Carry on Caring: the work of women teachers

Abstract

This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, ‘Hillview’. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers’ caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teachers as mothers in the classroom, are noted. Next, I look at the ways in which the Hillview teachers cared for each other, creating a workplace culture characterized by collaboration, compassion, and community. Although a gender analysis is extremely important in understanding teachers’ work, this does not mean that teachers’ caring activities or workplace cultures are simply derived from any essential qualities of women. Hillview teachers struggled with ‘their’ children and with material conditions that contained sources of stress and frustration. Their close‐knit culture stemmed in part from the need to find collective strategies to compensate for the frustrations of their work; the culture gave them the impetus to keep doing what often seemed an impossible job.

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