When Trust Becomes Risk: Governing Affects in Teacher–Parent Interaction in China

• In Event: From policy to practice: Trust, risk, inclusion, and teacher agency in education

Proposal

1.Objectives
Teaching involves complex emotional work with students, colleagues, parents, and stakeholders (Hargreaves, 2001; Yin & Lee, 2012; Levine Brown et al., 2023). Global education marketization and parental empowerment (Brown, 1990; Ball, 2012; Addi-Raccah & Arviv-Elyashiv, 2008), alongside advocacy for home–school collaboration (Christenson, 2004; Fan & Chen, 2001), heighten emotional demands. Teachers are expected to meet student and parent needs (Zhang & Yu, 2017) and maintain positive relationships (Green et al., 2007), requiring empathy, listening, and emotional regulation. Professionalism increasingly entails “multiple professionalisms” (Mehta & Teles, 2014).
In China, state accountability and policies promoting teacher authority (MOE et al., 2024) create dual pressures. Yet parent–teacher conflicts grow more frequent. Key questions arise: What should teachers feel toward parents? Whose rules define this? What do these rules reveal about home–school dynamics and teacher professionalism? This study uses qualitative interviews (2024–2025) to examine teachers’ feeling rules (Hochschild, 1979) and their structural roots.
2.Perspective
Hochschild (1979) defines feeling rules as normative expectations about appropriate emotions. Prior studies focus on display rules (Sutton, 2004) or broader emotional rules (Hopman, 2019). Feeling rules go deeper than outward expression; they reflect teachers’ own negotiation of norms. They are shaped by school power dynamics and institutional cultures (Zembylas, 2002). This study introduces an analytical framework of feeling structure to examine Chinese teachers’ emotional configurations.
3.Methods
Research questions: (1) What feeling rules do teachers perceive with parents, and from where? (2) How do these rules influence interactions and outcomes?
Given the sensitivity of emotional topics, qualitative methods were used: focus groups and in-depth interviews.
Phase 1 (Aug 2024): focus groups with teachers of varied backgrounds, following heterogeneity and anonymity principles (Krueger & Casey, 2015). Scenarios of teacher–parent interaction were discussed to identify emotional experiences and their sources.
Phase 2 (June 2025): follow-up one-on-one interviews with classroom teachers, focusing on how feeling rules are formed and enacted. Interviews occurred after trust-building in Phase 1.
Data Sources
Participants: 58 teachers from a national in-service training program; diverse in region, subject, and grade level. Focus groups (6–8 teachers) lasted 90–120 minutes, facilitated by an experienced moderator; all were audio-recorded with consent.
Eighteen class teachers joined follow-up interviews (60–120 min). All transcripts were analyzed thematically; cross-referencing ensured consistency.
4.Results
Teachers’ Feeling Structure: Navigating Contradictory Rules
Teachers’ interactions with parents are governed by overlapping performative, professional, and political feeling rules. Performative logic stems from accountability tools such as complaint channels and parent–school platforms. Echoing Ball (2003), teachers internalize a “trace consciousness,” treating emotional exchanges as verifiable acts to prevent blame. Professional norms, rooted in cultural notions of care and parental expectations, demand patience, tolerance, and rationality. Political pressures require teachers to protect school image—balancing warmth with authority so as not to appear weak or be manipulated. These often conflicting logics create a complex emotional framework.
Decline of Authenticity: When Trust Becomes Risk
While emotional regulation is common in modern work (Hochschild, 1983), teaching’s ethical nature makes such regulation especially fraught. Palmer’s (1998) “courage to teach” contrasts with teachers’ growing fear of connection. To reduce risk, they develop defensive emotional strategies: praise carefully, use euphemisms, avoid deep involvement, and withhold trust. Rather than forming authentic bonds, they maintain safe distance; emotions become filtered performances. Trust and intimacy—once central to education—now carry institutional danger.
Seeking Resistance: School Support and Rule Negotiation
Some schools provide buffers that allow teachers to renegotiate feeling rules: internal feedback and complaint channels, neutral investigations, and administrative mediation help teachers seek support when conflicts arise. These trust-based arrangements move teachers from passive compliance to active negotiation of emotional norms. However, in performance-driven schools, management may side with parents to maintain external stability, further undermining teachers’ emotional security. Variation across schools shows feeling rules are contested, not fixed, and teachers’ agency depends on institutional context.
6.Significance
This study contextualizes Chinese teachers’ feeling rules, revealing shifting professionalism, emotional costs of performativity, and changing trust dynamics. It expands the concept of feeling structure as socially constructed and politically situated. Teachers’ emotional rules are not static but continuously negotiated within institutional frameworks.

Authors

• Xinyue Zhou, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

• xiaoqian peng