Teachers’ Emotions in Minority Primary Schools: The Role of Power and Status

5.1 Research Questions and Design

The gap identified in the literature review pertains to the insufficient examination of how two widely discussed positive emotions (enjoyment and pride) and one negative emotion (frustration) are activated within the power/status framework. Existing research has not yet explored these emotional responses in sufficient detail through this lens. Therefore, our aim was to propose an alternative explanation for these emotional outcomes – both positive and negative – that provides greater nuance and depth than the four theoretical frameworks previously discussed. Our particular focus, regarding the negative emotions, is on the emotion that has attracted the most attention from researchers – frustration – for which we draw on Kemper’s theory of emotions to offer a more comprehensive explanation than those provided by the previously discussed theoretical frameworks. For instance, we explore whether there are qualitative differences in the experience of frustration depending on whether it arises from workload demands or interpersonal dynamics with colleagues. Similarly, for positive emotions, the frameworks presented in the literature review do not adequately account for why teachers experience enjoyment and pride, nor do they clarify whether these emotions differ qualitatively depending on whether they are directed toward interactions with headteachers or parents. Similarly, while dilemmatic situations in the literature are often identified as causes of teacher ambivalence, our study seeks to demonstrate that these dilemmas are, in fact, shaped by relational contexts of power and status – particularly within minority school settings. Accordingly, our objective is to explain how the interplay of power and status influences the ways in which teachers experience emotions such as enjoyment, pride, frustration, and dilemmas, depending on the various micro-relational contexts within the school environment.

The research questions guiding our study are as follows:

1. What are the beliefs of teachers working in minority schools in Thrace, specifically those teaching Greek as a second language, regarding minority education? This question allowed us to illuminate teachers’ lived experiences in relation to the broader community in which minority schools are located.

2. Under what conditions do these teachers experience enjoyment, pride, frustration, and dilemmatic situations in their professional roles?

3. In what ways do these emotional experiences shape their teaching practices?

The narrative research design was selected as the strategy for answering these questions (Webster & Mertova, 2007). Since the mid-1980’s, teachers’ life narratives have been the focus of educational research due to their potential to reveal not only lived experiences but also the hidden aspects of teachers’ lives inside and outside school. In this study, we employed the critical event approach to narratives. This choice was based on the understanding that specific events are key determinants in how we recall life experiences and that the way we reconstruct past critical events to our memory leads us to adapt strategies and processes to new situations. In addition, by analyzing the narratives people use to make sense of critical events, researchers can uncover the emotional and evaluative grounding of their reasons for action. In other words, the critical events approach to narrative research enabled us to identify the emotional aspects of the identities of teachers working in minority primary schools.

5.2 Research Tools

In order to collect data for the critical-event narrative research design, we employed the critical incident technique (CIT) complemented by a semi-structured interview. The semi-structured interview was designed to address questions 1 and 3 while the CIT was used to answer question 2. The interview guide focused on the following areas: (a) teacher’s views on the usefulness of minority education to the social context they work, (b) the challenges they encounter in their daily teaching lives, and (c) the factors they believe contribute to successful teaching. Although the question may appear broad, any kind of response was considered relevant, as encouraging teachers to reflect on successful teaching experiences allowed us to elicit insights into the positive and negative emotions associated with teaching.

The form of the CIT was the following:

1. Could you mention experiences in which you have been confronted with a dilemmatic situation?

2. Could you mention experiences in which you have felt frustration?

3. Could you mention experiences in which you felt pride?

4. Could you mention experiences in which you felt enjoyment?

We informed teachers that there were no specific types of experiences we were seeking. Rather, we were interested in any incidents related to their daily work in the minority school, such as school climate, issues concerning their teaching practices, the evaluation process, disciplinary matters, and relations with colleagues and parents.

5.3 Sampling Choices

The study took place during the first six months of 2023 and focused on five primary minority schools in one of the three prefectures of Thrace. Two of two of them are located in the city capital of the prefecture and three in rural areas. The selection of this specific prefecture was based on two primary reasons. First, the majority of Thrace’s minority schools are situated in this prefecture, which means that we had access to a typical case of the phenomenon under study based on demographic criteria. Second, one of the authors was raised in this prefecture, granting her an intimate understanding of the cultural and social dynamics within the minority schools. This insider knowledge allowed her to filter factual information and interpret the lived experiences shared by participants more effectively. The teachers were selected using the snowball sampling technique, which proved to be the most suitable method given the political and social sensitivities in the region.

Memos written by a member of the research team during school visits reveal how broader contextual tensions were mirrored in the dynamics of the interviews. One particularly telling observation from the field notes highlights the fear teachers felt toward the school headmaster – a fear that was notably more pronounced in schools located in the capital city of the prefecture, where the Turkish Consulate is based. According to comments made when the recording device was turned off, teachers believed that the Consulate exerted considerable influence, aiming to protect and promote what they perceived as the interests of the minority community – interests that some teachers controversially described as forming a “ghetto.” This atmosphere of fear had a clear impact on the interview process: teachers often spoke in hushed tones when discussing minority-related issues and appeared visibly anxious about ensuring the door was closed during interviews. It is important to note that, from the teachers’ perspective, school principals discriminated against Christian and post-secondary Muslim teachers. As evidence for this discrimination, they cited how principals handled national celebrations, such as the Greek Independence Day and their involvement in the teaching of sensitive topics, such as the Asia Minor catastrophe. These field observations illustrate that minority schools in Thrace present a challenging research context, making access difficult. This is why snowball sampling was an effective method, allowing us to gain entry to the field smoothly and without significant obstacles. Demographic information about the sample is presented in Table 1.

We collected data from 15 teachers who work in minority schools and teach in the Greek-speaking program. As shown in the demographic details in Table 1, the participants were experienced educators who had taught in minority schools for many years. This selection proved valuable, as these teachers had a wealth of experiences to share during both the formal interviews and informal discussions. Their extensive experience provided rich insights into the emotional dimensions of their professional identities, particularly in the context of the challenges and rewards they encounter in this unique educational environment.

5.4 Data Analysis

The data were analyzed using the version of thematic analysis developed by Ritchie, Spencer, and O’Connor (2003). In our study, we slightly modified this approach to better suit the nature of the data we collected. The steps in this modified version of analysis are as follows. First, all 15 interviews were coded line by line with some instances of in vivo coding. Second, the three axes as emerged from the CIT and the semi-structured interviews (teachers’ perspectives on minority education, the emotions and contexts shaping those emotions and how emotions affect teaching) were cross-tabulated with the participants. In each cell of the table, we identified the participants’ codes for each of the three axes. Finally, we analyzed each axis horizontally to create thematic charts, through which we identified themes that addressed the research questions. Themes are abstractions which have been emerged out of the semi-deductive coding guided by the interview axes and their aim is not only the response to research questions but the refinement of the theoretical framework we used, as well. We constructed four thematic matrices by the horizontal analysis of the cross-tabulated codes as emerged from step 2. Findings will be presented by using these thematic matrices from which the following themes have been identified:

• Socio-spatial differences in minority education according to teachers’ views,

• Contextual factors contributing to the formation of positive and negative emotions,

• Impact of emotions on teacher’s identity.

6.1 Social Differences and Language Use in Minority Education According to Teachers’ Views (Research Question 1)

One of the key areas we investigated was how teachers working in the Greek-speaking program of minority schools in Thrace understand and interpret minority education. We believe that the presentation of their views on this issue provides a framework for the discussion of emotions that will follow in the subsequent subsections. Table 2 summarizes the findings related to this issue.

Table 2 highlights a core belief among teachers, namely that the quality of minority education in Thrace is perceived to depend on whether minority families reside in rural or urban areas. In urban areas, minority students and their parents were reported to have a higher proficiency in Modern Greek compared to those from rural areas. One might hypothesize that this is attributable to the fact that, in urban areas, the linguistic communities coexist, which creates more opportunities for interaction and, consequently, for the use of the Greek language. The advanced proficiency level was considered by teachers as a factor facilitating the educational procedures.

On the contrary, in rural areas, the level of language proficiency was reported to be lower. The challenges of low proficiency were described by a participant as follows:

They didn’t know the language! For a whole month, I was constantly teaching them basic school vocabulary.

Moreover, in urban areas, school attendance was reportedly more consistent and collaboration with parents smoother. As one teacher working in a rural minority school stated:

In the (city) […] it’s simply easier to collaborate with parents. Because there, they understand that school is mandatory, and that if they help their child, the child will progress. Now, we’re not talking about everyone… but for the majority. People in the city are a bit more, let’s say, civilized… not that they aren’t here… but here (in rural areas) we often have to fight for the basics… like getting them to come to school…

Teachers reported tensions among subgroups of the minority, particularly in urban areas where socio-cultural heterogeneity in schools is more pronounced. This phenomenon was less evident in rural schools, where a greater degree of socio-cultural homogeneity exists. Specifically, tensions were reported between Muslim students of Turkish origin and Roma students.

Furthermore, teachers associated Roma students with irregular attendance and higher dropout rates. It seems that from the teachers’ point of view, Muslim families in rural areas are like closed systems which resist communication with the wider community and in which a specific type of reservation toward education has developed. Teachers justify this belief from the fact that Muslim parents avoid participating to minority schools’ activities in which parents are invited to discuss the learning process of their children.

Crucial findings for answering the research questions had been brought to light when teachers were asked about the difference that speaking the Turkish language makes in handling classroom and social relations. Teachers who do not know students’ mother tongue (Turkish language) do not seem to consider the knowledge of Turkish as a prerequisite for teaching, because they think that their work concerns exclusively the teaching of Greek.

“… I didn’t want to learn Turkish… after all, they live here …and my job is to teach …Turkish language is not helpful for teaching the subjects of the curriculum, I could learn some words… but students have to learn a whole sentence, not just some words

In contrast, teachers who are familiar with Turkish language believed that this is essential for helping minority students to learn the Greek-speaking curriculum of the school. Minority teachers make clear that speaking or understanding the Turkish language enables them to forge emotional bonds with students and to share a common worldview about the things that matter to the students.

understanding the Turkish language helps me to make sense of the implicit culture of the students, Greek-speaking teachers who do not know Turkish cannot even share a joke with the children, and these things bring us close to the students.

In addition, minority teachers who are in a position to understand students’ mother tongue are able to create a pleasant classroom climate by means of which teaching might be effective. For instance, when minority teachers know how to use Turkish as an aid in order to clarify a question of the students, then students’ trust to the teacher is more heightened. In other words, understanding students’ mother tongue is a means for increasing the sense of preparedness for the minority teachers.

I do not mean to speak Turkish as the main teaching language, I am just saying that mastering the grammatical structure of the Turkish language one can grasp the reasons why these students cannot learn speak Greek. I spent years trying to understand that students in Turkish put the verb at the end of a clause, I could not realize it before I learned Turkish. The grammatical structure of the Greek language differs, I was slow to understand that this is how their mother tongue is structured, we need to know the structure of their language so that we can also find the differences to spot them.”

To summarize the findings related to the first research question, we brought to light two social mechanisms through which minority teachers’ school life is enabled or restrained and their professional identity is shaped. In particular, we underlined, first, the difference the social space makes to students’ learning contexts and, second, the contribution of teachers’ speaking of the Turkish language to the teaching process.

6.2 Contextual Conditions for the Creation of Positive and Negative Emotions (Research Question 2)

In order to bring to light the main findings regarding the second research question, we will present two tables in which the contextual conditions for positive (Table 3) and negative emotions (Table 4) are highlighted.

Regarding the positive emotions, findings in Table 3 show that school culture and teachers’ agency in conjunction with specific social contexts in which teachers interact, contribute to the creation of positive emotions for minority teachers. In particular, by “school culture” we refer to such conditions as how teachers handle administrative issues of the school, the support teachers receive from school officials, the social recognition they receive from the community, and how positive the organizational climate of the school is.

Regarding the emotions resulting from teachers’ relations with students’ parents, it seems that when teachers’ educational work is recognized by parents, they feel to enjoy the social dimension of the teaching profession.

The day we were giving grades to students’ families, they were telling me how much I had contributed a lot to these children, that was a great pleasure for me

In addition, teachers’ pride is shaped not only when they help minority students to achieve learning goals but when they see their students enter adulthood by starting a family or taking a respectful job.

I teach for 26 years in this school, some students have been married, so they bring to me a marriage invitation and favors, this is a huge recognition for what I have done all these years

These excerpts show that teachers’ agency is not only a cognitive issue but an emergent property of the relations in which specific social bonds are developed. Pride and self-confidence are empowered due to their belief that the moral dimension of their profession is realized. Although self-confidence is typically considered a cognitive construct – referring to a belief in one’s abilities and competence – we regard it as closely related to self-efficacy, defined as an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute behaviors necessary for achieving specific performance outcomes. From a sociological perspective on teachers’ professional identity, however, self-efficacy aligns closely with what Priestley, Biesta, and Robinson (2015) describe as teacher agency. In their framework, agency is not treated as a fixed attribute or internal capacity that teachers inherently possess, but rather as something achieved through the dynamic interplay between individuals and their environments. Agency, in this sense, is an emergent phenomenon, arising from the interaction between personal resources and contextual conditions. Accordingly, when we refer to “self-confidence” in this study, we do so with this understanding of teacher agency in mind.

In our research, teachers tend to see their social role as a vocation in the Weberian sense, not as “a job,” and this means that they experience their role as a moral goal to be fulfilled. In that sense, we believe that the moral dimension of minority teachers’ identity is tied up with the social audiences with which they are related in their everyday life, within and outside school. It appears that the more teachers perceive themselves as capable of positively influencing their pupils’ lives through their work, the more likely they are to feel a sense of pride. In this regard, agency – understood as the teacher’s self-perception of their capacity to affect educational outcomes – emerges not merely as a professional competency but also as a moral issue. This moral dimension is grounded in the belief that one’s actions have meaningful consequences for others, thereby imbuing teaching with a sense of ethical responsibility and personal significance.

However, we have to note that social relations with colleagues were absent from teachers’ narrations as a context for experiencing positive emotions. Although we have no explanation for this finding, we were surprised by the fact that teachers experienced only negative emotions with their colleagues, as the following part of the analysis suggests.

Regarding the negative emotions, Table 4 summarizes how emotions emerged out of the intersection of teachers’ relational contexts with specific conditions such as the administrative demands, the teaching process, students’ parents, and relations with colleagues.

Teachers’ frustration seems to emerge out of various combinations of conditions. For instance, the conditions that give rise to frustration and disappointment have to do with teachers’ belief that administration does not recognize their work or that students resist learning or show disrespect to their work. As a teacher told us,

I couldn’t find a way to approach students, I was walking into the classroom and no one was listening to me. For more than a month I couldn’t find a way how to get close to them, I didn’t know how or what to do (I3)

This passage affirms that teachers make sense of their job not just as a list of tasks that have to be fulfilled but as an emotionally charged experience which is full of vulnerable equilibriums. A similar context in which frustration is developed concerns cases for which teachers believe that they cannot correspond to students’ learning needs. This is an emotion that may lie dormant for a long time and affects negatively teachers’ identity.

School administration affects teachers’ emotions when teachers feel that they are not supported in cases in which they need its assistance. This feeling sometimes gives rise to tensions between teachers and the school administration, which intensifies the sense that teachers’ work is seen as insignificant. In that sense, frustration/disappointment emerges out of a vulnerable role relation. Additionally, the negative emotions experienced by teachers regarding school administration include a sense of fear. In some cases, teachers report feeling intense anxiety, which leads them to adopt specific behaviors for self-protection. Instances such as whispering during interviews were observed to ensure the confidentiality of the interview content from school administration. A notable example involves a teacher’s effort to confirm that the office door was closed and another teacher’s deliberate suggestion to conduct the interview in an off-campus location. It is also evident that teachers tend to avoid references to religious (Christian) topics, such as Easter and Christmas celebrations, personal name day celebrations, or disagreements concerning historical issues. These include events such as the celebrations of March 25 or the content of specific chapters in the History curriculum, during which teachers receive specific directives.

These behaviors were particularly evident in minority schools in Komotini, where teachers highlighted the decisive role and presence of the Turkish consulate. Teachers noted that decisions concerning the school are often influenced by directives from the consulate, which are followed by school administrations, creating an environment of tension and uncertainty. In schools located in the surrounding areas, these phenomena were less pronounced, underscoring the variations between different school environments.

Teachers’ feelings of insecurity often manifest when they encounter challenges arising from their students’ limited proficiency in Modern Greek. These feelings are particularly pronounced during the early stages of their professional careers. The following excerpt exemplifies the intensity of these emotions and the inadequate professional preparation for addressing such challenges…

When I first entered a minority school as a substitute teacher, even though I was from the area, I knew almost nothing about the situation there. I remember entering the classroom and being completely unable to communicate. The language barrier was a significant challenge at the time. […]. I found myself overwhelmed by the situation, unable to cope with what was happening around me. […] It was a challenging initial experience, even though I had consciously chosen to work in this environment. I spent a lot of time wondering if I had made the right decision. (Σ5)

Vulnerability was an experience tied up not only with insecurity and frustration but dilemmatic situations as well. This is obvious to how teachers handle tensions and conflicts among students. We consider it to be one of the main sources for teachers’ experiencing dilemmatic situations.

two children (Roma and Muslim) had come into conflict and were fighting each other. Deciding whose side I should support was a dilemma for me because parents of both children would have come to school for complaints.

Another source of dilemmatic situations concerned how teachers dealt with parents’ interventions to the teaching process. There were parents who were telling teachers what teaching style to adopt in class and this made teachers oscillating between adopting what parents wanted and implementing their own teaching methodology. Parents were also intervening in ways which were in contrast to the official rules of the school. Thus, in such cases, teachers had to decide whether to sidestep these rules in order to maintain the positive climate with parents or not. Another dilemmatic situation concerned the handling of bilingualism. In particular, learning the Turkish language for teaching purposes or not made teachers feel ambivalent.

Finally, it was a surprise for us that not only relations with colleagues were not shapers of positive emotions, but they were a context in which negative emotions were developing. Relational evils like intense competition among colleagues, absence of cooperative spirit, and attempts which undermined teachers’ development were some of the reasons teachers provided which made them to be reserved to the formation of an esprit de corps among teachers in minority schools. In addition, because of this climate, teachers distance themselves from each other and were adopting an individualistic stance toward the professional bonds.

I am frustrated about the relations with my colleagues, when I needed some assistance most of my colleagues were not helpful, most of them are too competitive and are reserved of sharing even teaching material (I11)

From what we have said up to now regarding the social conditions which give rise to negative emotions, one could easily guess their effects upon teachers’ identities. In the next section, we deal with this issue.

6.3 How Emotions Affect Teachers’ Identities (Research Question 3)

It seems that the above-mentioned positive and negative emotional experiences of teachers shape their professional identities at the personal and at the professional level. Regarding the first, when we say that emotions affect positively teachers as a person, we mean that in cases of enjoyment, pride, and self-confidence, they find reasons to merge the personal with their role identity. In such cases, emotions act as motives for further engagement to the role identity of the teacher. Asking teachers to recall instances of successful teaching practices proved to be good evidence for the connection of positive emotions with teachers’ identities, such as pride.

I was proud of encouraging students to create their own class newspaper, even those who were afraid of writing, were so active to this collective effort.

The motivational aspect of the positive emotions becomes apparent to the fact that these emotions may boost teachers’ creativity through which they implement teaching methods. When teachers were mentioning such successful teaching methods as the use of music, dramatization or the use of Greek and Turkish language, they underlined the enjoyment that permeated classroom experience as a whole. This enhanced the feeling of happiness when they reconstructing their teaching career as a whole.

Negative emotions impacted teachers’ life both at the personal and at the professional level as well. Negative emotions may make teachers withdraw their energy when, for example, they have to prepare extra-curricular activities for students and become less creative. Sometimes, frustration creates to teachers the feel that they are unable to fulfill the moral goal of their profession.

My priority has always been my students, I remember a student who was in a great panic about his transition to high school, he had a refusal to continue schooling. I was trying to discuss with him but I did not make it, I felt incompetent as a teacher to realize a so important goal, this is probably the only case I will never forget because a few years later I was told that this student left school.

To summarize, emotions may affect teachers either by making them withdraw energy from the tasks related to teachers’ professional tasks or feel incompetent or by motivating them to increase the energy they devote to engage with the teaching role. It needs to be stressed that in both cases, it is the moral dimension of the teaching profession that intensifies the emotional energy of these outcomes.