quality of the mental and emotional models which inform our analysis and interpretation of local circumstances and events: 2to take at face value the voices of experience as if they were events per se, rather than stories about events, is to dehistoricise and decontextualise the very experiences being reported. (Scott, 1992, quoted in Fine, 1994, p. 21). The rejection of an absolutist stance and the assertion of the importance of particular contextual in#uences are fundamental to narrative research. Drawing upon the work of Geertz (1995), Walter Doyle suggests that: If we accept this view that truth is a #oating value, akin to a swirl, that lies somewhere among the vectors of observation (direct experience), rigorous conceptualisation (evidentiary argument), and communal understanding, then the truth we are seeking is not unlike the truth story: a truth that taps into our shared comprehension of a phenomenon. Each rendering provides insight, expands understandings, and pushes credibility, but none settles it once and for all (Doyle, 1997, p. 96). Thus the "ndings avoid the road towards generalisable, prescriptive formula-driven professional
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development models of e!ectiveness and improvement, littered as it is with expensive failure. Narrative, whether written or spoken, can enable people to construct and reconstruct themselves and their world, to make a di!erent sense of their experience. There is no doubt that raising experience to the level of conscious re#ection and dialogue, whether through speaking aloud or writing, enables new forms of critical interrogation. In the views of some, it is the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1), whilst others assert that it is also through narrative that we may make our actions, thoughts and feelings intelligible to others (Said, 1978). As the narratives which form the central part of this research illustrate: Studying one's own professional work is no straightforward matter and adopting the re#ective mode is not simply a cerebral activity. (Dadds, 1993, p. 287). We have two fundamentally di!erent ways of knowing and understanding, which interact to construct our mental life. First, there is the rational mind, characterised by the logical, deductive mode of comprehension, which is careful, analytic, re#ective and frequently deliberate. Alongside this, however, is another system of knowing, the emotional mind, which is powerful, impulsive, intuitive, holistic and fast*and often illogical. Usually there is a harmony between the two, one informing the other (head and heart operating together). However, when we are upset, distressed by strong emotions or indeed in touch with our passions, the emotional mind swamps the rational mind. It is clear from memory, neuroscienti"c (Epstein, 1986) and psychotherapeutic research (Jackins, 1989) that powerful emotions do in fact disrupt thinking and, therefore, learning. Strong emotions*anxiety, love, anger and the like*it seems can create neural static in the pre-frontal cortex which can sabotage the capacity for attention in &working memory'. According to Goleman (1995, p. 2), `That is why when we are emotionally upset we say &we can't think straight'*and why continual emotional distressa can cripple the capacity to learn.
Feelings and emotion then, have a vital role in the development of learning since it is through our subjective emotional world that we develop our personal constructs and meanings of outer reality and make sense of our relationships and eventually our place in the wider world. In addition, they are also clearly related to our motivation and state of attention. From a neuroscienti"c perspective, Le Doux (1998) argues that the emotional brain may act as an intermediary between the thinking brain and the outside world. There is an interplay between thought and feeling and feeling and memory. When feelings are ignored, they can act unnoticed and thus have unacknowledged negative or positive in#uences. When #ooded by our emotional brain, our `working braina may have little capacity for attention to hold in mind the facts necessary for the completion of a task, the acquisition of a concept or the making of an intelligent decision. In reviewing research on the impact of emotional expression and outcome studies of therapies designed to enhance emotional experience, Littrell (1998) notes supporting evidence for the value of re-experiencing emotions and for the salutary impact of talking or writing about trauma by normally functioning individuals in a structured, controlled way. Thus the processes used in both modules were designed to evoke emotional memories for the purpose of developing new responses on the basis that these would be likely to contribute signi"cantly to emotional and cognitive development. 4. The schools' culture: the need for re6ection Talking about emotion generates strong feelings and its relevance to school education continues to be perceived by many to be controversial. Teaching itself has only recently been acknowledge by some as work in which emotions are central (Day, 1998; Fineman, 1993). In most instances, however, these are managed and regulated to ensure the e$cient and e!ective running of the organisation. Emotions, it has been claimed: are usually talked about only insofar as they help administrators and reformers &manage' and o!set teachers' resistance to change or help them set the climate or mood in which the really important
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business of cognitive learning or strategic planning can take place. (Hargreaves, 1999b, p. 837). The same is true for the consequences of the intensi"cation and attempted technicisation of teachers' work in many countries. For example, whilst the new right managerialist agendas now recognise the existence of widespread teacher stress and acknowledge its e!ects upon the quality of teaching and learning, there are no signs that they seek to look beyond this &crisis' in order to attend to the underlying emotional repertoire required by teachers if they are to sustain high quality, enthusiastic teaching on a daily basis over a career. Nevertheless, with the popularising of such concepts as &emotional intelligence' (Goleman, 1995) and &multiple intelligences' (Gardner, 1983) increasing support is being added to the lobby who believe `a view of human nature that ignores the power of emotions is sadly short-sighteda. (Goleman, 1995, p. 4). If the experience of teaching can only be truly known through stories of real events in which teachers, students and curricula interact (as distinct from the shorthand language of images and symbols which we use to describe its purposes and goals to others), then to neglect the stories of teaching and the narratives of teachers' experiences may be to collude in oversimpli"cation or distortion. Yet what we believe, say and feel in one role may be quite di!erent from what we believe, say and feel in another. James (1890) described these as &the various selves'; Berne (1964) described them as &ego states'; for Assagioli (1975) they were termed &subpersonalities'; for Perls (1969) &splits' or &parts'; and for Moreno (1953) &roles'. Jung (1935), on the other hand, characterised them as &complexes' or &fragmentary personalities' (p. 81). Peshkin (1984, p. 34) warns that, `we2 have many subjective selves. Which one comes to the fore depends on the situation in which we "nd ourselvesa. Past and present contexts too are, therefore, important.
5. English teachers*professional development contexts These extracts from the stories of a principal and two teachers at di!erent points in their careers
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illustrate a situation of increased bureaucracy and intensi"cation of work in which teachers in England have found themselves over the last "fteen years. Reforms imposed by a series of government policy decisions are continuing to challenge their ability to continue to provide the high levels of emotional commitment so necessary to good teaching. The stories highlight also the persistence of these professionals in seeking*often against the odds*to apply sets of personal and professional values which go far beyond any baseline measure of competency and the personal costs of doing so in di$cult circumstances.
6. Louise*&an ant on a patterned carpet' I would say my emotional self and professional self were inextricably linked and the former was the driving force. Powerful words like passion and belief come to mind now but I honestly never thought of these, or considered them at the time. I "nd such words frightening and against my better judgement, for such vocabulary can close people's minds as well as open them. Louise is the principal of a "ve teacher rural elementary school whose story is one of commitment under pressure; only with di$culty is she able to continue to resist becoming &an ant on a patterned carpet': I had always wanted*&my own school' is the general phrase; to take the reins and lead a team providing high and improving levels of achievement for pupils. (I sometimes now think how namK ve that was*but we must set some goals or why do the job at all). I was sure of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go and naturally assumed everyone else would understand and agree. But dealing with a variety of people, all with interests in the education of children*teachers, support sta!, governors, parents and naturally children themselves, the LEA (School District) and Government, all had their own e!ects upon this &vision', e!ects that conspired to constantly pull me o! course. Often the reasons for a lack of progress towards my goals
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were the constant initiatives from the LEA and more particularly the government of the day. Overload for myself and sta! was a major factor. What I needed was time and focus to gain a better insight into my school and indeed my own role, to improve my perspective and restore my &con"dence' and direction, and remove my feeling of being &all at sea'. 2 I once heard my job described as an ant on a patterned carpet. You are so wrapped up in either teaching or administration you never "nd the time to step back and really e!ectively assess how the sta! and school are doing. You know there is a pattern or plan somewhere but you are so close to it you can't see it properly. This autobiographical fragment provides a #avour of the professional life of a principal in an English school. It illustrates an image of self which is dominated by professional concerns but driven by personal values and mediated by external forces which seek to &pull her o! course'. The metaphor of &ant on a patterned carpet' is a powerful testimony both of the clear purposes in her life and the ways in which real participation in &the bigger picture' has become di$cult as externally imposed innovations and intensi"cation of forms of public accountability cause her to lose perspective, and with this, her sense of signi"cance and consequentiality.
7. Peter*&burning the midnight oil' I believe that the very nature of being a teacher means that your personal life and professional life interact. Peter is a teacher in a School and Community College and a pastoral Head of Year. Like Louise, he feels that teaching is becoming increasingly bureaucratic and that more and more demands are
In the English system this is equivalent to a secondary school, catering for a student population of 11}18 years old. In the evening the school opens for classes for adults from the local community. Peter is involved only with 11}18 year old students.
made which take over increasing amounts of his personal time. He gave an example of an emotionally draining incident. On a Friday afternoon, at 3.15 pm, a pupil con"ded in me that the previous weekend her father had beaten her up giving her two black eyes. This had happened before. This was disguised with a great deal of makeup. Whilst making the disclosure it was made clear to the pupil that the school's child protection o$cer would need to be involved as well as informing social services. The pupil only lived with her father. The family background was that of a broken home, with mum leaving the family house over two years ago with no address being known and the elder brother being a known drug addict who lived with an uncle of a similar background. The pupil concerned did not see it as a possibility of there being any contact with any of these people. The father worked away from home for four to "ve days at a time and he was due back the following Monday. This situation had been going on for over two years with the pupil looking after herself over this period and only seeing her dad on his return. Whilst away the child did not have a contact telephone number, nor did she know where father worked. After contacting Social Services they appeared totally uninterested. After explaining the background situation they seemed unconcerned and did not see it as an immediate problem because the father would not be there over the weekend and the child was used to being on her own anyway. An appointment was made for the pupil to see them the following Monday morning. However, the child was obviously distressed, there were no relatives on which to call for support. Nor was it felt that the school could ask for the support of the parents of one of her friends. With nowhere to turn to, it was suggested that the pupil spend the weekend with a member of sta! and her family. Two di!erent sta! volunteered but the pupil concerned was extremely reluctant. At 6.40 pm the same day, as a compromise, the pupil went to a member of sta!'s house for a meal and was later dropped o! back at home. Over the weekend the pupil was
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given the telephone numbers of two di!erent teachers, including myself, who agreed that if the pupil wanted all she had to do was pick up the phone and one of us would pick her up. Peter's chosen story focused upon the operationalisation of the core moral purposes of teachers to &care for' their pupils, to act &in loco parentis'. Description of the incident reveals not only the concern that he and his colleagues shared for the abused pupil*and the scepticism about the real concerns of the Agency charged with having similar concerns*but their willingness to allow the formal emotional attachment which good teachers have with their students to #ow over into their own personal time.
8. Sarah*&I developed a healthy cynicism for reform' Sarah, a Modern Languages teacher, had entered teaching in the mid 1980s when, `Good will had been exhausted and the large range of clubs and social activities that I remembered from my school days, were no longer availablea. She felt that the plethora of externally initiated reforms had created a negative e!ect: Sadly, too much of my experience of outside initiatives has been negative - partly, because schools have had to respond to too many changes in a short period of time. This has often led to reactive not proactive management, a feeling of being on an escalator and not being able to get o! until you have carried out the next change. The basic vision that makes the school is all too often lost and so it becomes more di$cult to "lter and assess change. Sta! do not necessarily believe in the changes that take place, and the messages given to pupils become inconsistent. It is, however, easy to criticise, but much harder to have the courage to stand out against what can feel like an unstoppable force. The newly competitive nature of education was compounded by the addition of league tables. The need for a school to perform was highlighted
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in terms of its A}C rate and more recently the A}G rate and average grade. The positive aspects of this are that we can no longer be complacent about the results we achieve, and thus are less willing to put up with pupil under-achievement. However, the pressure on schools to improve is great, and the support and knowledge is not always there. There is now an obsession with statistics in the school in which I work, and we are still trying to "nd some new way to analyse last year's exam results*sometimes at the expense of doing anything to improve this year's. Sarah's story of change is not unusual among teachers in England as she describes the increased accountability not only for the quality of their teaching and students' learning but also for student achievement. She identi"es both positive and negative aspects of reform and highlights the courage that is required by teachers to maintain their roles in mediating knowledge rather than acting as subcontractors who simply implement externally imposed policies. These three stories of response to change illustrate both the fragmentary personal and professional lives of teachers and the seamlessness of the ways in which they think about and enact their personal}professional, cognitive}emotional lives. Each either implicitly or explicitly provides evidence of their sel#essness in giving time &outside o$ce hours' to attending to the increasing planning pressures caused by reform and to the welfare of their students. In varying degrees, however, each reveals also frustration, a sense of powerlessness, and, in two instances, growing resentment at the diminishing quality of their own professional lives.
9. Northern Ireland teachers*personal development contexts The next three stories provide vivid examples of the emotional di$culties faced by teachers in Northern Ireland. The extracts illustrate the interplay between many of their inner personal tensions and dramas which are embodied in the ways that professional lives are played out and which often go unseen or unnoticed. The creative exploration of
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their professional masks during the in-service module appeared to intensify the emotional undertones of present and past professional experiences. In addition to the articulation of feelings of disappointment, resentment, hurt, rage, fear and shame in their stories, there were also opportunities for these teachers to re-experience, and in some cases confront and re-evaluate raw feelings which had been embedded in the original incidents but which had not previously been resolved. In some cases, this led to new developments in understanding.
is that I am isolated. I want to leave teaching now because I'm expected to be someone I'm not. Clearly, the role of &clown' or &fool' had outlived its usefulness in this teacher's experience*to the extent that he is contemplating leaving his teaching career. The paradox which has yet to be addressed, however, is that although he desires closeness with his colleagues, the personality he has adopted creates a social distance which itself perpetuates his isolation and thus contributes to his personal cycle of disappointment and cynicism.
10. Gerry*&the lonely clown' Gerry is a mid-career professional who works in a Further Education College as a tutor responsible for Health and Social Care. When I started looking for a suitable mask to present, up popped the clown mask2 when we came to putting on our masks, I didn't like it. It felt claustrophobic and I couldn't see out of it properly. I didn't like it at all! It inhibited my view. No-one could see me; they didn't know if I was smiling or making faces at them behind it; no real communication with anyone while I was wearing my mask. I felt very uncomfortable. That's it. Now I know. That's what's going on at work. I can't be myself. Work is smothering me. I can't breathe. I can't be the person they want me to be. They're the ones with the masks*smiling chatty faces, having a good laugh, the best of friends until you need help or support then they are all too busy. I'm not prepared to spend my time among such negative people. Their energy a!ects me, leaving it impossible for me to separate my feelings from theirs. That's the danger of being in a negative environment This is why I feel like leaving teaching at the "rst opportunity*not because I don't like teaching the young people, not because I can't do it, not because I can't enjoy it BUT because I feel I have to compromise myself to be accepted, like the others, and I'm not prepared to do that. The cost This is the equivalent of an American community college.
11. Paddy*&white stripe of secrecy' Paddy, a senior teacher responsible for pastoral care, described himself as having, over the years, to put on a &professional, almost hardened, institutional face' when he was meant to be acting in a helping capacity, thus involving himself in the kinds of &emotional labour' described by Hochschild (1993). In my earlier years as a teacher-counsellor, I had given &my all' in personal and professional commitment to two sisters, who had su!ered a trauma. I could only be of limited assistance within the school's remit and yet, to a great degree, this assistance was all-embracing as I saw it. I fought hard to garner all the services at my disposal to provide support and referral, but in the end to no avail. One girl took an overdose, after a session with me. She was hospitalised but subsequently fully recovered. I was &taken to task' for my apparent lack of care. I was the subject of a personal complaint by the parents* the "rst in my professional life*and this cut at the heart of my personal and professional being. This had the e!ect of me withdrawing into myself, of su!ering a dispersal of my professionalism, of making me doubt my true worth as a person, of the enormous e!ort it takes to reach inside again and pick up the pieces, of the inability to really say what I felt in the circumstances, of being maligned professionally. As in the mask I created, I had a tear of despair but would not
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present this writ large in my defence. I was afraid of being misinterpreted. From then on, instead of perhaps taking the risk to be me as I truly am, in my teaching roles, I retreated into my hardened persona to protect myself. I still care but: The white stripe of secrecy Embodies the epitomization of a divided self. I feel a tear of creativity and despair As I gaze upon the face of many colours. Strikingly, I colour the left eye black From the corner of which A stream of paint runs voluntarily, My tear of despair.
12. Sinead*&good girl}bad girl' Sinead teaches Year Two in a primary school. She is in her eighth year of teaching. At the time of the critical incident she describes below, Sinead had just got married. At the same time, her mother was admitted critically ill to hospital and her motherin-law was also found to be terminally ill*both of these situations creating huge emotional and practical strain, with every spare minute spent in hospitals. In addition, work at school was very demanding for her in her role of enthusiastic music specialist within the school. Making the mask brought up feelings from a year ago that in many ways I had been trying to push away. The mask has two clear sides*one gay, the other sad and angry. The recent memory which was stimulated through dialogue on the mask centred on a day close to Christmas. Hectic rehearsals for school performances and then the Principal announced that the choir was to sing in a charity event downtown in twenty minutes time and my job was to get them ready. I was raging and for the "rst time in my teaching career I let it rip!! It was so unlike me to be angry like that in school. I usually go with the #ow. I know now it was just a culmination of all the pressures in my life which had been making my mood swing back
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and forth from good to bad. Normally, I am dependable, emotionally controlled, collegial and accommodating and behave accordingly. In this instance there was a gradual build-up of stress and tension all day, which culminated in this unexpected outburst at my Principal. Behind the mask, there are strong feelings of resentment that the Principal should take me for granted and expect my professionalism to overcome all increases in workload and ultimately stress levels. As a teacher with responsibilities within the school, I found this situation, where my persona dramatically slipped, di$cult to deal with. It made my relationship with my Principal awkward in the immediate aftermath, as normally I have a good relationship with him. In addition, as an ambitious young teacher, I felt that I had perhaps reduced my opportunities in the future to gain promotion within the school by not conforming to the requests of my Principal. In so doing, I felt that my position as an upwardly mobile teacher may have been threatened. Other unexpected situations during that very personally stressful period also resulted in incidents where I know I acted outside what I thought was my well-developed professional mask. I still cringe and will always wonder if the pain and stress of this period will be detrimental to my career in the long term. The feeling is in the job*one slip and you've had it! Such a poignant story sharply demonstrates the way in which emotional incidents in an individual's history can continue, often unconsciously, to impact on present-day behaviours. In this instance, the recall of and re#ection on the original incident and its emotional consequences permitted the teacher to re-evaluate her dissatisfaction with her current range of responses to colleagues. These stories provide further evidence of the immense emotional investment which many teachers make and which are &taken for granted' aspects of their work; and of the ways in which stressful phases in their own personal lives have signi"cant e!ects upon their professional selves. Their expressions of disillusionment, isolation, and sense of
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injustice at the perceived lack of care which they themselves receive in school illustrate the importance of attending to the needs of the morale, selfcon"dence and self-esteem needs of the teacher as person as well as professional.
13. University teachers: the need for dialogue meaning can come into existence only when two or more voices come into contact: when the voice of a listener responds to the voice of a speaker. (Wertsch, 1991, p. 52, after Bakhtin). Understanding the emotions that are often an unacknowledged part of people's outer cognitive or professional selves, may occur through embracing and managing voices in constructed inner and outer dialogues. Ruth: `There is little of this type of analysis or exploration of the impact of emotion available in text books on teaching, learning and change.a Chris: `Yet, since we ask our students to engage in exploring these connections, I believe we have a moral responsibility to do the same.a Ruth: `A lot of my own personal, tacit knowledge base has been derived from my own emotional change process where I had opportunities (often painful) to open up age-old memories of sadness and neglect and of feeling burdened by responsibility too early. Real change for me came out of emotional release.a Chris: `I wonder whether it is this kind of passionate engagement which, in a sense, gives them (the teachers) and ourselves permission as well as encouragement to take risks with our personal and professional images, public and private, and, through this, to grow in the kinds of self understandings which provide the means for improving practice.a As with the teachers' narratives, the written dialogue between ourselves as tutors and authors was personal and professional, cognitive and emotional.
It made explicit and added to the inner debate, which we had been having independently, by subjecting it to scrutiny by a &critical friend'. Whilst the interrogation of stories or accounts by a critical friend may promise rigour at the expense of relationship (Davies, 1998), in analysing and responding to each other's texts as examples of self dialogue, we maintained our commonly held purposes, i.e., to probe our understandings of our own and each other's values and practices as professionals in the di!erent contexts in which we worked and to understand those emotional factors which in#uenced our own work commitments and those of students attending award-bearing in-service programmes. We thus endeavoured neither to neglect nor discount teacher experience and the tensions between that experience and public theory (Bullough & Bauman, 1996, p. 406) in investigating the interface between those and the experience and tensions which we, as tutors, were experiencing on personal, professional, cognitive and emotional levels. The extracts from our correspondence during and beyond the period of the research reveal something of our own histories, motivations, dilemmas and aspirations. Like school teachers, though perhaps for di!erent reasons, talking about what we do is not necessarily a part of our lives. Whilst unlike many teachers in schools, constrained as they are by the busyness and practicality ethics of teaching, we do theorise and make explicit those theories through publication, our theorising does not usually focus upon ourselves. Ruth: `It is one thing to rationalise and intellectualise about the vital role of emotions; it's quite another to experience them in operation in one's own life.a Chris: `It's a little scary, because I don't know where it might lead or what disclosures might result. I am sensitive to your disclosure that you have always been acutely responsive to emotion in yourself and others and in any atmosphere, and am aware that this also applies to me, though I'm not sure I always communicate this. Certainly my professional life has been dominated by feelings*often intense*which relate to
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&atmosphere' created by a person, people or events.a
heart' when it was assaulted deliberately, or by circumstance.a
Ruth: `My whole credo in teaching right from the beginning (21 years ago) is that the most e!ective way of teaching, guiding or counselling others would be through my own personal development or self-awareness. Emotions and emotional understanding seemed to be key in this but it took quite some time (and personal courage and commitment) before any proper integration between my thinking and feeling took place.a
Ruth: `Knowing this is so important in my work with teachers: it allows me to respond to something potentially deeper 2. Helping them, where appropriate, to unlock earlier learning experiences so that old patterns of thinking and feeling can be re-considered and new ways of responding can happen*hopefully.a
Re#ection, like the cultures in which many university tutors work, is often private and introspective if not isolated. Actions and their meanings in a sense remain behind our backs when we do not examine them but merely take them for granted (Gadamer, 1976). McCutcheon (1992) suggests that: When we scrutinise them, bring them to consciousness and question them, we are able to understand and transform our actions so that they are more consonant with beliefs (p. 195). However, it is our experience that the movement from consciousness and questioning to understanding and then transformation is problematic.
There are, for example, di!erent kinds and levels of re#ection and since re#ection involves processes of deconstruction and reconstruction then this may involve an impossible to sustain self-confrontation. Thus, although the process of engagement with narrative presents possibilities for change in ourselves (Coles, 1989), the extent and signi"cance of such change will depend upon a combination of personal and workplace conditions, a capacity for self-confrontation and provision of appropriate kinds of support in the process of changing (Day, 1993). Studies of teachers have found that they get better at thinking re#ectively across the interrelated emotional, moral, personal, private and professional dimensions of their work (Clandinin, 1986) when they receive support and encouragement from one or more critical and trusted colleagues (Bullough, 1989; Tabachnik & Zeichner, 1984; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986).
Ruth: `I believe that emotional patterns and learnings (especially those which hurt) are tied up in our personal biographies (becoming part of our neural circuitry). Negative incidents in the past (of abandonment, shaming, insult, rejection, neglect, abuse) seem mostly to restrict and inhibit spontaneity and openness to experience in the moment and the desire to prevent such experiences happening again. So change becomes less likely and learning less of an option. Certainly, I discovered this to have been true for me.a
The reason, of course, is that collaborative research constitutes a relationship. In everyday life, the idea of friendship implies a sharing, an interpenetration of two or more persons' spheres of experience. Mere contact is acquaintance, not friendship. The same may be said for collaborative research which requires a close relationship akin to friendship. Relationships are joined, as MacIntyre (1981) implies, by the narrative unities of our lives. (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988, p. 281).
Chris: `I have, more times than I care to remember, felt that in worlds which I inhabit, emotion and its expression (i.e., anger, joy, enthusiasm, fear, spontaneity) are consciously excluded by most people. For myself, I learned a long time ago to &shut down' or &dampen' my own &feeling
This was a feature of our own narrative. During our dialogue, in meetings, on the phone, through email and letter, we juggled the personal and professional with the cognitive and emotional as we talked about our own backgrounds, beliefs, practices, hopes and fears.
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14. Discussion These stories describe various incidents from experience, both past and present. The group of teachers from England had been asked to write autobiographical accounts of the ways in which their professional linked to their personal lives. The process of writing had raised awareness of the importance of &commitment', &care', &courage', &compromise' and &fragmentation of personal time' in their teaching. The group of teachers from Northern Ireland had been asked to explore their inner lives and how these related to their professional selves through mask-making and had raised powerful personal images of &creativity' and &despair', &resentment' and &retreat'. The process of continuing dialogue had enabled us as university teachers to understand better the parts that our own history and emotion played in our teaching. What all the stories demonstrate is that &watersheds' (Clandinin, 1986) or &critical incidents' (Measor, 1985; Tripp, 1993) are only the tip of the iceberg of teachers' lives. Beneath the waterline is a continuing inner debate between the personal and the professional, the emotional and the cognitive, which has its moments of (sometimes only temporary) resolution. Furthermore, di!erent means used to access the emotional mind to challenge and support others in the processes of understanding practice, produce signi"cant and qualitatively different results. In this inquiry the "rst (autobiographical) raised awareness of the e!ects of the personal on the professional and vice versa; the second (mask-making) enabled intensive emotional exploration of these e!ects; and the third (sustained dialogue) enabled an exploration, interrogation and confrontation of the relative power of emotional histories upon the personal, professional and propositional voices of the tutors. The stories are replete with feelings, often intense, about the ways in which a teacher's personal sense of self is frequently compromised by personal history, social context and the exigencies of the job of teaching, thus demanding us all to keep a "rm sense of our professional identities in place. This study, then, illustrates graphically the ways in which the professional self in teaching a!ects and is a!ected by personal history past and present as
well as the political and social contexts of teaching. The extracts from the teachers' and tutors' narratives also demonstrate the delicate interaction between the rational (cognitive) and the non-rational (emotional) and, in particular, the powerful in#uencing role of the latter upon the former. Teaching at its best requires motivation, commitment and emotional attachment, and this requires a deep knowledge of self as well as student. It is, then, crucial that the importance of this interaction is not only acknowledged but is also understood to have a central role in programmes of teacher education and continuing professional development in all phases of teachers' lives. Only then can we be sure that those involved in teacher education policy and practice are serious in their e!orts to provide a comprehensive and appropriate range of opportunities for the maintenance and improvement of the quality of all teachers and, through this, the quality of teaching and learning.
References Assagioli, R. (1975). Psychosynthesis: A collection of basic writings. Northamptonshire: Turnstone Press. Berne, E. (1964). Games people play: The psychology of human relationships. Middlesex: Penguin. Bullough, R. (1989). Teacher education and teacher re#ectivity. Journal of Teacher Education, 40(2), 15}20. Bullough, R. W., & Bauman, K. (1996). Narrative reasoning and teacher development: A longitudinal study. Curriculum Inquiry, 26(4), 385}415. Clandinin, D. J. (1986). Classroom practices: Teacher images in action.. London: Falmer Press. Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1988). Studying teachers' knowledge of classrooms: Collaborative research, ethics and the negotiation of narrative. The Journal of Educational Thought, 22, 269}282. Coles, R. (1989). The call of stories: Teaching and the moral imagination. Boston: Houghton Mi%en. Dadds, M. (1993). The feeling of thinking in professional selfstudy. Educational Action Research, 1(2), 287}303. Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes+ error: Emotion, reason and the human brain. New York: Grosset/Pulman. Davies, A. (1998). Thinking about &narrative reasoning' as a methodology: A response to &narrative reasoning and teacher development: A longitudinal study'. Curriculum Inquiry, 28(4), 473}483. Day, C. W. (1993). Re#ection: A necessary but not su$cient condition for professional development. British Journal of Educational Research, 19(1), 83}93.
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Day, C. W. (1998). Working with di!erent selves of teachers: Beyond comfortable collaboration. Educational Action Research, 6(2), 255}274. Doyle, W. (1997). Heard any really good stories lately? A critique of the critics of narrative in educational research. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(1), 93}99. Epstein, H. (1986). Stages in human brain development. Developmental Brain Research, 30, 114}119. Feiman-Nemser, S., & Buchmann, M. (1986). The "rst year of teacher preparation: Transition to pedagogical thinking. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 18, 239}256. Fineman, S. (1993). Emotion in organisation. London: Sage. Fried, R. L. (1995). The passionate teacher. Boston: Beacon Press. Gadamer, H. (1976). Philosophical hermeneutics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1995). After the fact: Two countries, four decades, one anthropologist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Hargreaves, A. (1999a). Teaching in a box: Emotional geographies of teaching. ISATT millenium keynote address, International Study Association on teachers and teaching 9th Biennial Conference. Dublin, 31 July 1999. Hargreaves, A. (1999b). The emotional practice of teaching. ¹eaching and ¹eacher Education, 14(8), 835}854. Hargreaves, A. (2000). Mixed emotions: Teachers' perceptions of their interactions with students. Teaching and Teacher Education, 16(8), 811}826. Hochschild, A. R. (1993). The managed heart: Commercialisation of human feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jackins, H. (1989). The upward trend. Seattle: Rational Island Publications.
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James, W. (1890). In G. Allport (Ed.), Psychology: The briefer course. New York: Harper and Row, 1961. Jung, C. G. (1935). Tavistock lectures, lecture 3. London: Routledge Kegan Paul. Le Doux, J. (1998). The Emotional Brain. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Littrell, J. (1998). Is the re-experience of painful emotion therapautic?. Clinical Psychology Review, 18(1), 71}102. McCutcheon, G. (1992). Facilitating teacher personal theorizing. In E. W. Ross, J. W. Cornett, & G. McCutcheon (Eds.), Teacher personal theorizing Connecting curriculum practice, theory and research. Albany: State University of New York Press. Measor, L. (1985). Critical incidents in the classroom: Identities, choices and careers. In S. J. Ball, & I. Goodson (Eds.), Teachers+ lives and careers. London: Falmer Press. Parlett, M., & Hamilton, D. (1976). Evaluation as illumination. In D. Tawney (Ed.), Curriculum evaluation today: Trends and implication. Schools Council Research Studies, London: Macmillan. Perls, F. (1969). Gestalt therapy verbatim. Lafayette, California, CA: Real People Press. Peshkin, A. (1984). Odd man out: The participant observer in an absolutist setting. Sociology of Education, 57, 254}264. Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Tabachnik, G., & Zeichner, K. (1984). The impact of the student teaching on the development of teacher perspectives. Journal of Teacher Education, 36(5), 35}44. Tripp, D. (1993). Critical incidents in teaching: Developing professional judgment. London: Routledge. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the mind (1st ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
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Teachers' and teacher educators' lives: the role of emotion Christopher Day *, Ruth Leitch School of Education, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Nottingham NG8 1BB, UK School of Education, The Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland BT7 1HL, UK Received 25 August 1999; received in revised form 15 March 2000; accepted 18 May 2000
Abstract This paper reports research which focuses on ways of enhancing understandings by teachers of the key role that emotions play in their personal professional growth. It combines the narrative, autobiographical accounts of teachers attending part-time masters degree programmes in England (Continuing Professional Development and School Improvement) and Northern Ireland (Personal and Social Development) with an interrogation of the underlying values which a!ect the practices of their tutors. It reveals the e!ects of powerful and often unacknowledged interaction between personal biography and professional and social contexts upon teachers in schools and higher education. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Narrative; Emotion; In-service; Teachers' voice
1. Introduction The research reported here is grounded in the tensions within and between four interconnecting areas of teachers' lives: the cognitive}emotional and the personal}professional. The narrative groups of stories*by teachers from schools and colleges*and extracts from the collaborative dialogue of ourselves as university tutors*reveal the complexities of being and remaining a professional and the strategies used in order to maintain a sense of self; and they provide powerful testimony of the importance of attending to the much neglected emotional dimension of teachers' selves in continuing professional development, what has been
* Corresponding author. Tel.: #44-115-951-4423; fax: #44115-951-4435. E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Day).
referred to as the &emotional geography' of teaching (Hargreaves, 1999a, 2000). Maintaining an awareness of the tensions in managing professional identity is part of the safeguard and joy of teaching. Often unacknowledged feelings of hurt, guilt, resentment, fear, injustice, and shame, for example, are common at the interface of the person of the teacher and his or her professional identity. In focusing upon the role of emotion, the assumptions upon which our thinking is based are that: (1) emotional intelligence is at the heart of good professional practice (Goleman, 1995); (2) emotions are indispensable to rational decision-making (Damasio, 1994); (3) emotional health is crucial to e!ective teaching over a career; (4) emotional and cognitive health are a!ected by personal biography, social context (of work and home) and external (policy) factors;
0742-051X/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 7 4 2 - 0 5 1 X ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 0 3 - 8
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(5) research which focuses upon the passion of vocation (Fried, 1995) in relation to person as well as professional is scarce.
2. The inquiry The motivation for this inquiry emerged initially from our professional concerns as teacher educators and our prior collaboration through teaching. These resulted in an ongoing re#ection and dialogue about our perceptions of the role that emotion plays in our teaching and professional lives generally, and how it a!ects our students who are themselves experienced teachers. The research was illuminating (Parlett & Hamilton, 1976) and designed to elicit answers to two key questions: (1) How is the professional self of the teacher a!ected by personal histories? (2) Can in-service courses assist teachers in adding self-knowledge as a means of increasing understandings of the ways in which emotion as well as cognition a!ect their teaching lives? The study was thus framed within three broad objectives: Personal: To develop and further our respective understandings of how we view our role as tutors in universities through the autobiographical exploration of the sources of our own beliefs and purposes which inform what we do and why in our work with teachers in their continuing professional development. Professional: To explore, through narrative inquiry, the ways in which teachers who were engaged in personal and professional re#ection and dialogue in two contrasting educational contexts articulated the relationships between their personal and professional sense of selves. Propositional: To determine through analysis and synthesis of their narratives and our own the role that emotions variously play in learning and change, how this was expressed and in what sense, if any, the methods used in the di!ering continuing professional development contexts produced di!erent outcomes. We are aware, and have guarded against, presenting fragments from others' personal and professional lives which are partial, selecting only that which we wish others to see and hiding
that which will prevent us telling the story in our way: 2when voices*as isolated and innocent moments of experience*organise our research texts, there is often a subtle slide towards romantic, uncritical, and uneven handling, and a stable refusal, by researchers, to explicate our own stances and relations with voices. (Fine, 1994, p. 20). The inquiry was carried out with opportunity samples of teachers attending courses in two di!erent geographical and university contexts in the UK: one in England and the other in Northern Ireland. The unifying factors were: (i) both sets of teachers were engaged in two-year part-time master's degree programmes in the respective universities; (ii) the overall focus of each university course involved re#ection on the teachers' continuing professional development; and, (iii) all teachers were informed in advance that part of each course requirement would involve engagement in various approaches to autobiography and narrative and agreed to provide written re#ections. During the period of the inquiry, the teachers in the English context were studying a module on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and School Improvement, the main objective of which was to broaden and extend their knowledge and understanding of issues concerned with CPD, its school and policy contexts. They were to consider how they were a!ected by these issues as individuals and additionally the ways in which they, as leaders, might support others in critical re#ection on experience. The main approaches adopted included discussion of pre-selected focused readings and exchange of experience, autobiography, critical incident analysis, narrative and collaborative dialogue. By contrast, the teachers in the Northern Irish context were studying a module on Personal and Social Development which required them to examine the interrelationship between personal development and social development, particularly in relation to the construction and maintenance of their own professional identities. Creative methods, including mask-work, dialogue, and creative writings were deployed alongside academic inputs and discussion. Thus although each module provided
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qualitatively di!erent emphases according to purpose, both were concerned with exploring the personal}professional, cognitive}emotional dimensions of teachers' lives. The inquiry focused upon twenty teachers in the English context and nineteen in the Northern Irish context. For the purposes of this paper, six narrative extracts have been purposively selected from the total available from both the English and Northern Irish contexts. They aptly illustrate the qualitatively rich responses to the two autobiographical (England) and mask making and wearing (Ireland) tasks which formed a core component for all students in each course and which provide the data upon which this research is based. It is important to note that this research does not set out to provide a comparative evaluation of the experiences and work of the two groups, but rather to illustrate the powerful e!ects of personal history and of the in-service approaches of the tutors upon the professional lives of both. In contrasting the two groups it was recognized that: (i) Northern Ireland is distinctive for its political and religious tensions (e.g. between Protestants and Catholics, Nationalists, Republicans and Unionists) and for the ongoing con#ict which has been, until recently, a feature of life for students and teachers; (ii) the orientations of the two courses were di!erent. The students' tasks re#ected this. Thus, whilst the English course sought to engage students in written and spoken narrative about the ways in which their personal and professional lives interacted, the Irish course focused explicitly upon the use of powerful enactive, symbolic means of experiencing through personal mask making and wearing. The six cases have been selected to represent gender, range of experience and phases of teaching which were present in the total number of students who attended both courses. The case participants, therefore, include three females and three males: two in Primary Education; three in Secondary Education: and one in Further Education. Two of these were in senior management positions, two were in middle management roles and two were main grade teachers with less teaching experience. From the outset of the modules in both university contexts, the teachers were apprised of the research dimension and its general purposes.
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Permission was speci"cally requested from those teachers whose stories were to be reproduced and each teacher was invited to authenticate their narrative and the emotional themes derived. The tutors' extracts are drawn from a continuing written and spoken dialogue over time which focused upon deliberate attempts to be re#exive, to ground ourselves in our present theory and action through critical deconstruction and reconstruction of past motives and present meanings.
3. Narrative and the emotional mind We use narrative as a means of understanding teaching and teachers on the assumption that there is no single objective truth. Rather, the goal is to understand, through the building of professional models of teaching and learning, in order to improve the quality of the mental and emotional models which inform our analysis and interpretation of local circumstances and events: 2to take at face value the voices of experience as if they were events per se, rather than stories about events, is to dehistoricise and decontextualise the very experiences being reported. (Scott, 1992, quoted in Fine, 1994, p. 21). The rejection of an absolutist stance and the assertion of the importance of particular contextual in#uences are fundamental to narrative research. Drawing upon the work of Geertz (1995), Walter Doyle suggests that: If we accept this view that truth is a #oating value, akin to a swirl, that lies somewhere among the vectors of observation (direct experience), rigorous conceptualisation (evidentiary argument), and communal understanding, then the truth we are seeking is not unlike the truth story: a truth that taps into our shared comprehension of a phenomenon. Each rendering provides insight, expands understandings, and pushes credibility, but none settles it once and for all (Doyle, 1997, p. 96). Thus the "ndings avoid the road towards generalisable, prescriptive formula-driven professional
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development models of e!ectiveness and improvement, littered as it is with expensive failure. Narrative, whether written or spoken, can enable people to construct and reconstruct themselves and their world, to make a di!erent sense of their experience. There is no doubt that raising experience to the level of conscious re#ection and dialogue, whether through speaking aloud or writing, enables new forms of critical interrogation. In the views of some, it is the primary form by which human experience is made meaningful (Polkinghorne, 1988, p. 1), whilst others assert that it is also through narrative that we may make our actions, thoughts and feelings intelligible to others (Said, 1978). As the narratives which form the central part of this research illustrate: Studying one's own professional work is no straightforward matter and adopting the re#ective mode is not simply a cerebral activity. (Dadds, 1993, p. 287). We have two fundamentally di!erent ways of knowing and understanding, which interact to construct our mental life. First, there is the rational mind, characterised by the logical, deductive mode of comprehension, which is careful, analytic, re#ective and frequently deliberate. Alongside this, however, is another system of knowing, the emotional mind, which is powerful, impulsive, intuitive, holistic and fast*and often illogical. Usually there is a harmony between the two, one informing the other (head and heart operating together). However, when we are upset, distressed by strong emotions or indeed in touch with our passions, the emotional mind swamps the rational mind. It is clear from memory, neuroscienti"c (Epstein, 1986) and psychotherapeutic research (Jackins, 1989) that powerful emotions do in fact disrupt thinking and, therefore, learning. Strong emotions*anxiety, love, anger and the like*it seems can create neural static in the pre-frontal cortex which can sabotage the capacity for attention in &working memory'. According to Goleman (1995, p. 2), `That is why when we are emotionally upset we say &we can't think straight'*and why continual emotional distressa can cripple the capacity to learn.
Feelings and emotion then, have a vital role in the development of learning since it is through our subjective emotional world that we develop our personal constructs and meanings of outer reality and make sense of our relationships and eventually our place in the wider world. In addition, they are also clearly related to our motivation and state of attention. From a neuroscienti"c perspective, Le Doux (1998) argues that the emotional brain may act as an intermediary between the thinking brain and the outside world. There is an interplay between thought and feeling and feeling and memory. When feelings are ignored, they can act unnoticed and thus have unacknowledged negative or positive in#uences. When #ooded by our emotional brain, our `working braina may have little capacity for attention to hold in mind the facts necessary for the completion of a task, the acquisition of a concept or the making of an intelligent decision. In reviewing research on the impact of emotional expression and outcome studies of therapies designed to enhance emotional experience, Littrell (1998) notes supporting evidence for the value of re-experiencing emotions and for the salutary impact of talking or writing about trauma by normally functioning individuals in a structured, controlled way. Thus the processes used in both modules were designed to evoke emotional memories for the purpose of developing new responses on the basis that these would be likely to contribute signi"cantly to emotional and cognitive development. 4. The schools' culture: the need for re6ection Talking about emotion generates strong feelings and its relevance to school education continues to be perceived by many to be controversial. Teaching itself has only recently been acknowledge by some as work in which emotions are central (Day, 1998; Fineman, 1993). In most instances, however, these are managed and regulated to ensure the e$cient and e!ective running of the organisation. Emotions, it has been claimed: are usually talked about only insofar as they help administrators and reformers &manage' and o!set teachers' resistance to change or help them set the climate or mood in which the really important
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business of cognitive learning or strategic planning can take place. (Hargreaves, 1999b, p. 837). The same is true for the consequences of the intensi"cation and attempted technicisation of teachers' work in many countries. For example, whilst the new right managerialist agendas now recognise the existence of widespread teacher stress and acknowledge its e!ects upon the quality of teaching and learning, there are no signs that they seek to look beyond this &crisis' in order to attend to the underlying emotional repertoire required by teachers if they are to sustain high quality, enthusiastic teaching on a daily basis over a career. Nevertheless, with the popularising of such concepts as &emotional intelligence' (Goleman, 1995) and &multiple intelligences' (Gardner, 1983) increasing support is being added to the lobby who believe `a view of human nature that ignores the power of emotions is sadly short-sighteda. (Goleman, 1995, p. 4). If the experience of teaching can only be truly known through stories of real events in which teachers, students and curricula interact (as distinct from the shorthand language of images and symbols which we use to describe its purposes and goals to others), then to neglect the stories of teaching and the narratives of teachers' experiences may be to collude in oversimpli"cation or distortion. Yet what we believe, say and feel in one role may be quite di!erent from what we believe, say and feel in another. James (1890) described these as &the various selves'; Berne (1964) described them as &ego states'; for Assagioli (1975) they were termed &subpersonalities'; for Perls (1969) &splits' or &parts'; and for Moreno (1953) &roles'. Jung (1935), on the other hand, characterised them as &complexes' or &fragmentary personalities' (p. 81). Peshkin (1984, p. 34) warns that, `we2 have many subjective selves. Which one comes to the fore depends on the situation in which we "nd ourselvesa. Past and present contexts too are, therefore, important.
5. English teachers*professional development contexts These extracts from the stories of a principal and two teachers at di!erent points in their careers
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illustrate a situation of increased bureaucracy and intensi"cation of work in which teachers in England have found themselves over the last "fteen years. Reforms imposed by a series of government policy decisions are continuing to challenge their ability to continue to provide the high levels of emotional commitment so necessary to good teaching. The stories highlight also the persistence of these professionals in seeking*often against the odds*to apply sets of personal and professional values which go far beyond any baseline measure of competency and the personal costs of doing so in di$cult circumstances.
6. Louise*&an ant on a patterned carpet' I would say my emotional self and professional self were inextricably linked and the former was the driving force. Powerful words like passion and belief come to mind now but I honestly never thought of these, or considered them at the time. I "nd such words frightening and against my better judgement, for such vocabulary can close people's minds as well as open them. Louise is the principal of a "ve teacher rural elementary school whose story is one of commitment under pressure; only with di$culty is she able to continue to resist becoming &an ant on a patterned carpet': I had always wanted*&my own school' is the general phrase; to take the reins and lead a team providing high and improving levels of achievement for pupils. (I sometimes now think how namK ve that was*but we must set some goals or why do the job at all). I was sure of what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go and naturally assumed everyone else would understand and agree. But dealing with a variety of people, all with interests in the education of children*teachers, support sta!, governors, parents and naturally children themselves, the LEA (School District) and Government, all had their own e!ects upon this &vision', e!ects that conspired to constantly pull me o! course. Often the reasons for a lack of progress towards my goals
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were the constant initiatives from the LEA and more particularly the government of the day. Overload for myself and sta! was a major factor. What I needed was time and focus to gain a better insight into my school and indeed my own role, to improve my perspective and restore my &con"dence' and direction, and remove my feeling of being &all at sea'. 2 I once heard my job described as an ant on a patterned carpet. You are so wrapped up in either teaching or administration you never "nd the time to step back and really e!ectively assess how the sta! and school are doing. You know there is a pattern or plan somewhere but you are so close to it you can't see it properly. This autobiographical fragment provides a #avour of the professional life of a principal in an English school. It illustrates an image of self which is dominated by professional concerns but driven by personal values and mediated by external forces which seek to &pull her o! course'. The metaphor of &ant on a patterned carpet' is a powerful testimony both of the clear purposes in her life and the ways in which real participation in &the bigger picture' has become di$cult as externally imposed innovations and intensi"cation of forms of public accountability cause her to lose perspective, and with this, her sense of signi"cance and consequentiality.
7. Peter*&burning the midnight oil' I believe that the very nature of being a teacher means that your personal life and professional life interact. Peter is a teacher in a School and Community College and a pastoral Head of Year. Like Louise, he feels that teaching is becoming increasingly bureaucratic and that more and more demands are
In the English system this is equivalent to a secondary school, catering for a student population of 11}18 years old. In the evening the school opens for classes for adults from the local community. Peter is involved only with 11}18 year old students.
made which take over increasing amounts of his personal time. He gave an example of an emotionally draining incident. On a Friday afternoon, at 3.15 pm, a pupil con"ded in me that the previous weekend her father had beaten her up giving her two black eyes. This had happened before. This was disguised with a great deal of makeup. Whilst making the disclosure it was made clear to the pupil that the school's child protection o$cer would need to be involved as well as informing social services. The pupil only lived with her father. The family background was that of a broken home, with mum leaving the family house over two years ago with no address being known and the elder brother being a known drug addict who lived with an uncle of a similar background. The pupil concerned did not see it as a possibility of there being any contact with any of these people. The father worked away from home for four to "ve days at a time and he was due back the following Monday. This situation had been going on for over two years with the pupil looking after herself over this period and only seeing her dad on his return. Whilst away the child did not have a contact telephone number, nor did she know where father worked. After contacting Social Services they appeared totally uninterested. After explaining the background situation they seemed unconcerned and did not see it as an immediate problem because the father would not be there over the weekend and the child was used to being on her own anyway. An appointment was made for the pupil to see them the following Monday morning. However, the child was obviously distressed, there were no relatives on which to call for support. Nor was it felt that the school could ask for the support of the parents of one of her friends. With nowhere to turn to, it was suggested that the pupil spend the weekend with a member of sta! and her family. Two di!erent sta! volunteered but the pupil concerned was extremely reluctant. At 6.40 pm the same day, as a compromise, the pupil went to a member of sta!'s house for a meal and was later dropped o! back at home. Over the weekend the pupil was
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given the telephone numbers of two di!erent teachers, including myself, who agreed that if the pupil wanted all she had to do was pick up the phone and one of us would pick her up. Peter's chosen story focused upon the operationalisation of the core moral purposes of teachers to &care for' their pupils, to act &in loco parentis'. Description of the incident reveals not only the concern that he and his colleagues shared for the abused pupil*and the scepticism about the real concerns of the Agency charged with having similar concerns*but their willingness to allow the formal emotional attachment which good teachers have with their students to #ow over into their own personal time.
8. Sarah*&I developed a healthy cynicism for reform' Sarah, a Modern Languages teacher, had entered teaching in the mid 1980s when, `Good will had been exhausted and the large range of clubs and social activities that I remembered from my school days, were no longer availablea. She felt that the plethora of externally initiated reforms had created a negative e!ect: Sadly, too much of my experience of outside initiatives has been negative - partly, because schools have had to respond to too many changes in a short period of time. This has often led to reactive not proactive management, a feeling of being on an escalator and not being able to get o! until you have carried out the next change. The basic vision that makes the school is all too often lost and so it becomes more di$cult to "lter and assess change. Sta! do not necessarily believe in the changes that take place, and the messages given to pupils become inconsistent. It is, however, easy to criticise, but much harder to have the courage to stand out against what can feel like an unstoppable force. The newly competitive nature of education was compounded by the addition of league tables. The need for a school to perform was highlighted
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in terms of its A}C rate and more recently the A}G rate and average grade. The positive aspects of this are that we can no longer be complacent about the results we achieve, and thus are less willing to put up with pupil under-achievement. However, the pressure on schools to improve is great, and the support and knowledge is not always there. There is now an obsession with statistics in the school in which I work, and we are still trying to "nd some new way to analyse last year's exam results*sometimes at the expense of doing anything to improve this year's. Sarah's story of change is not unusual among teachers in England as she describes the increased accountability not only for the quality of their teaching and students' learning but also for student achievement. She identi"es both positive and negative aspects of reform and highlights the courage that is required by teachers to maintain their roles in mediating knowledge rather than acting as subcontractors who simply implement externally imposed policies. These three stories of response to change illustrate both the fragmentary personal and professional lives of teachers and the seamlessness of the ways in which they think about and enact their personal}professional, cognitive}emotional lives. Each either implicitly or explicitly provides evidence of their sel#essness in giving time &outside o$ce hours' to attending to the increasing planning pressures caused by reform and to the welfare of their students. In varying degrees, however, each reveals also frustration, a sense of powerlessness, and, in two instances, growing resentment at the diminishing quality of their own professional lives.
9. Northern Ireland teachers*personal development contexts The next three stories provide vivid examples of the emotional di$culties faced by teachers in Northern Ireland. The extracts illustrate the interplay between many of their inner personal tensions and dramas which are embodied in the ways that professional lives are played out and which often go unseen or unnoticed. The creative exploration of
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their professional masks during the in-service module appeared to intensify the emotional undertones of present and past professional experiences. In addition to the articulation of feelings of disappointment, resentment, hurt, rage, fear and shame in their stories, there were also opportunities for these teachers to re-experience, and in some cases confront and re-evaluate raw feelings which had been embedded in the original incidents but which had not previously been resolved. In some cases, this led to new developments in understanding.
is that I am isolated. I want to leave teaching now because I'm expected to be someone I'm not. Clearly, the role of &clown' or &fool' had outlived its usefulness in this teacher's experience*to the extent that he is contemplating leaving his teaching career. The paradox which has yet to be addressed, however, is that although he desires closeness with his colleagues, the personality he has adopted creates a social distance which itself perpetuates his isolation and thus contributes to his personal cycle of disappointment and cynicism.
10. Gerry*&the lonely clown' Gerry is a mid-career professional who works in a Further Education College as a tutor responsible for Health and Social Care. When I started looking for a suitable mask to present, up popped the clown mask2 when we came to putting on our masks, I didn't like it. It felt claustrophobic and I couldn't see out of it properly. I didn't like it at all! It inhibited my view. No-one could see me; they didn't know if I was smiling or making faces at them behind it; no real communication with anyone while I was wearing my mask. I felt very uncomfortable. That's it. Now I know. That's what's going on at work. I can't be myself. Work is smothering me. I can't breathe. I can't be the person they want me to be. They're the ones with the masks*smiling chatty faces, having a good laugh, the best of friends until you need help or support then they are all too busy. I'm not prepared to spend my time among such negative people. Their energy a!ects me, leaving it impossible for me to separate my feelings from theirs. That's the danger of being in a negative environment This is why I feel like leaving teaching at the "rst opportunity*not because I don't like teaching the young people, not because I can't do it, not because I can't enjoy it BUT because I feel I have to compromise myself to be accepted, like the others, and I'm not prepared to do that. The cost This is the equivalent of an American community college.
11. Paddy*&white stripe of secrecy' Paddy, a senior teacher responsible for pastoral care, described himself as having, over the years, to put on a &professional, almost hardened, institutional face' when he was meant to be acting in a helping capacity, thus involving himself in the kinds of &emotional labour' described by Hochschild (1993). In my earlier years as a teacher-counsellor, I had given &my all' in personal and professional commitment to two sisters, who had su!ered a trauma. I could only be of limited assistance within the school's remit and yet, to a great degree, this assistance was all-embracing as I saw it. I fought hard to garner all the services at my disposal to provide support and referral, but in the end to no avail. One girl took an overdose, after a session with me. She was hospitalised but subsequently fully recovered. I was &taken to task' for my apparent lack of care. I was the subject of a personal complaint by the parents* the "rst in my professional life*and this cut at the heart of my personal and professional being. This had the e!ect of me withdrawing into myself, of su!ering a dispersal of my professionalism, of making me doubt my true worth as a person, of the enormous e!ort it takes to reach inside again and pick up the pieces, of the inability to really say what I felt in the circumstances, of being maligned professionally. As in the mask I created, I had a tear of despair but would not
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present this writ large in my defence. I was afraid of being misinterpreted. From then on, instead of perhaps taking the risk to be me as I truly am, in my teaching roles, I retreated into my hardened persona to protect myself. I still care but: The white stripe of secrecy Embodies the epitomization of a divided self. I feel a tear of creativity and despair As I gaze upon the face of many colours. Strikingly, I colour the left eye black From the corner of which A stream of paint runs voluntarily, My tear of despair.
12. Sinead*&good girl}bad girl' Sinead teaches Year Two in a primary school. She is in her eighth year of teaching. At the time of the critical incident she describes below, Sinead had just got married. At the same time, her mother was admitted critically ill to hospital and her motherin-law was also found to be terminally ill*both of these situations creating huge emotional and practical strain, with every spare minute spent in hospitals. In addition, work at school was very demanding for her in her role of enthusiastic music specialist within the school. Making the mask brought up feelings from a year ago that in many ways I had been trying to push away. The mask has two clear sides*one gay, the other sad and angry. The recent memory which was stimulated through dialogue on the mask centred on a day close to Christmas. Hectic rehearsals for school performances and then the Principal announced that the choir was to sing in a charity event downtown in twenty minutes time and my job was to get them ready. I was raging and for the "rst time in my teaching career I let it rip!! It was so unlike me to be angry like that in school. I usually go with the #ow. I know now it was just a culmination of all the pressures in my life which had been making my mood swing back
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and forth from good to bad. Normally, I am dependable, emotionally controlled, collegial and accommodating and behave accordingly. In this instance there was a gradual build-up of stress and tension all day, which culminated in this unexpected outburst at my Principal. Behind the mask, there are strong feelings of resentment that the Principal should take me for granted and expect my professionalism to overcome all increases in workload and ultimately stress levels. As a teacher with responsibilities within the school, I found this situation, where my persona dramatically slipped, di$cult to deal with. It made my relationship with my Principal awkward in the immediate aftermath, as normally I have a good relationship with him. In addition, as an ambitious young teacher, I felt that I had perhaps reduced my opportunities in the future to gain promotion within the school by not conforming to the requests of my Principal. In so doing, I felt that my position as an upwardly mobile teacher may have been threatened. Other unexpected situations during that very personally stressful period also resulted in incidents where I know I acted outside what I thought was my well-developed professional mask. I still cringe and will always wonder if the pain and stress of this period will be detrimental to my career in the long term. The feeling is in the job*one slip and you've had it! Such a poignant story sharply demonstrates the way in which emotional incidents in an individual's history can continue, often unconsciously, to impact on present-day behaviours. In this instance, the recall of and re#ection on the original incident and its emotional consequences permitted the teacher to re-evaluate her dissatisfaction with her current range of responses to colleagues. These stories provide further evidence of the immense emotional investment which many teachers make and which are &taken for granted' aspects of their work; and of the ways in which stressful phases in their own personal lives have signi"cant e!ects upon their professional selves. Their expressions of disillusionment, isolation, and sense of
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injustice at the perceived lack of care which they themselves receive in school illustrate the importance of attending to the needs of the morale, selfcon"dence and self-esteem needs of the teacher as person as well as professional.
13. University teachers: the need for dialogue meaning can come into existence only when two or more voices come into contact: when the voice of a listener responds to the voice of a speaker. (Wertsch, 1991, p. 52, after Bakhtin). Understanding the emotions that are often an unacknowledged part of people's outer cognitive or professional selves, may occur through embracing and managing voices in constructed inner and outer dialogues. Ruth: `There is little of this type of analysis or exploration of the impact of emotion available in text books on teaching, learning and change.a Chris: `Yet, since we ask our students to engage in exploring these connections, I believe we have a moral responsibility to do the same.a Ruth: `A lot of my own personal, tacit knowledge base has been derived from my own emotional change process where I had opportunities (often painful) to open up age-old memories of sadness and neglect and of feeling burdened by responsibility too early. Real change for me came out of emotional release.a Chris: `I wonder whether it is this kind of passionate engagement which, in a sense, gives them (the teachers) and ourselves permission as well as encouragement to take risks with our personal and professional images, public and private, and, through this, to grow in the kinds of self understandings which provide the means for improving practice.a As with the teachers' narratives, the written dialogue between ourselves as tutors and authors was personal and professional, cognitive and emotional.
It made explicit and added to the inner debate, which we had been having independently, by subjecting it to scrutiny by a &critical friend'. Whilst the interrogation of stories or accounts by a critical friend may promise rigour at the expense of relationship (Davies, 1998), in analysing and responding to each other's texts as examples of self dialogue, we maintained our commonly held purposes, i.e., to probe our understandings of our own and each other's values and practices as professionals in the di!erent contexts in which we worked and to understand those emotional factors which in#uenced our own work commitments and those of students attending award-bearing in-service programmes. We thus endeavoured neither to neglect nor discount teacher experience and the tensions between that experience and public theory (Bullough & Bauman, 1996, p. 406) in investigating the interface between those and the experience and tensions which we, as tutors, were experiencing on personal, professional, cognitive and emotional levels. The extracts from our correspondence during and beyond the period of the research reveal something of our own histories, motivations, dilemmas and aspirations. Like school teachers, though perhaps for di!erent reasons, talking about what we do is not necessarily a part of our lives. Whilst unlike many teachers in schools, constrained as they are by the busyness and practicality ethics of teaching, we do theorise and make explicit those theories through publication, our theorising does not usually focus upon ourselves. Ruth: `It is one thing to rationalise and intellectualise about the vital role of emotions; it's quite another to experience them in operation in one's own life.a Chris: `It's a little scary, because I don't know where it might lead or what disclosures might result. I am sensitive to your disclosure that you have always been acutely responsive to emotion in yourself and others and in any atmosphere, and am aware that this also applies to me, though I'm not sure I always communicate this. Certainly my professional life has been dominated by feelings*often intense*which relate to
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&atmosphere' created by a person, people or events.a
heart' when it was assaulted deliberately, or by circumstance.a
Ruth: `My whole credo in teaching right from the beginning (21 years ago) is that the most e!ective way of teaching, guiding or counselling others would be through my own personal development or self-awareness. Emotions and emotional understanding seemed to be key in this but it took quite some time (and personal courage and commitment) before any proper integration between my thinking and feeling took place.a
Ruth: `Knowing this is so important in my work with teachers: it allows me to respond to something potentially deeper 2. Helping them, where appropriate, to unlock earlier learning experiences so that old patterns of thinking and feeling can be re-considered and new ways of responding can happen*hopefully.a
Re#ection, like the cultures in which many university tutors work, is often private and introspective if not isolated. Actions and their meanings in a sense remain behind our backs when we do not examine them but merely take them for granted (Gadamer, 1976). McCutcheon (1992) suggests that: When we scrutinise them, bring them to consciousness and question them, we are able to understand and transform our actions so that they are more consonant with beliefs (p. 195). However, it is our experience that the movement from consciousness and questioning to understanding and then transformation is problematic.
There are, for example, di!erent kinds and levels of re#ection and since re#ection involves processes of deconstruction and reconstruction then this may involve an impossible to sustain self-confrontation. Thus, although the process of engagement with narrative presents possibilities for change in ourselves (Coles, 1989), the extent and signi"cance of such change will depend upon a combination of personal and workplace conditions, a capacity for self-confrontation and provision of appropriate kinds of support in the process of changing (Day, 1993). Studies of teachers have found that they get better at thinking re#ectively across the interrelated emotional, moral, personal, private and professional dimensions of their work (Clandinin, 1986) when they receive support and encouragement from one or more critical and trusted colleagues (Bullough, 1989; Tabachnik & Zeichner, 1984; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986).
Ruth: `I believe that emotional patterns and learnings (especially those which hurt) are tied up in our personal biographies (becoming part of our neural circuitry). Negative incidents in the past (of abandonment, shaming, insult, rejection, neglect, abuse) seem mostly to restrict and inhibit spontaneity and openness to experience in the moment and the desire to prevent such experiences happening again. So change becomes less likely and learning less of an option. Certainly, I discovered this to have been true for me.a
The reason, of course, is that collaborative research constitutes a relationship. In everyday life, the idea of friendship implies a sharing, an interpenetration of two or more persons' spheres of experience. Mere contact is acquaintance, not friendship. The same may be said for collaborative research which requires a close relationship akin to friendship. Relationships are joined, as MacIntyre (1981) implies, by the narrative unities of our lives. (Clandinin & Connelly, 1988, p. 281).
Chris: `I have, more times than I care to remember, felt that in worlds which I inhabit, emotion and its expression (i.e., anger, joy, enthusiasm, fear, spontaneity) are consciously excluded by most people. For myself, I learned a long time ago to &shut down' or &dampen' my own &feeling
This was a feature of our own narrative. During our dialogue, in meetings, on the phone, through email and letter, we juggled the personal and professional with the cognitive and emotional as we talked about our own backgrounds, beliefs, practices, hopes and fears.
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14. Discussion These stories describe various incidents from experience, both past and present. The group of teachers from England had been asked to write autobiographical accounts of the ways in which their professional linked to their personal lives. The process of writing had raised awareness of the importance of &commitment', &care', &courage', &compromise' and &fragmentation of personal time' in their teaching. The group of teachers from Northern Ireland had been asked to explore their inner lives and how these related to their professional selves through mask-making and had raised powerful personal images of &creativity' and &despair', &resentment' and &retreat'. The process of continuing dialogue had enabled us as university teachers to understand better the parts that our own history and emotion played in our teaching. What all the stories demonstrate is that &watersheds' (Clandinin, 1986) or &critical incidents' (Measor, 1985; Tripp, 1993) are only the tip of the iceberg of teachers' lives. Beneath the waterline is a continuing inner debate between the personal and the professional, the emotional and the cognitive, which has its moments of (sometimes only temporary) resolution. Furthermore, di!erent means used to access the emotional mind to challenge and support others in the processes of understanding practice, produce signi"cant and qualitatively different results. In this inquiry the "rst (autobiographical) raised awareness of the e!ects of the personal on the professional and vice versa; the second (mask-making) enabled intensive emotional exploration of these e!ects; and the third (sustained dialogue) enabled an exploration, interrogation and confrontation of the relative power of emotional histories upon the personal, professional and propositional voices of the tutors. The stories are replete with feelings, often intense, about the ways in which a teacher's personal sense of self is frequently compromised by personal history, social context and the exigencies of the job of teaching, thus demanding us all to keep a "rm sense of our professional identities in place. This study, then, illustrates graphically the ways in which the professional self in teaching a!ects and is a!ected by personal history past and present as
well as the political and social contexts of teaching. The extracts from the teachers' and tutors' narratives also demonstrate the delicate interaction between the rational (cognitive) and the non-rational (emotional) and, in particular, the powerful in#uencing role of the latter upon the former. Teaching at its best requires motivation, commitment and emotional attachment, and this requires a deep knowledge of self as well as student. It is, then, crucial that the importance of this interaction is not only acknowledged but is also understood to have a central role in programmes of teacher education and continuing professional development in all phases of teachers' lives. Only then can we be sure that those involved in teacher education policy and practice are serious in their e!orts to provide a comprehensive and appropriate range of opportunities for the maintenance and improvement of the quality of all teachers and, through this, the quality of teaching and learning.
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