Miller, Elizabeth R and Gkonou, Christina (2023) Exploring Teacher Caring as a “Happy Object” in Language Teacher Accounts of Happiness. Applied Linguistics, 44 (2). pp. 328-346. DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amac034
Miller, Elizabeth R and Gkonou, Christina (2023) Exploring Teacher Caring as a “Happy Object” in Language Teacher Accounts of Happiness. Applied Linguistics, 44 (2). pp. 328-346. DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amac034
Miller, Elizabeth R and Gkonou, Christina (2023) Exploring Teacher Caring as a “Happy Object” in Language Teacher Accounts of Happiness. Applied Linguistics, 44 (2). pp. 328-346. DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amac034
Abstract
This article explores how the language teachers in our study associated particular teaching experiences with feeling happy in qualitative interview accounts. Adopting a critical poststructural orientation, it uses the concept of sticky objects (Ahmed 2010; Benesch 2017) to explore how contexts, social discourses, relationships and emotional norms are entangled in and shape emotions such as happiness. More particularly, it adopts Ahmed’s (2010) notion of “happy objects” in exploring language teachers’ associations of “teacher caring” with feeling happy. Rather than exploring what happiness is, this study investigates what happiness does to and for language teachers, focusing on their accounts of teacher caring. It argues that the happy object of teacher caring is enmeshed in normative discourses that cast individual teachers as responsible for caring enough in order to help their students to succeed as determined by institutional norms of student achievement. Ultimately, it contends that accounts of teacher happiness require careful scrutiny for what they can tell us about the complex intersections of emotions with normative discourses, structures and values.
Item Type: | Article |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Language and Linguistics, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 07 Jan 2024 21:37 |
Last Modified: | 26 Aug 2024 01:00 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/34719 |
Available files
Filename: Miller_Gkonou_2022_Applied Linguistics.pdf