Coping with emotionally challenging expectations: Japanese beginning teachers and their relationships with students’ parents’

ABSTRACT

This article examines emotionally challenging expectations in the relationships beginning teachers have with students’ parents. The data consist of narrative interviews with 17 Japanese beginning teachers. Due to strong cultural and social norms prescribing appropriate social interactions, Japanese teachers have little leeway in negotiating parents’ expectations. We found that beginning teachers described facing three emotionally challenging expectations in their relationships with students’ parents: 1) they do not fully understand what is expected of them; 2) they are expected to turn to colleagues for help with difficult issues involving parents; and 3) they are expected to endure and learn from criticism. To cope with these emotionally challenging expectations, beginning teachers perform emotional labour. The article presents a wider understanding of teachers’ work as a relational practice and offers insights that can be used to move beyond the discourse that frames beginning teachers from a ‘deficit’ perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Beginning teachers
• emotional labour
• expectations
• japan
• parent-teacher relationships

Acknowledgedments

The first author would like to thank Institute for Advancement in Higher Education at Hokkaido University and Faculty of Education at Ehime University for enabling this study as a doctoral researcher and a visiting post-doctoral researcher respectively.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The word ‘guardian’ (‘hogosha’) is used in official documents and speech, as it acknowledges that the biological parent(s) (‘oya’) are not necessarily in charge of the student. Participants used ‘hogosha’ in our interviews. However, we have used the word ‘parent’ to align with prior research in English.

2. For elementary school, this refers to the classroom teacher’s responsibilities. In junior high school, in addition to teaching a specific subject, many teachers are also responsible for managing the non-academic matters of their designated homeroom students and communicating with the students’ parents.

3. Most teachers complete four-year programmes in universities to obtain a teaching licence. These programmes provide basic skills on pedagogy, guidance and subject knowledge, but due to limited exposure to the lived realities of schools via a three-week practicum, graduating teachers’ skill levels can be low (Howe, 2005).

4. Japanese comprehensive education starts at age six and consists of six years of primary school and three years of lower secondary. Public, national and private schools follow the same national base curriculum.

5. All names used in this article are pseudonyms and we have chosen to use the honorific title of sensei (lit. the one born before), because it carries a lot of cultural significance in Japan.

6. These parents make unrealistic demands to teachers and schools, requesting special attention for their children and the dismissal of ‘un-cooperative’ teachers (Holloway et al., 2010).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland under grant number 265974 (Disentangling the Emotional Dimension in Beginning Teachers’ work) and Jenny and Antti Wihuri foundation;Academy of Finland [265974];Jenny ja Antti Wihurin Rahasto;

Notes on contributors

Erkki T. Lassila

Erkki T. Lassila, PhD, is a post-doctoral researcher from Faculty of Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research interests are in teacher’s work in different socio-cultural contexts, gifted education and narrative methodologies.

Eila Estola

Eila Estola, PhD, is a professor emerita within the Faculty of Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests include teachers’ work, identity, ethics, and early childhood education.

Geert Kelchtermans

Geert Kelchtermans is a full professor of education at the KU Leuven (University of Leuven, Belgium), where he chairs the Center for Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School (CIDTS). His research focuses on the practices and the development of educational professionals as situated in their organisational and institutional working conditions.

Minna Uitto

Minna Uitto, PhD, is an adjunct professor and post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research interests focus on the relationships and emotions of teachers’ work.