The life–course formation of teachers’ profession. How emotions affect VET teachers’ social identity.

Abstract

One of the less developed issues in the sociology of education concerns how the social formation of emotions affects teachers’ collective identities. In this article we outline the ingredients of a conceptual scheme explaining the emotional dynamics which form teachers’ social identities through a life-course perspective. In particular, we show how educational and job experiences related to teachers’ social trajectories create emotional dynamics in their identities which undermine the sense of belongingness to their profession. Our methodology was based on biographical – narrative interviews treated through a Critical Realism prism in order to bring to the fore the causal process through which a specific outcome is formed. By researching the extreme case of VET teachers in Greece who were put into redundancy for two years in the memorandum years, we explore why the threat of job loss, instead of mobilizing collective action, feeds feelings of self-blame and of shame which annul teachers’ social ties.