Karen Brennan the Managed Teacher : Emotional Labour , Education , and Technology

Arlie Russell Hochschild’s (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, documents the institutionalization of emotion. While the teaching profession is not prominently featured in The Managed Heart, teachers offer a compelling example of institutionalized emotion. Not only is emotional labour expected of teachers, but teachers are a significant force in the reproduction of emotional institutionalization. In this paper, I argue that, as a consequence of their professional duties, teachers perform significant emotional labour and that the teaching profession requires strategies to mitigate the negative consequences of emotional labour. I discuss theoretical frameworks for emotion and emotional labour, as introduced by Hochschild and elaborated by others. I then examine the expectations, conditions, and effects of emotional labour for teachers and discuss strategies, with particular focus on technology, for managing consequences of emotional labour. Finally, I consider the possibility of using chatbots as a specific technology-based coping strategy and discuss a chatbot that I created for this purpose.