Abstract
A staffroom plays a number of roles, from café, through professional learning space, to independent work area. As a place of community, personal and professional relationships and camaraderie can thrive in a staffroom. Conversely, it can be a place where personal and professional relationships become fractured, resulting in a negative emotional response for the individual teacher. This qualitative case study explored the social and micropolitical factors that existed within a staffroom and played into the daily interactions and relationships of 17 Australian secondary school teachers who shared the same space. Individual interviews were conducted, focussing on emotions and emotional experiences encountered in the staffroom. This paper examines collegial relations and their impact on the emotional disposition of the individual teacher while sharing a staffroom. Thematic analysis revealed three principal factors as being in operation when participants discussed the nature of their relationships with colleagues in the staffroom: the role of emotional labour and emotional work, the sense of surveillance from visiting senior staff members, and the influence of different forms of collegiality developed with their peers. Findings emphasise the important effect of staffroom relationships on the professional and personal emotionality of a high school teacher, an underexplored area of teachers’ work.
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Parks, M., McKay, L. Teacher emotions and emotional labour: the significance of staffroom relationships in an Australian high school. Aust. Educ. Res. 50, 845–861 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00529-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-022-00529-0