Description
At a time when teaching and learning policy too often presents itself in a simplistic input-output language of measurable targets and objectives, The Affected Teacher explores the role played by emotionality in how professional life is experienced by school teachers. The book argues that, in the very highly organised and structured social spaces of public institutions, emotionality - or, more precisely, all that is included in the concept of ‘affect’ - needs to be recognised and validated, rather than ignored or pathologised.
It explores how neoliberal education policy seeks to mould professional subjectivities, relationships and practices; how teachers experience and ‘manage’ their feelings; and the role that affect plays in guiding either compliance with or resistance to often unpopular policy directives. Drawing on a rich body of original data comprising formal and informal discussions with a range of teachers, the case is argued for psychoanalytically and politically informed individual and group reflexivity, both as a form of professional and personal development and as a way of keeping alive alternative beliefs and understandings regarding the purposes of education.
The Affected Teacher is relevant to practising schoolteachers and to undergraduate and graduate students and academics involved in education related courses such as policy studies, education management and the sociology of education, as well as disciplines related to psychosocial studies and psychoanalysis.
Table of Contents
Preface: Background and Presentation Part 1: Contexts and Theory: Reflexivity, psychoanalysis and empowerment Chapter 1: Reflexivity and Psychoanalysis Chapter 2: Discourse, Ideology and Affect Chapter 3: Fear and Love Part 2: Repetition and Transference: Reflexivity as personal and professional development Chapter 4: New Editions of Old Contracts Chapter 5: Affect, Communication and ‘Absence’: Performativity and anti-caring Part 3: Reflexivity, Discourse and the Affective Pull Chapter 6: Not Rocking the Boat: Virtuous pragmatism and the allure of normalcy Chapter 7: The Loss and Return of the Happy Object Part 4: Resistance and Refusal: Towards a reflexivity of the group Chapter 8: Reflexivity and the Group: Validating affect, challenging hegemony
