Emotions and English Language Teaching Exploring Teachers’ Emotion Labor

Taking a critical approach that considers the role of power, and resistance to power, in teachers? affective lives, Sarah Benesch examines the relationship between English language teaching and emotions in postsecondary classrooms. The exploration takes into account implicit feeling rules that may drive institutional expectations of teacher performance and affect teachers? responses to and decisions about pedagogical matters. Based on interviews with postsecondary English language teachers, the book analyzes ways in which they negotiate tension?theorized as emotion labor?between feeling rules and teachers? professional training and/or experience, in particularly challenging areas of teaching: high-stakes literacy testing; responding to student writing; plagiarism; and attendance. Discussion of this rich interview data offers an expanded and nuanced understanding of English language teaching, one positing teachers? emotion labor as a framework for theorizing emotions critically and as a tool of teacher agency and resistance.

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

2 Theorizing Emotions

3 Theorizing Emotion Labor

4 High-Stakes Literacy Testing and Emotion Labor

5 Responding to Student Writing and Emotion Labor

6 Plagiarism and Emotion Labor

7 Attendance and Emotion Labor

8 Conclusion and Pedagogical Implications

Index

Sarah Benesch is Professor Emerita of English, College of Staten Island, The City University of New York, USA.