Teacher care work in situations of severe deprivation

Abstract

This study examines the care work of teachers employed at two schools in situations of severe deprivation. At the teachers’ places of employment, basic amenities and complementary support structures for sustaining students’ psychosocial, economic and emotional needs were absent. The focus of the article is twofold: firstly, to fathom the reasons why teachers voluntarily expressed care for impoverished students by way of providing them with food, money and counselling; and secondly, to determine the outcomes of caring on their (the teachers’) well-being. The data was generated through narrative inquiry. The narratives made visible four key influences that motivated the teachers to provide students with pastoral and academic care, namely teachers’ early life experiences, religious beliefs, students’ living conditions, and beliefs about the importance of education. The study revealed that the pastoral care and academic work of teachers in deprived schools is arduous, extensive and protracted and comes at financial and emotional cost to the teachers who chose to care. A Derridian reading of the findings suggests that pastoral care is a complex phenomenon, comprising a combination of hazards and benefits for carers that are paradoxical, ambivalent and inseparable in nature.

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