Resilience and loss in work identities: a narrative analysis of some retired teachers’ work‐life histories

Abstract

The article examines the importance of ‘emotional labour’ in the constitution of the ‘teacherly‐self’. Deriving from a research project on work and social identity, the article explores the ways teachers have negotiated the radical changes in the profession in recent years, and uses the notion of ‘teacher resilience’ to explore the ways teachers have reacted to the effects of neo‐liberal reforms to education; reforms that have powerfully impacted on the more child‐centred ways of working in the classroom and school environment. Using narrative analysis of the work‐life histories of these retired teachers, recorded using oral history methodology, the authors examine structures of feeling that turn on notions of emotional labour and commitment, resilience and loss in relation to the occupational identity of teachers.

Notes

1. Does Work Still Shape Social Identity and Action? ESRC Identities programme: 148‐25‐0038.

2. We do recognise that there were some misgivings at the time regarding Plowden’s strictures, and these are mapped out by Ken Jones in Education in Britain (1994), but he also argues there that there existed enough of a consensus around the report to take ‘the ideas developed by progressive educators … to the height of their influence’ (p. 84), within education and particularly concerning teacher training.