To teach and know feelingly: reason, emotions and relationships in teachers' professional practice in neo-liberal times

Debates over the relationship between professional practice, professional standards and professional identity have been a feature of Australian and international educational and political discourse for the last two decades (Ball, 1997; Bodman, Taylor & Morris, 2012; Doecke, Howie & Sawyer, 2006; Power, 1994; Sachs 2001). The discourse is replete with neo-liberal claims about educational reform that supposedly benefits everyone. It invariably includes appealing rhetoric about greater transparency, democratic participation, individual choice, and the freedom for individuals within the system to express themselves openly. Much research has shown that these claims are belied by the increasingly dominant regimes of performativity (Ball, 2003) and audit cultures (Avis, 2003; Power, 1994) that seek to standardise and narrow educators' professional practice. In their quest for professional recognition, teachers and teaching communities are obliged to engage with the twin banner of standardisation and accountability as a measure of whether young Australians are meeting important educational outcomes. Yet, the literature shows that teachers in Australia have engaged with their working practices in different ways (see Gannon, 2012; Parr, 2010). This inquiry investigates how a small number of (mostly) experienced educators in Australia have engaged with this rhetoric and this neo-liberal policy making. It explores and reflects on the actions and professional choices they have made in their day to day professional lives, and the attitudes and emotions that have underpinned these actions. Adopting institutional ethnography (Smith, 2005, 2006) as an important dimension to this research, I map out how educators, individuals and groups act and are acted upon across time and space, drawing attention to the complex negotiations they undertake in their particular educational sites. The study involves interviews with twelve secondary school teachers (most of them with more than 20 years' experience, but some beginner teachers, too) and school leaders in Melbourne and overseas. A multifaceted narrative, this thesis is also informed by references to literature in the fields of philosophy, autobiography (Florio-Ruane, 200 I), poetry, and literary fiction as well as the expected literature in educational theory. One element that draws this perhaps disparate range of literature together is my interest, as both a literature teacher and a researcher, in language. Language, with its creative and educational possibilities, and also its power to control and contain, is centre-stage in this study. Through close attention to the language I use, I make explicit the impact on the research of my own professional and personal background (Mackenzie & Knipe, 2006) and this same close attention to language enables me to explore how my activities, feelings and experiences hooked me into "extended social relations" (Smith, 2004, p. 5) in my work in the classroom and in conducting this research. I explore these institutional relations and practices reflexively through journal entries and autobiographically as part of the "memory work" of this study (Haug et aI., 1987). 3 A key focus of this study is to explore the extent to which emotion is an important dimension of the intellectual, critical and relational practices of teachers. This exploration is underpinned by socio-cultural (e.g., Ball, 2003) and dialogic (e.g., Bakhtin, 1981) theory. I challenge traditional psychologistic studies that see emotion located in the individual, a 'natural' phenomenon that one must learn to 'control' (e.g., Boler, 1999; Rose, 1998). This study critically and reflexively teases out some ofthe consequences of practitioners engaging in their work, rather, with a degree of "emotionality" (Denzin, 1984). Expression of feelings may often be considered 'inappropriate' in neo-liberallandscapes and political agendas that are pre-occupied with standardised learning outcomes and professional performance (see Zembylas, 2003). When teachers repress their feeling, they learn - sometimes at great emotional cost - how to self-regulate emotions and know which ones may be expressed and which may not. While this study shows some examples of this, it also shows the potential for the relational and emotional dimensions of teaching to re-form subjectivities and 're-embody' professional practice. The research accentuates the diverse local, contextual and social factors that shape teachers' everyday work in ways that challenge neo-liberal politics of standardisation, regulation and technicism. It illustrates how in any open and democratic society the social world can be "a site of debate" (Smith, 2004, p. 27), opening up for engagement with all members of a professional community the mUltiple views and intellectual positions that exist in that community. As the narratives from the participants in this study reveal, in educational settings which understand and appreciate the complex interplay of intellectual, emotional and relational dimensions of teachers' work, teachers are best able to commit to a vision of participating, caring and learning. They can forge trusting professional relationships and collaboratively work together to create rich and robust professional practice and professional learning that ultimately benefit their students and the futures they hope to build.