The power of emotional factors in English teaching

One of the most prevalent ways in which power works in education is by separating out and segmenting knowledge areas so that their corresponding synergies and connective augmentations are nullified. This article takes secondary English teaching as an example of these complex social processes, and presents research that brings disparate fields of investigation together. On the one hand,teachers may be polarised and challenged by curriculum changes and governmental mandates that could infringe upon their everyday practice. On the other, every teacher in the profession will bring their interior and emotional life to bear on their ways of working, and this aspect of teaching has not been connected to curriculum change. This research proposes a conjunction of educational emotion and discursive identities, through an analysis of the ways in which teachers perceive curriculum change and their personal teaching and learning realities. This investigation has also been worked into the teacher training of pre-service (or trainee) secondary English teachers, so that they may realise how such concerns may be understood conjointly.