In recent years, many teachers suffered different kinds of negative emotions in the context of education reforms. A typical explanation was that the education reforms disempowered teachers in teaching, so teachers were forced to do much non-instructional work. Teachers considered their work meaningless but were powerless to change it, and eventually indulged themselves in negative emotions. However, the present research suggested that this explanation had neglected teacher agency and might be incomplete. Arguing from the perspective of social constructionism, the research showed that teachers in Hong Kong experienced negative emotions in education reforms because, on top of the disempowerment, the reforms structurally displaced teachers’ educational goals with administrative goals. The goal displacement impeded teachers’ evaluation of the instructional values of their work. Thus, teachers perceived their work as inconsistent with their major purpose of teaching (i.e. making a difference) and they felt negative towards work. Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The study explores the social psychological process of teachers’ emotional experiences. Twenty-one secondary schoolteachers in Hong Kong were interviewed. The findings show that the teachers generally felt caam² (a Cantonese adjective that covers a range of meanings like gloomy, dreadful, tragic, pitiful, pathetic, and miserable) in teaching. The social psychological process of the emotional experience of caam² involves how teachers interpret the significance of their actual work in attaining the teaching goal of making a difference. If they interpret their work as incapable of fulfilling the goal, they will experience negative emotions in teaching. The findings also suggest that the interpretation is affected by teachers’ power which is unequally distributed according to teachers’ teaching experience and managerial roles. Copyright © 2016 Tsang and Kwong.

In recent years, many teachers suffered different kinds of negative emotions in the context of education reforms. A typical explanation was that the education reforms disempowered teachers in teaching, so teachers were forced to do much non-instructional work. Teachers considered their work meaningless but were powerless to change it, and eventually indulged themselves in negative emotions. However, the present research suggested that this explanation had neglected teacher agency and might be incomplete. Arguing from the perspective of social constructionism, the research showed that teachers in Hong Kong experienced negative emotions in education reforms because, on top of the disempowerment, the reforms structurally displaced teachers' educational goals with administrative goals. The goal displacement impeded teachers' evaluation of the instructional values of their work. Thus, teachers perceived their work as inconsistent with their major purpose of teaching (i.e. making a difference) and they felt negative towards work.
[Copyright of British Journal of Sociology of Education is the property of Routledge.]