Care Ethics, Social Reproduction, and Intensification: A Framework for Control and Oppression in Teachers' Work

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 12:40 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Investigating the Lived Policy Experiences of Teachers and Administrators (Table 23)

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between teacher’s enactment of care ethics, the reproduction of motherhood in teachers’ work, and care’s contribution to the intensification of teachers’ labor. Drawing on feminist care ethics, social reproduction, and Apple’s intensification thesis, this study describes the complex web of gender, labor, and socio-psychological forces impacting teachers’ work. Findings: 1) Care ethics influence teacher conceptions of what “good teachers” do and constrain teachers’ ability to set professional boundaries around their labor; 2) Care expectations normalize intensification and contribute new labor and social expectations that align with the neoliberal project; 3) These care expectations have resulted gendered oppressions and the state capture of motherhood to address broad social, political, and economic policy goals.

Author

• Janel Anderson, Gonzaga University