From authority figure to emotion worker: attitudes towards school discipline in Finnish schoolteachers’ journals from the 1950s to the 1980s

Abstract

The article discusses the change in attitudes towards school discipline in Finnish schoolteachers’ professional journals from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. In explaining this change, the article draws from the studies of Cas Wouters and Arlie Hochschild. At the beginning of the studied period, the discussions in the schoolteachers’ professional journals were dominated by conservative views, which promoted authoritarian solutions to schools’ discipline-related problems. Over the next decades, however, these discussions came to be dominated by progressive views, which placed great value on the individual needs and rights of children. This emphasised the nature of teaching as a form of emotional labour, and it also raised discussion on how teachers could better adapt themselves to the emotional demands of the new democratic school culture.

Keywords:

• authority
• democratization
• emotional labour
• Finland
• historical sociology
• school discipline
• schoolteachers
• Wouters

Acknowledgements

We greatly acknowledge the importance of the Crafting the Ideal Employee Research Group in developing the original ideas expressed in this study.

Additional information

Funding

The study was financially supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 267172].