What Urban Teachers Don’t Learn: Emotional Labor and Student Connection as Topics in Professional Development

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Current Issues in Professional Development

Abstract

This proposal describes dissertation research and advances it towards practice by giving an account of a series of teacher seminars using the findings. In the original research, I describe the specific ways in which urban high school teachers regulate their affective selves – also called emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) - as they seek to maintain physical and psychological proximity to their students. I also use inductive coding to show the patterns of affective presentation that tend to build academically productive relationships with students. The current project expands on this work by applying these skill sets to a series of professional development opportunities and by giving an account of the process and outcomes in ongoing relationship-building seminars.

Author

• Christopher Soto, Carlbrook School