Intersections of social justice and emotion labor among English language teachers: A perezhivanie inquiry

Abstract

In light of the recent growth of research on social justice and emotion labor in TESOL teacher education, the present study aimed to fill a gap regarding the intersections of these two constructs. Thus, the study explored emotion labor and social justice among Iranian English language teachers through the theoretical lens of perezhivanie. Data were collected from narrative frames and semi-structured interviews as situated within a narrative inquiry methodology. Data analyses showed that the teachers' perezhivanie included not just how contextual demands and institutional expectations impeded effective actualization of social justice, but the latter itself became a source of emotion labor for the teachers through discourse, culture, and ideology. The findings highlight that inasmuch as social justice is a constructive purpose in educational work, it should equally be understood and enacted cautiously because it has the potential to become a source of emotional challenges and professional conundrums for teachers. We provide implications for teachers and teacher educators to contextualize social justice based on situational particularities so that teachers’ perezhivanie is featured more by emotional transformation than by emotion labor.