Care Labor and the American Teacher [electronic resource]

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Care theory began as an ethical framework focused on the creation of classrooms and schools that treat students and communities in more empathetic and meaningful ways. Over thirty years after its application to the field, there is broad agreement that students need caring classrooms and teachers have come to be the primary providers of this care. There is room for concern however, that care's framework inadequately accounts for the racial, gendered, and economic constraints of women laboring in care work, particularly in K-12 schools. This inductive mixed-methods descriptive study offers insight into the ways these care obligations have transformed teachers' work. The current study uses survey data from 260 secondary teachers in the US as well as interview data to describe the work teachers do to provide students' academic, physical, social-emotional, and beyond school care and the challenges they face as they take on the labor care requires. Results reveal that care obligations have deep associations with a gendered workplace hegemony that influences what, how, and who is expected to provide care labor for children in schools. Care in teaching is tied to the valorized identity of "mother," capitalizing on women's socialization to provide maternal care. The valor associated with this maternal care operates to bind women to work that is intensifying, oppressive, and conducted within working conditions that are often unresponsive to the needs of teachers and their students. In addition, the teaching field has established no clear definitions of or boundaries around professional care obligations, leaving teachers obligated to provide care for students in what teachers describe as a virtually boundless labor condition. This entangles teachers in an oppressive double bind wherein they choose to do work that contributes to their own oppression, driven by a sense of urgency to provide the care they believe their students need. This study provides empirical evidence of the way modern care expectations are situated within teachers work and the social conditions impacting the field. There is further evidence that there is a relationship between the intensification of these care obligations and destabilizing dissatisfaction in the field that contributes to attrition. The teaching profession, federal and state governments, districts, and school leaders must work to clarify care expectations along with acceptable boundaries around teacher work. Schools must work to address teacher working conditions to ensure teachers are provided the necessary work time and structure needed to carry out the care work that is necessary to build and sustain caring schools for all children and has become recognized as an expected part of teacher professional work.