Cruel Optimism in Teacher Education: Governing Teacher Professionalism Through Affective Infrastructures and Technologies of Patience

• In Event: Politics of Affect: The Technologies of Governance in Making Normative Subjectivities in Education

Abstract

Objectives
This paper critically explores the paradoxical hope of making professional teachers in South Korea. Building on education research that examines the affective dimensions of teacher practice in nationally centralized systems (Moore & Clarke, 2016; Rasmussen, 2015), we investigate how “affective infrastructure” (Zembylas, 2023) governs the ways teachers perform their professional roles. We ask:
How do the promises of teacher education constrain, rather than support, teachers’ professional flourishing?
What institutional technologies and systemic practices shape, and potentially unmake, teachers’ professional identities?

Theoretical Framework
We draw on Lauren Berlant’s (2011) concept of cruel optimism, which describes situations “when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing” (p. 1). In particular, we examine how professional ideals in teacher education operate as “technologies of patience” (p. 28), to explain normative expectations that teachers endure unsatisfying or harmful conditions with the hope of future reward. Rather than individual competencies or motivations, we interrogate how structural forces and emotional investments shape teacher subjectivities.

Methods
This participatory, inquiry-based qualitative study (Karlsen & Hildebrandt, 2023) centers non-hierarchical relationships between researchers and participants. Four elementary teachers who participated in the 2023 teacher rallies in South Korea (Yoon, 2023) with over five years of teaching experience took part in the study. We conducted individual interviews, followed by four group discussions focused on: (1) teacher education experiences; (2) certification exams; (3) issues of class, gender, and justice; and (4) teacher agency. We used artifact-based methods (e.g., news articles, photos, posters) to prompt reflection (Bautista García-Vera, 2023). Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), progressing from open to axial coding (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). All transcripts were cross-checked with video recordings to confirm tone and context, resulting in 19 refined axial codes.

Findings
Teachers entered the profession with hopeful beliefs such as “I love learning” or “it’s a good job for women.” These statements reveal how optimism governs teacher professional identity, yet our analysis explicates technologies of patience; teachers’ trust that hard work and endurance will eventually lead to better conditions. While expressing sympathy toward peers, teachers also noted how emotional labor has been normalized under neoliberal reform agendas. We also found the fear, accumulated even from teachers’ K-12 learning and exam experiences, has contributed to their compliance with unjust systems. Lastly, the study space became a site of collective critical reflection, where participants recognized that they were not educated to challenge structural injustice.

Significance
Departing from psychological explanations of teacher motivation or grit (Kirchgasler, 2018), we highlight moments of impasse when teachers feel they cannot move forward (Berlant, 2011). A critical gap is identified in teacher education research and policy: the emphasis on content and pedagogy/methods without addressing how teacher identities are shaped by institutional and affective structures. Our findings reframe teacher attrition not as individual disinterest or burnout but as the product of systemic affective governance, which Zembylas (2023) calls “affective infrastructure.” It challenges dominant narratives of professionalism and calls for reimagining teacher education as a space of critical, emotional, and political formation.

Authors

• Sun Young Lee, Wichita State University

• Soo Bin Jang, University of Delaware