Teacher vulnerability in teacher identity in times of unexpected social change

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unexpected challenges to the lives and professional practice of teachers regardless of their institutional context. Our understanding of how teachers viewed their impact on their perceived sense of professional identity is largely unexplored, especially concerning teachers working in the post-compulsory sector. This article discusses the findings from a small-scale qualitative research project that aimed to investigate, `what teachers’ reflective stories tell us about their perceptions of their professional identities in times of unexpected social change.’ To explore how teachers perceived their professional roles in these challenging times we used a reflective narrative approach in the format of McAdams’s life-story interview (1993). Seven volunteer participants who formed a purposive sample of professionals from a variety of post-compulsory education institutions in the UK were asked to describe key episodes to capture their experiences covering the period from March 2020 to the end of May 2021. The findings focused on how unexpected social changes impacted on teachers’ perceived sense of professional identity, specifically through their sense of vulnerability. Three main themes were identified: vulnerability resulting from questioning professional credibility; vulnerability in the changing dynamics of relationship development; and vulnerability in the pastoral role.

KEYWORDS:

• teacher identity
• vulnerability
• storytelling
• post-compulsory education
• United Kingdom

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unexpected challenges to the lives and professional practice of teachers regardless of their institutional context or sector. Teachers had to adapt to new work demands and contexts, requiring them to explore creative ways of teaching and to employ new strategies of online communication with learners and colleagues. Being involved in pastoral care of their students whilst managing their own professional and personal situation had a considerable impact on teachers’ perception of themselves as professionals, on their emotions and eventually on their performance (Gómez-Domínguez et al. 2022). A number of international studies have focused on the psychological consequences of the pandemic on teachers’ work, wellbeing, burnout and coping strategies (Campbell 2020; James and Thériault 2020; König, Jäger-Biela, and Glutsch 2020; MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer 2020). These studies also investigated the changes in the pedagogical approaches to teaching online (Anderson et al. 2021; Pokhrel and Chhetri 2021). However, our understanding of how unexpected and sudden social changes impact on teachers’ perceived sense of professional identity, specifically through their sense of vulnerability, is largely unexplored, especially concerning teachers working in the post-compulsory sector in the UK. So far, only one study (Kim and Asbury 2020) has explored English teachers’ experiences during the pandemic, but with a particular focus on the primary and secondary sector.

This article focuses on teachers from the post-compulsory sector, including adult community learning and further and higher education. It discusses the findings from a small-scale qualitative research project that aimed to investigate: `What do teachers’ reflective stories tell us about their perceptions of their professional identities in times of unexpected social change?’ The specific focus of the article is the exploration of the impact that teaching online and having limited face-to-face relationships with students and colleagues has had on teachers’ perceived sense of identity, from the perspective of teacher vulnerability (Kelchtermans 1996, 2009; Lasky 2005). Vulnerability is considered a key dimension of teacher identity and is connected with teachers’ emotional response to their professional life and practice and is therefore pertinent to this study.

The research was conducted using a narrative reflective approach (McAdams, 1993) which created opportunities for teachers to explore key moments of their experiences during the lockdown period from March 2020 to May 2021. Although the findings are interlinked, it has been possible to identify three themes of teacher vulnerability; vulnerability resulting from professional credibility coming under question; vulnerability in the changing dynamics of relationship development; and vulnerability in the pastoral role.

The first theme identified is around an immediate perception of doubt and insecurity, particularly around professional credibility. The teachers shared a number of experiences, especially during the initial lockdown, which challenged their professional pedagogical practice. Due to high value stakes being placed on positive relationships with learners, and the impact they expected to have on their learners’ learning, the teachers experienced a ‘vulnerability to inefficacy’ (Kelchtermans 1996, 2009) as their learners questioned their ability to teach online.

The second theme captured the importance of maintaining, developing, and creating trusting relationships with their student groups and colleagues. The relationships with students and colleagues were seen as sources of emotional reward (Miller and Gkonou, 2018) as well as sources of ‘emotion labour’ and insecurity about how the teachers saw their credibility, knowledgeability and adopted pedagogical approaches. Teachers were aware of the importance of being actively engaged in existing professional networks within their institutions. However, some also found new professional relationships in professional global communities outside of their organisation. These provided an escape from the constraints of institutional hierarchy, separation, and isolation that many teachers were experiencing (Campbell et al. 2022).

Finally, the third theme refers to the pastoral role teachers emphasised in their stories as part of perceiving themselves as caring, autonomous and creative individuals. The space that lockdown provided enabled the teachers to make autonomous decisions about accepting or refusing official-line directives, whilst being confident about the actions they took when engaging in non-compliance. This engagement in ‘ethics of discomfort’ (Zembylas 2010), enabled the teachers to reconcile with discomforting emotions as they navigated a path through periods of crisis.

This article explores these themes in more depth, providing critical discussion around teacher professional identity, identifying key implications as education moves towards a ‘new normal’ (Hew et al. 2020; Telfer 2021).

Teacher identity

Researchers have paid attention to the complexity of the construct of professional identity over the last twenty years (Zhang and Wang, 2022). The research into teacher identity has played a key role in understanding teacher education, teacher development, aspects of teaching, teacher job satisfaction and retention (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009; Day et al. 2006; Day, Elliot, and Kington 2005; Lopes and Pereira 2012). Søreide (2006) for example investigated the multiple identities teachers adopt when they position themselves in their narratives and how these identities change and merge depending on a particular context in which teachers negotiate their personal situation. Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) noted that teacher identity was explored through the links between identity and self (Rodgers and And, 2008) and between emotions and identity (Cutri and Whiting 2015; Hargreaves 1998; Kelchtermans 1996, 2009; Lasky 2005; Shapiro 2010; Zembylas 2010). The researchers reviewed the impact of reflection on teachers’ ethical dimensions of identity (Nevgi and Löfström 2015), the relationship between identity and agency, alongside which contextual factors influence identity and how this occurs (Benesch 2018; Miller and Gkonou 2018; Day et al. 2006; Flores and Day 2006).

The literature exploring teacher identity emphasises its shifting, negotiated, and open character. It changes over time as teachers are influenced by an array of internal factors, including beliefs and emotions, and external factors, for example prior learning experiences, school culture, local and national educational reforms (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009; Hargreaves and Fullan 2012; Lasky 2005; Sachs 2005).

Teacher vulnerability and its impact on professional identity

Lasky’s research into teacher identity (2005) explores the interplay among teacher identity, agency, and emotions that is conceptualised into the construct of professional ‘vulnerability’. Lasky (2005) conceives vulnerability as ‘a multidimensional, multifaceted emotional experience that individuals can experience in an array of contexts’ (2006, 901). According to Lasky, similar to Kelchtermans (1996, 2009), teacher vulnerability includes emotions as powerful guiding principles when evaluating events. For Kelchtermans (1996, 307), vulnerability ‘encompasses not only emotions (feelings), but also cognitive processes (perception, interpretation)’ and has moral and political roots (1996, 314). Vulnerability is presented at all levels of teachers’ professional practice. Teachers experience vulnerability in their classroom practice (micro-level), when observing the impact on learning and relationships with students; at the school level in relationship with colleagues and management (meso-level), and also at the wider social and political level (macro-level).

Kelchtermans’s research demonstrated that feelings of vulnerability endangered teachers’ ‘professional identity and moral integrity’ (1996, 319). Teachers felt vulnerable when they observed a loss of something professionally valuable (Ibid., 310), for example having time and space to build more personal relationships based on ‘caring, love, friendship, and community’ (1996, 310). On the school level, teachers expressed powerlessness when trying to influence the micro-politics of their institutions when fighting for better work conditions or when they had to deal with colleagues’ gossip or envy when engaging in innovative teaching practice. Kelchtermans also described a ‘vulnerability of inefficacy’ (1996, 314) which occurs when teachers blame themselves for students’ failures, but also accept unrealistic expectations about their impact on student learning. These concerns were particularly evident in stories among teachers ‘with a strong caring ethic’ (1996, 313). For Kelchtermans, vulnerability as a concept reveals the politics of identity when teachers struggle ‘for recognition by others and for self-recognition’ (1996, 319) in situations when they face moral or political dilemmas.

According to Lasky, vulnerability has two different dimensions: vulnerability as openness and willingness to take risks as opposed to vulnerability that has a more protective/inefficacious dimension. The openness happens when teachers willingly accept their own vulnerability (2005, 908) in the belief that this enhances rapport with students, openly shows their personal care about them and is linked with a positive impact on student learning. The protective/inefficacious vulnerability happens when teachers feel powerless to oppose changes that threaten the core values they bring to the profession, namely the values of caring and nurturing.

Teacher vulnerability has been further explored in research into multicultural education particularly that of Boler (1999) who coined the term ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ and then Zembylas (2010) who enlarged the concept with ‘an ethic of discomfort’. Boler’s pedagogy of discomfort focused on the need to acknowledge that one’s worldview may be challenged when engaging in multicultural education and that individuals, including educators themselves, need to manage and reconcile with their discomforting emotions (Cutri and Whiting 2015). Zembylas’s ethic of discomfort relates to ‘the proactive and transformative potential of discomfort’ (2010, cited in Cutri and Whiting 2015, 1012) as it addresses teachers’ emotional endeavours when coping with the demands of their work.

Miller and Gkonou (2018, 51) focused on the role of emotions from the perspective of power relations in workplaces and linked emotions with the post-structural concept of ‘emotion labour’ (Benesch 2018). Emotion labour is linked to the concept of ethics of discomfort and vulnerability as it is understood as a process in which teachers actively ‘negotiate their emotions according to situated feeling rules’ (Miller and Gkonou 2018, 51). In other words, emotions are considered not as internal factors but stem from internalised social-political norms and contexts that define which emotions are acceptable in the context of teacher work. The concept of emotion labour as defined by Benesch (2018) and adopted by Miller and Gkonou (2018) interprets emotions as potential sources of teachers’ activism (Benesch 2020). This means teachers make conscious decisions for non-compliance in the name of student care and interests and see this as an important part of their role as professionals.

Identity as a life story

‘Human beings are natural storytellers’ and through constructing stories about particular episodes in their lives, people create identity as it is perceived and understood in the moment of narration (McAdams and McLean 2013, 233). In his earlier work, McAdams (1993) suggests that humans internalise a life story that enables them to answer key existential questions about who they are, how they understand their own development and see the direction of their lives. However, identity as constructed through a life story narrative should be understood as ‘exquisitely contextualised in culture,’ McAdams and McLean (2013, 237) warn.

The stories people tell are more about trying to find the meaning of someone’s past, of their actions and accompanying emotions rather than about objective truths (McAdams 1993). The stories reconstruct and reimagine the past as the storytellers understand it in the act of interview conversation as, McAdams (1993, 30) suggests, ‘good stories give birth to many different meanings, generating “children” of meaning in their own image’.

Stories are considered a valuable methodological approach when examining teacher identity as they ‘are a way to express identity … within changing contexts’ (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009, 181; Clandinin and Connelly 1999; Lopes and Pereira, 2012). Kelchtermans’s (1996, 2009) research using teachers’ career stories led him to the development of a particular theoretical framework of teachers’ professional development. He argues that stories focused on ‘critical incidents’ can reveal how teachers understand themselves, situations they consider as having an impact on their thinking and how they ‘judge’ themselves in relation to others. According to him, career stories expose teachers’ self-understanding through a personal interpretative framework (2009, 260) which consists of ‘a set of cognitions, of mental representations that operates as a lens through which teachers look at their job, give meaning to it and act in it.’ This self-understanding only occurs in the act of ‘telling’ and requires a listener. Therefore, the stories that focus on critical incidents enable the teachers to engage in a thoughtful and reflective narrative about their situations, experiences, and beliefs that explain and question their actions.

In our study we have therefore focused on the critical incidents that would capture teachers’ experiences during the unprecedented changes in their life and practice and would enable us to explore the impact that working in an online context had on teachers’ professional identity through the lens of teacher vulnerability and emotion labour within the context of post-compulsory education in the UK.

Materials and methods

To explore how teachers perceived their professional identities during the period of the pandemic we chose to use a reflective narrative approach in the format of McAdams’s life-story interview (1993). This structured and simultaneously flexible approach (King, Horrocks and Brooks 2019) enabled us to adapt and extend questions to suit particular respondents’ narratives. The interview protocol consisted of two parts. In the first part we asked our respondents to imagine that they were going to write the first three chapters of a book that described different stages of their professional journey, covering the period before March 2020.

The second part of the interview covered the period from March 2020 until June 2021, the time when the interviews were conducted. The teachers described critical incidents that they experienced during the pandemic:

1. The peak moment.

2. The lowest moment.

3. The moment that challenged their perception of themselves as a teacher.

4. The moment that described how their relationship with other people they worked with had been affected (colleagues; students).

5. The projected future episode that described how they see themselves in the future.

The incidents covered a context, people involved, a description of how the participants saw themselves in that situation, and how that situation made them think and feel of themselves as professional teachers (see Appendix A – An interview protocol). The authors of the article collaboratively created an interview protocol and negotiated the interview process to ensure a more systematic approach to data generation, but at the same time to enable the participants to explore their stories in depth and detail. The interviews lasted between 45 to just over 60 minutes. As McAdams suggests, ‘a person’s ideology functions as a ‘setting’ for identity`. The stories the participants told us about themselves were set `within a particular ethical, religious, and epistemological ‘time and place’’ (1993, 81). This meant that the participants’ stories covering the period of pre-pandemic could shed a light on their decisions and actions they took during the pandemic and could be aligned to their reflections on how sudden social crises challenged and/or re-affirmed their professional sense of being teachers.

Seven volunteering participants who formed a purposive sample of teachers working in the post-compulsory sector in the UK were recruited using online advertising (online conferences) and a snowballing technique. The participants (Table 1) had been working within a variety of industry settings before becoming teachers either in the further education/community and/or in the higher education sector.

Table 1. Sample.

Name (Pseudonym) Gender	Teaching experience/current position/geographical place	Current position	Subject specialism	Age range
ChristineFemale Female	Novice; started to teach in March 2020.North-West North-West	Associate lecturer in psychology, HE	Counselling	Late twenties
GeorgeMale Male	13 years; 7 years in FE and 6 years in HE. Scotland	Senior lecturer in Education Studies, HE	Engineering	Early forties
RolandMale Male	Over 30 years in FE and HE.South-West South-West	Senior lecturer in Media, HE	Media	Early sixties
AnnFemale Female	5 years in adult community, FE and HE sector. South- East	Tutor in Arts Adult Community Centre; Academic Study Skills Tutor, HE	Art	Late twenties
JaneFemale Female	Novice; started to teach in HE in March 2020. North-West	Associate lecturer in health, HE	Health	Early forties
JoanneFemale Female	Over 20 years of experience in adult education. North-West	A member of a six-form college senior team. Teacher education.	Early years practitioner	Early fifties
FannyFemale Female	6 years in HE. North- West	Lecturer in Health, HE	Health	Late thirties

We considered the ethical procedures for this particular research with utmost care as we were aware of the fact that the topics of the stories the participants were asked to focus on might trigger reliving some potentially very sensitive moments or contain confidential information. We had therefore prepared available information about the support for mental health or any other issues that might arise during our interviews beforehand. The project was reviewed by our institutional ethics committees and the participants were provided with the participant information sheet and the consent forms. We used pseudonyms and described the participants’ subject-specific background in more generic terms to avoid any possible identification.

Data interpretation

Both authors of the article were engaged in the interview process, though separately, utilising Zoom as an online platform and the available video/recording facility. The interviews were transcribed verbatim to notice emerging stories and how these stories related to each other. The interpretation process had a number of steps (Silverman 2014). Both researchers created coding tables (see Appendix B) which were primarily data driven. However, during this process we noticed that stories triggered strong emotional memories that referred to narrators’ emotional states, critical reflections on their decision-making processes, and also how strongly they perceived their caring and pastoral roles in the critical moments of social and educational disruption. This led us to explore the concept of vulnerability in literature on teacher identity and subsequently we adapted the coding process to capture the essence of the data from this perspective. The codes were then exchanged, checked for agreement, refined, and grouped intothree themes.

We noticed the contradictions in the stories and distinguished emotions as they happened during the interview and within the stories. The themes did not emerge as isolated and definite units of meaning but ran through the teachers’ stories like golden threads that connected narratives about their unique personal journeys, in a specific time and space. The themes identified in the stories are therefore to be understood as abstractions of meanings as interpreted and reimagined by the recipients of the stories, the interviewers. The boundaries between the themes are blurred, as they reappear in different stories and merge into each other with various levels of strengths (see Figure 1)

Figure 1. Teacher vulnerability of identity seen through the three interconnected themes.

Results and discussion

The teachers’ stories about how they had experienced the period of pandemic and seen themselves as professionals in times of unexpected social change revealed three themes interconnected through the concept of vulnerability. These are discussed further in this section.

Theme 1: Vulnerability – the questioning of professional credibility

In most stories teachers, regardless of their teaching experience and background, referred to sudden changes in the professional practice as challenging their sense of what it means to follow sound pedagogical practice. They viewed online delivery as poor pedagogical practice that potentially threatened student learning attainment and could impact negatively on future job prospects. This was even the case of an extremely experienced teacher, such as George, whose occupational background was in crisis management. George’s professional views on pedagogy were based on the

‘pedagogies of care and where I place students in the sort of teacher student relationship and how I treat students and I am […] adamant that my students’ needs are paramount. I’m a very caring teacher.’

However, online teaching and a resulting lack of control over workplace conditions seemed to strip him and the rest of the teachers of the ability to follow their well-established repertoire of strategies and skills that form part of their ‘subjective educational theory’ (Kelchtermans 1996). This enhanced their vulnerability:

[…] everything online in a week […] I had to change how I did it […] get used to things like breakout rooms and […] all the sort of vagaries of direct instruction in online teaching […] I saw myself as being somebody that was really worried, I was really worried […] this impending critical impact on people’s masters, but also on their careers […] I couldn’t see how it was going to […] pan out positively […].

(George)

Teachers’ emotional states ranged from ‘being worried’ or ‘scared’ to complete panic when they felt they were not able to perform or questioned their ability to perform their role (Hew et al. 2020):

But what I struggle with the online teaching is students don’t have the video on at all. They will not verbally speak to staff at all […]. I woke up […] I actually had a panic attack about the thought of doing classes that day to that environment. […] I wasn’t sure whether it was me. […] whether it was my teaching style. […] but that morning, I thought it’s me, they don’t like me, they don’t like what I’m doing, they don’t like the class.

(Fanny)

Even though Fanny is an experienced teacher, her panic state is similar to the novice teacher’s, Jane, who reflected upon her own emotional breakdown while teaching via Zoom:

And then zoom happened and I just remember one day […] just turned the screen off (laughter) and saying that my Internet have gone down because I just couldn’t do it anymore […] staring [.] looking at all these faces just looking back at me.

(Jane)

The loss of face-to-face contact with their students was experienced as the ‘loss of something professionally valuable’ (Kelchtermans 1996, 310). The participants admitted they felt vulnerable when they shifted to online teaching, with little time for prior preparation. Ann, who was teaching a group of six mature female students online, talked about making an extra effort to know her students and to create a sense of community as,

online that’s so much more difficult, especially in the early weeks of the course because it’s so much harder to get to know your students […]

(Ann)

Ann also talked about how she exhibited openly her vulnerability to her students when engaging them in online teaching and how satisfying and successful she found it,

We used Padlet as online sketchbooks. I didn’t see any physical work and it again […] felt like a bit like a team effort, like, I said to them, I’ve never delivered a course online, you’ve never been to a course online, let’s just work it out, you know, we’re stuck together now for the next 20 weeks.

(Ann)

The teachers’ stories described critical incidents which referred to the moments when their students refused or criticised their pedagogical practice. This ‘vulnerability to inefficacy’ (Kelchtermans, 1996, 314) triggered painful memories of being ‘confronted with the limits of their impact’ (Ibid.), as can be evidenced in Christine’s account,

the student […] absolutely slated me as a teacher and the feedback that I was given was very, very harsh and the things that it said […] really tore me down

(Christine)

For novice teachers, Jane and Christine, their vulnerability in professional inefficacy was exacerbated through their limited access to the social capital of their professional teams which they joined at the beginning of the school lockdown (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012; McCrone 2021; Thomson and Trigwell 2018; Turner, 2021). Christine felt, ‘because I wasn’t physically there, I was probably forgotten a little bit’, which led to inadequate pedagogical practice strongly criticised by her students. Both Jane and Christine then mentioned the power of reflection as a way to deal with the impact of the perceived professional failure on their confidence and wellbeing,

Reflect […] critical […] and then, what can I do differently next time? Because you can really drag yourself down being too critical unless you’re going to do something with the information. […] But yeah, I was very critical of myself.

(Jane)

Developing creative ways of online teaching brought teachers a sense of achievement and renewed confidence in their professional practice. George, for example, had adapted the way he taught because he ‘didn’t want to keep people in these spaces for seven hours.’ Despite being insecure and sceptical about the impact of sudden online delivery, his master’s students’ learning attainment and feedback became a source of emotional reward,

I was amazed, because the pass rates, the first-time pass rate for the students went up. […] But really importantly was the feedback that came from the students […] personal feedback.

(George)

However, during the second lockdown George experienced less appreciation from his students which led him to question his instructional practice, and required mental energy to manage his own emotional reactions and emotion labour (Cutri and Whiting 2015; Benesch 2018; Miller and Gkonou, 2018):

it’s the first time I’ve ever had an argument or a clash with students and it happened entirely because we were online and the frustrations and whatever, but it challenged my perception, thinking, am I doing the right thing here or should I just be saying, do this […] and submit this and I’ll pass it [.], it really knocked me for a couple of days.

(George)

Theme 2: Vulnerability in the changing dynamics of relationship development

The relationships with students were seen as sources of emotional reward and confirmation of teachers’ professional identity as well as sources of emotion labour (Miller and Gkonou, 2018) and insecurity about how the teachers saw their credibility, knowledgeability and adopted pedagogical approaches. The sources of emotional reward were identified with unexpected pass rates (Jane, George, Ann), immediate feedback after the lesson (Christine), seeing students collaborate with and support each other (Ann), receiving individual appreciative emails (George) and even getting ‘a thank you’ response from a student’s parent on behalf of their child who was supported during the lockdown (Fanny).

All the participants emphasised the importance of establishing effective and collaborative relationships between the teacher and students and detailed how they struggled and eventually succeeded within the constraints of technological means. The ‘ethic of care’ served as a lens that determined which decisions they made and how they dealt with challenges of online communication (Avis and Bathmaker 2004). Online teaching brought alienation and distancing from students, in some cases hindered interaction between the teacher and the learner as some teachers complained about their students’ video-off culture, and insufficient training and support about how to use available technology. The inability to observe how students perceived the lesson felt ‘like the talking into a black hole’ (Roland), which led to high levels of stress for teachers, self-doubt, and abandoning attempts to cope with the situation (MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Mercer 2020). In Roland’s stories, when he spoke about undergraduate media students’ insufficient engagement with the university course, we could detect emotional exhaustion, not dissimilar to Fanny’s and Jane’s in the previous section. For Roland, being in a classroom space seemed to mitigate some negative aspects of students’ disengagement with the course content materials, whilst teaching online required a different model of teaching and learning (Arasaratnam-Smith and Northcote 2017) which may not be suitable for some students:

Perhaps the thing that’s most difficult is getting students to participate […] the cameras off culture. […] The fact that […] these kids are […] barely able to cook for themselves, let alone, you know, get themselves up in the morning and I’ve got to log on.

(Roland)

Vulnerability in Lasky’s concept (2005) requires teachers to take risks and demonstrate openly their concerns and care about their students. However, this requires development of strong, trusting relationships with students and ability to react promptly to students’ feedback and needs. In this sense, online teaching seemed to take away the relational aspect of teacher role in the classroom practice, which led, for example, to poor student feedback on teacher performance, ‘got quite bad student evaluation feedback for the […] module and I thought I’d done a really good job on it […], I don’t know quite what went on’ (Roland). Similarly, Fanny’s unhappiness with the lack of communication in the online space seemed to spring from the inability to interact with her students and to develop trusting relationships to assess their learning, which resulted in feelings of personal inadequacy and professional failure, ‘I would say my grade profile has dropped, and all of that has made me question whether what I’m doing is right.’

The teachers talked about the importance of having, maintaining or creating trusting and close relationships with colleagues as sources for emotional support and validation of their practice. With the professional pride they related to new online digital tools they devised with their teams and used to support learning (Roland) or how their team worked together to deal with unexpected challenges, ‘you know, their ability to just roll with the punches, it’s been amazing’ (Joanne). If there was limited access to other members of the institution, as in the case of Ann and also novice teachers, Jane and Christine, they made conscious efforts to establish online spaces to reach others.

It seems that the anxieties about the impact of the global lockdown on people’s careers, health, families, and overall lives translated to the quality of relationships with staff members. A few participants referred to the lack of collegiality and real interest in collaboration or support, which, in some cases, caused emotional pain:

There’s been some really quite hurtful and really unprofessional and really quite hateful things done and said by some colleagues that’s made me just see them in a completely different light […] When we do ever eventually get back into that space again, that’s going to be a challenge, because […] I can see a number of fractured relationships across the whole faculty.

(George)

However the disillusionment felt with some staff members also led to the active establishment of new appreciative and supportive relationships within the institution (George, Roland), and a change in managerial style. Participants in leadership positions, George, Roland and Joanne, felt they became more pragmatic and emotionally resilient about what to expect from some of their colleagues, ‘it’s just made me rethink how to be with them. I think not to expect too much, from them. And then I won’t be upset because that’s it now.’ (Joanne)

Teachers’ stories referred to the loss of ‘unpredictable and unscripted’ (Natout 2020) corridor conversations that could bring spontaneity, collegiality, and free flow of ideas amongst the members of community regardless of their job roles. These conversations have already been recognised as valued sources of professional capital (McCrone 2021; Hargreaves and Fullan 2012) however their replacement with online communications within the teacher’s specific team is seen to have limited opportunities for professional growth:

What I loved was that the staff room, the kitchen, the corridor, […] nice, vibrant, bubbly, friendly places and I missed that. I missed the conversations with people who don’t do the same thing as me whereas now I only ever really see and talk to people who do the same thing as me and that is a challenge.

(George)

Similarly, novice teachers missed opportunities to engage in informal, unplanned conversations with their new colleagues that would ease their induction to the new professional community:

that kind of corridor chat and how much productivity comes actually from the corridor chat […] instead, it was, I had to send an email […] or ring them and […] we kept missing each other and I think that was when I felt very lonely.

(Christine)

In the effort to escape the constraints of one’s institutional hierarchy, isolation and estrangement, the teachers initiated the establishment of professional online relationships within the network of their own organisation and also joined networks of other professional online communities (Campbell et al. 2022). For example, Ann, who worked for a charity with dispersed centres across the whole of UK, created a drop-in online space for teachers in her organisation. This then increased a sense of belonging and addressed the need to overcome isolation:

[…] once a week for like an hour every week. I just opened […] a drop- in session for them to come along. […] it was just nice to meet them to be honest. […] I feel like I have a very good relationships with them, feel like I can email them.

(Ann)

Not having to travel to the workplace provided much needed mental space to explore and develop other professional relationships on a national and even global level. The response received became a source of emotional reward, as the participants’ work or research was acknowledged and positively recognised. They could see how it impacts on other people’s lives and work which strengthened the teachers’ confidence and transformed their vision for the future (Joanne, Roland, George):

there was space, […] logistical space or a mental space so I was able to pursue some things […]. A number of women approached me to just meet me […] just to talk to me about their careers […]. There was something about recognition for doing some things I was doing actually. Thinking about it, gosh, us going back in the first lockdown and I won an award!

(Joanne)

Theme 3: Vulnerability in the pastoral role – caring for students and colleagues

The teachers’ stories expressed serious concerns about the impact of the lockdown on their students’ as well as colleagues’ wellbeing and mental health. These nurturing perspectives sprang from the formative years before becoming a teacher, or during their teacher education programmes, which was evident in the first part of the interviews. However, increased workload linked to the pastoral role in some cases, led to a direct impact on the participants’ own mental health, ‘[…] I can see myself going into dark places sometimes when I’m having to listen to students talk to me about their own mental health problems […]’ (Fanny). In Fanny’s case, she commented on how female students had gravitated to her for advice and support even before the university lockdown, so caring for the wellbeing of the student who was stranded in the student halls due to the lockdown seemed to her a natural thing to do. However, having to deal with very sensitive issues via online video-conferencing tools was experienced as impersonal and ‘awful’ (Fanny).

Some participants critically reflected on the insufficient institutional strategies that would appropriately guide student expectations about the pastoral support provided, and how these became a source of conflict when ground rules were introduced,

I think the problem with the students is there have been some boundary issues regarding communication, so they started using platforms, such as Teams, as more of a chat function as in anytime day or night that they would try and get in touch. My colleague was having phone calls at 11 o’clock at night by Microsoft Teams, […] it was a constant

(Joanne)

Fanny described her strong empathy for students when they attended classes during the partial lockdown and the institution felt like ‘a ghost ship’. She decided to be ‘a lot more smiley and happier than I would normally be.’ However, she acknowledged the impact of the emotion labour on her own energy levels which was expressed in the comment, ‘I’d be glad when I’m not having to paint a fake smile on my face […].’

The concerns respondents raised were not only about students but also about the wellbeing of their colleagues. The sources of their vulnerability were coming from wider macro-level contexts when decisions were based on the impacts of funding. In Joanne’s case, she had to deal with staff redundancies as well as concerns about

admin stuff having to deal with the phone calls from distressed students … but they’re in their kitchens dealing with this.

(Joanne)

Joanne’s stories captured the feelings of anger and frustration when observing unfairness and lack of consideration of the impact of political decisions on the recipients of the service.

Other participants (Roland, George) talked about making conscious decisions not to pursue official-line directives, whilst being confident about the actions they took when engaging in non-compliance in order to respond more effectively to their students’ needs (Benesch 2020). However, there was an element of resistance in their voice when acknowledging no recognition or appreciation from wider meso-political structures of their institution. George’s refusal to follow some ‘mad faculty-wide committee’ directions to accommodate changes in the students’ assessment guidelines demonstrate how teachers found confidence in the act of reaffirmation of their core professional values, seeing ‘teaching as caring’, in the moments of deep social crisis,

It reaffirmed again going back to that original philosophy that if you put people’s health and wellbeing and their needs first you care for them, […] I just threw the rules out, […] able to navigate these things […] enabled me to be able to be a bit more confident and comfortable with saying well, actually, I can do this with the structures, a bit push them away, I can bring these things together for students.

(George)

Conclusion

Open or willing vulnerability (Lasky 2005) was seen as an integral dimension for teacher’s sense of their professional identity. The stories described teachers’ emotional journey from the states of anxiety and worry (when they questioned themselves as credible professionals) to the almost triumphant and certainly unexpected moments of positive reaffirmation of how they wished to see themselves as caring professionals. This re-affirmation came (and was accepted with gratitude) from their students’ feedback and/or from colleagues or from wider social/professional communities. In pursuing their own professional judgement, the respondents felt that they often acted against the institution’s top management set of rules, however, the exercise of autonomous decision-making revealed the sense of professional pride.

The findings point to the dominance of seeing their role through the lens of teaching-as-caring profession and, similarly to Søreide’s (2006) research, the teachers re-informed the vision of themselves as a kind and caring teacher. The lens of seeing oneself as a kind and caring teacher incorporated open and willing display of their vulnerability (Lasky 2005). Teacher vulnerability encompassed a wider perspective on their roles, including empathy with students and colleagues. It highlighted the teachers’ sense of accountability and their ethic of care when feeling personally responsible for and trying to mitigate the impact of the social and economic crisis on their students’ learning, future career opportunities whilst willingly exerting more energy and time on researching new pedagogical tools and strategies.

Seeing oneself as a kind and caring teacher incorporated caring for the wellbeing and professional growth of their colleagues. Teachers made conscious decisions to engage with colleagues and create virtual spaces for emotional comfort and professional development. They transformed their managerial style to successfully achieve the change. When experiencing a hostile or indifferent work environment, they managed their own emotional response through ‘self-policing emotional conduct’ (Miller and Gkonou 2018) or through conscious physical manifestation of their performance (Fanny) (Hargreaves 1998; McCrone 2021).

Talking about their life stories required the teachers to describe, explain, justify, but also challenge and critique their own actions and behaviours which triggered strong emotional responses to perceived self-image and self-esteem, in other words exposed their vulnerability. However, reflecting on the process of the interview, our sample of teachers found its storytelling format enjoyable, engaging, and almost cathartic. The journey was captured, decisions re-lived and re-evaluated and the vision for the future outlined with the new understanding of themselves and of the challenges and opportunities the new context might bring.

Implications

The research has highlighted some important elements around teacher professionalism and the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the development of teacher identity, particularly during the periods of extended lockdown in the UK. Teacher vulnerability and a strong sense of the need to adopt a caring and empathetic approach to students continue to dominate in the aftermath of the pandemic, as teachers experience a landscape which has been shaped and changed forever. Student mental health and the mental health of teachers remain at the forefront across the sector as the impact of COVID-19 continues to affect learning and teaching experiences. Being mindful of the necessity to strike a balance between providing the levels of support that are required for students and staff needs to be recognised in a wider context, through supportive management teams and the approach that organisations take to what is being termed as the ‘new normal’ (Hew et al. 2020).

The research has clearly demonstrated the importance of having a supportive community and extended opportunities to engage in critical reflection in order to critically review pedagogical practice, as a blended approach to teaching and learning has largely been adopted across the sector. The opportunities afforded during lockdown for teachers to develop their practice, becoming more creative and innovative, feeling empowered to challenge conventions and place their own professional knowledge at the heart of what they do, have provided increased autonomy within the sector. This is something that should continue as the sector goes through a period of dynamic change.

Storytelling as a research methodology also provides a platform for active reflection as participants engage in purposeful self-evaluation within a safe, respectful space. The opportunity for the teachers to spend some time to think as they shared their stories with the researchers, resulted in valuable time for self-reflection, enhanced through the process of active listening. This provides a powerful tool for wellbeing within a professional community and is something that should be explored further.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the participants of this study who agreed to tell us their stories about their professional journeys

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported for this study.

Appendix A

Interview protocol

Interviewer’s name:

Date/time of the interview:

Mode:

Length of the interview:

Interviewee’s name:

Age:

Professional background:

What is your current professional role (teacher/tutor/lecturer):

How long have you been in this role?

Introduction

Thank you for agreeing to take part in our research. We are interested in exploring what changes the lockdown and online delivery have brought to your professional life as a teacher; how you perceive these changes and what your possible vision for the future is. This interview may be slightly different from average interviews as I’ll be asking you to describe your views and experiences through a storytelling format. Consider the journey you have travelled so far since becoming teacher/professional.

The interview will last about an hour and is broken down into two parts.

The first part of the interview (15 to 30 minutes)

I will ask you to imagine that you are going to write a book about your professional life as a teacher. The book is divided into 3 chapters that describe different stages on your professional journey. Chapters (pre-March 2020).

I don’t expect you to tell me the whole story, but give me a sense of the story’s outline, based on these three, major chapters in your professional life as a teacher.

The second part of the interview (30 minutes)

This will focus on the fourth chapter (to date) that should cover the period of the sudden changes in your professional life (and role); the period from March 2020 up till now.

Any questions?

Let’s begin.

Part One (15 to 30 minutes)

Imagine that you are going to write a book about your professional life as a teacher. The book is divided into chapters that describe different stages on your professional journey as a teacher.

Identify at least three well-defined chapters (pre-March 2020).

Please can you give me the name of each chapter.

Briefly describe the overall contents for each chapter in a few sentences. This is not the full story, but the main outline for each chapter.

Part Two (30 minutes)

We’ll now focus on the fourth chapter (to date) that should cover the period of the sudden changes in your professional life (and role); the period from March 2020 up till now.

I’d like you to tell me five different stories. Each story will describe people who are there; what you are doing/were doing; where it took place; how you saw yourself and what you were telling yourself and what others were telling you; and what happened; what this made you think/feel about your role/professional life

1. The first story demonstrates the peak experience – the most wonderful episode you can describe during this period, since the first lockdown.

2. Now can you tell me a story that describes the lowest moment – something that was really difficult.

3. Please can you tell a story that describes an episode which challenged your perception of yourself as a teacher.

4. Now can you tell me a story that describes how your relationship with other people you work with has been affected (students, colleagues).

5. Finally, the projected future story – how do you see yourself and your professional role?

Can I approach you with the transcript to check accuracy please?

Appendix B

Table A2, Table A3, Table A4.

Table A2. Theme 1. Vulnerability – the questioning of professional credibility.

CODES	Responses
Pedagogical principles guiding their teaching practice are challenged	‘influenced by things like pedagogy of the oppressed’ ‘pedagogies of care’
Online learning seen as limiting learning gains (interlinked with student relationship)	‘I couldn’t see how it was going to […] pan out positively’
Emotional response – being worried; panic (interlinked with emotion labour)	‘I saw myself as being somebody that was really worried’ ‘I actually had a panic attack about the thought of doing classes that day to that environment’
Blaming themselves for not being able to establish appropriate relationship with students (interlinked with relationships)	‘I thought it’s me, they don’t like me, they don’t like what I’m doing, they don’t like the class’ ‘looking at all these faces just looking back at me’ ‘it’s the first time I’ve ever had an argument or a clash with students and it happened entirely because we were online’
Making extra effort (interlinked with a pastoral role)	‘online that’s so much more difficult’
Exhibiting own vulnerability to students to negotiate new approaches to learning	‘I said to them, I’ve never delivered a course online, you’ve never been to a course online, let’s just work it out’
Limited impact – student complaints (interlinked with emotion labour)	‘the student […] absolutely slated me as a teacher’
Renewed confidence via student/peer feedback & student outcomes/results	‘I was amazed, because the pass rates, the first-time pass rate for the students went up’
Reflection – a strategy to restore professional credibility	‘Reflect […] critical […] and then, what can I do differently next’

Table A3. Theme 2. Vulnerability in the changing dynamics of relationship development.

Codes	Responses
Teacher – student relationship: alienation and distancing from students	‘got quite bad student evaluation feedback’
Teacher – student relationship: Video off culture (interlinked with credibility)	‘like the talking into a black hole’
Teacher – student relationship: Immaturity of students	‘get themselves up in the morning and I’ve got to log on’
Teacher – teacher relationship: Finding emotional support	‘we dealt with it, and we did it as a team, so we own it. And that’s the important thing’
Teacher – teacher relationship: finding professional support	‘you know, their ability to just roll with the punches, it’s been amazing’
Teacher – teacher relationship: Tensions (linked with emotion labour)	‘There’s been some really quite hurtful and really unprofessional and really quite hateful things done’
Teacher-teacher relationship: missing the spontaneity of meeting a variety of people	‘that kind of corridor chat and how much productivity comes actually from the corridor chat’
Agency – creating online spaces to meet others (interlinked with caring for colleagues)	‘once a week for like an hour every week. I just opened […] a drop- in session for them to come along’
Opportunities to escape the constraints of one’s institutional position – global networking (professional recognition)	‘there was space, […] logistical space or a mental space so I was able to pursue … ’

Table A4. Theme 3: Vulnerability in the pastoral role – caring for students and colleagues.

Codes	Responses
impact on their own, their students’ & colleagues’ wellbeing & mental health	‘I can see myself going into dark places sometimes when I’m having to listen to students talk to me about their own mental health problems’ ‘admin stuff having to deal with the phone calls from distressed students … but they’re in their kitchens dealing with this … ’
Insufficient institutional resources to support students’ mental health (interlinked with student relationships)	‘some boundary issues regarding communication, so they started using platforms, such as Teams, as more of a chat function as in anytime day or night that they would try and get in touch … ‘My colleague was having phone calls at 11 o’clock at night by Microsoft Teams … ’
empathy for students and the impact on emotion labour	‘a lot more smiley and happier than I would normally be … ’ ‘I’d be glad when I’m not having to paint a fake smile on my face … ’
Non-compliance	‘if you put people’s health and wellbeing and their needs first you care for them, […] I just threw the rules out’