1st Edition

The Affected Teacher Psychosocial Perspectives on Professional Experience and Policy Resistance

By Alex Moore Copyright 2018
    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    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

    Biography

    Alex Moore is an Emeritus Professor at UCL Institute of Education. Previously, he taught in inner-city secondary schools for eighteen years, and was Head of the PGCE Secondary and MA in Education Programmes at Goldsmiths University of London. His earlier books include The Good Teacher: Dominant Discourses in Teacher Education (2004) and Understanding the School Curriculum: Theory, Politics and Principles (2014), both published by Routledge.