Walking on eggshells: elementary school teacher alienation in parent-teacher relationships in China

ABSTRACT

Conflicts in the parent-teacher relationships have become conspicuous and inevitable, deteriorating the supposedly mutually beneficial relationship. To understand teachers’ negative experiences in such relationships and underlying reasons, this study, based on alienation theory and its latter extensions, collected and analysed eight teachers’ in-depth interviews and 47 pieces of school-life observation records in a Chinese elementary school. The findings revealed that although elementary school teachers adopted different strategies to handle parent-teacher relationships, each experienced at least one dimension of alienation (powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, or self-estrangement). Especially, they felt “double powerlessness”: loss of control in relationships with both the school and parents. To be specific, the major sources of double powerlessness are the big gaps in educational attainment, wealth, and social connections between teachers and parents. However, teachers can still be partially empowered by their identity, colleagues, and even educational bureaucracy to resist alienation.

KEYWORDS:

• Parent-teacher relationships
• teacher alienation
• double powerlessness
• meaningless
• isolation
• resistance

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guanyu Li

Guanyu Li is currently a Ph.D. Candidate of College of Educational Administration, Beijing Normal University. His research focuses on school evaluation, principal leadership, teacher emotional labor, etc. During his two years of Ph.D. study, he has participated in more than 10 research projects and published 10 English educational papers, 6 of which were included in SSCI indexed journals. He has presented at three international academic conferences and three domestic academic forums. In 2022 and 2023, he was awarded the first-class scholarship for academic Ph.D. candidate.