Surviving diversity in times of performativity: Understanding teachers' emotional experience of change

In this chapter we focus on the way teachers experience their job and their professional identity. Our narrative and biographical approach allows for an in-depth reconstruction of the political and moral tensions teachers experience; the pressure to reconceptualise their selves; and as a consequence the emotional quality of their work lives. We argue that the changes in the working conditions deeply affect teachers both in their professional actions and the emotional experience of the job. Teachers experience intense emotional conflicts as they struggle to cope with conflicting identity scenarios, the web of (conflicting) loyalties they find themselves in, etc. Our findings confirm, exemplify and deepen earlier work on vulnerability as a structural characteristic of the teaching job. © 2009 Springer-Verlag US.status: publishe