Working More and Feeling Better? Revisiting Teachers' Work Intensification Thesis in the Korean Context

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher-Initiated Change: Empowerment, Engagement, and Shared Leadership

Abstract

This case study is designed to illustrate the patterns of teachers’ time use and their emotions at two elementary schools with distinctly different organizational cultures. Drawing on intensification thesis, this study analyzes how teachers’ work intensification represented by their time use is mediated by those organizational features. Using innovative, mixed method design including experience sampling method, time diary, and interviews, this study systematically examines the qualitative as well as the quantitative feature of teachers’ time use. The results show that work intensification can be alleviated by the organizational mediation of the schools. However, the results also show that work intensification can be paradoxically aggravated by the similar organizational intervention, making it an intriguing case to investigate.

Authors

• Ba-Ul Paul Chung, Seoul National University of Education

• Koeun Kim, New Mexico State University