Gender and emotions in relationships: a group of teachers recalling their own teachers

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Gender and emotions in relationships:a group of teachers recalling their ownteachersMinna Uitto a & Eila Estola aa Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education ,University of Oulu , Oulu, FinlandPublished online: 21 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Minna Uitto & Eila Estola (2009) Gender and emotions in relationships:a group of teachers recalling their own teachers, Gender and Education, 21:5, 517-530, DOI:10.1080/09540250802667591

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Gender and EducationVol. 21, No. 5, September 2009, 517–530

ISSN 0954-0253 print/ISSN 1360-0516 online© 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/09540250802667591http://www.informaworld.com

Gender and emotions in relationships: a group of teachers recalling their own teachers

Minna Uitto* and Eila Estola

Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, University of Oulu, Oulu, FinlandTaylor and FrancisCGEE_A_366929.sgm(Received 2 April 2008; final version received 24 September 2008)10.1080/09540250802667591Gender and Education0954-0253 (print)/1360-0516 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & [email protected]

This narrative inquiry analyses the memories of a group of female teachers tellingabout their own teachers. We ask how gender and emotions are intertwined toteacher–student relationships. Gender was present in the stories where the teachersdescribed being a schoolgirl in relationship with a teacher and told about theirteachers as women and men. The collective process of recalling evoked theemotions experienced as students, but these emotions were also interpreted inthe present context. When recalling, the teachers were reconstructing the past inthe light of the present and the future. The article highlights the significance forteachers reflecting on their own educational histories.

Keywords: emotions; gender; narrative inquiry; teachers; teacher memories;teacher–student relationship

Introduction

We focus on studying the teacher–student relationships described by a group of sevenfemale teachers when collectively recalling their former teachers. From the point ofview of narrative teacher research, teacher memories are understood in this researchas stories from the past that relate to people’s personal lives and experiences as formerstudents. While sharing their memories of their own teachers, however, the partici-pants were not so much describing the past as it really happened but were rather recon-structing it in the light of the present and the future (see Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach,and Zilber 1998; Smith and Paul 2000).

It is not surprising that teachers were recalled in relationships with their students,since a teacher’s work has been understood, above all, as relational by nature (e.g. vanManen 1991), and stories of teacher–student relationships have come up when peoplehave been asked to recall their teachers (e.g. Smith and Paul 2000; Uitto and Syrjälä2008). We found it important to examine teacher–student relationships more closelyfrom the students’ point of view. As we participated in the group of teachers andlistened to their memories, we noticed the importance of gender and emotions in therelationships between teachers and students. Many researchers do describe howgender and emotions are produced in educational practices and stories, and how theyare intertwined with each other (Crawford et al. 1992; Davies et al. 2001; Gordon2006; Kosonen 1998; Lesko 1988; Mitchell and Weber 1999). Nevertheless, there is

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

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518 M. Uitto and E. Estola

little research of how the memories about teachers in relationships with their femalestudents are intertwined with gender and emotions.

Gender was present in the stories where the participants described being a school-girl in relationship with a teacher and told about their teachers as women and men. Theteacher was often identified as a woman or a man right at the beginning of the story.When recalling their teachers, the participants discussed what it means to be a femaleor a male teacher, sometimes challenging the stories of female teachers as caregiversand male teachers as discipliners (cf. Renold 2006). We agree with Grumet (1988),who points out that the associations of teaching with femininity cannot be ignored.Research should pay attention to gender in teacher–student relationships, rather thanassume gender as neutral or as having no meaning. Teachers and students were repre-sented as embodied in the relationship, as also suggested by Paechter (2006a, 2006b),who emphasises the importance of recognising the body in the construction ofgender.1

The participants’ stories of their emotions in teacher–student relationships showedteaching and learning as emotional practices (Hargreaves 2000, 2002). As we under-stand emotions, they are not merely people’s personal and private experiencesgrounded in individual competence, but experiences constructed and organised insocial relationships (Boler 1997; Hargreaves 2000; Zembylas 2004). The participantswere telling us about their emotions experienced as students, they were interpretingthese emotions in the present context as teachers, and the moment of recalling evokedfurther emotions in them. The storytelling situation has an impact on how and whenparticular emotions are expressed or controlled (see Hargreaves 2002; Zembylas2004). Using narrative material from a group of teachers recalling their own formerteachers, we address the following question: How are gender and emotions inter-twined to teacher–student relationships?

Methodology

A group of female teachers were recruited to meet 16 times during one and a half yearsin the INTO (Inspirational Narratives of Teaching as an Opportunity) project carriedout in 2004–2005.2 The teacher memory material used here is from the fourth meetingin February 2004. At this point the participants were still getting to know each otherbetter. Seven of the 11 teachers were present in the meeting dealing with memories:Airi, Elina, Heidi, Kirsi, Maija, Maria and Virpi. (All the names of people and placesin the memories have been changed or omitted.) These female teachers worked atdifferent levels in the Finnish school system. Their ages ranged from 30 to 60.

The memory-work method developed by Frigga Haug has been applied in groupsdealing with memories (Crawford et al. 1992; Davies et al. 2001). However, in ourgroup we aimed to develop a method founded on everyday discussion and theoreticalunderstanding of the significance of stories in making sense of life and experiences(Estola et al. 2007). Based on our methodological commitments we understand that bytelling, listening and sharing stories, the storytellers can find new perspectives on theirlives. Although we as the authors had research interests, the group served primarily asvoluntary in-service training for the participating teachers. Different narrative ways ofworking were used to encourage the participants to discuss their life stories in theframework of well-being and coping as a teacher.

There were four of us female researchers planning and organising the sessionstogether, and present in each group meeting. Our relationships with the participants

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Gender and Education 519

became rather close and long-term. We perceived our roles as participatory, alsosharing fragments of our stories, and aiming to provide interpretations of the storiesthat were told in the group. Two researchers, including Eila, were responsible for thetimetable and the tasks and themes of the sessions. One researcher participated in thediscussions, but also made general notes on the group and the stories shared in it.Minna was in charge of data collection, i.e. for videotaping the sessions and transcrib-ing the session analysed here.

Although we use the concept of ‘memory’, we do not see teacher memories asstatic. As the quotations from the group will reveal, recalling is interactive, activeand interpretative (Kerby 1991; Wertsch 2002). The purpose and audience of story-telling may colour what is told and a person’s choice to become a teacher may influ-ence the way s/he recalls school (and teachers) (Mitchell and Weber 1999, 12–14). Itis impossible to say what is genuine or permanent in people’s memories. Yet, whatpeople remember and forget may tell something about them as individual persons,about the society and about the relationship between them and society (Kosonen1998, 280–1).

The session was held in a peaceful place outside the teachers’ workplaces. Theparticipants of the group were reminded of the theme of the session.

Eila: And today … we will recall the school memories of childhood, and someone mayalso have some kindergarten memories, although we may be of that age group whohave not been in kindergarten, but it is early memories like that we have thoughtof sharing today.

The lively atmosphere of the session varied from humour and laughter to seriousness.We will focus here on the memories that dealt with teachers and the students’ relation-ships with them. Some of the memories were very detailed, even chronological, whileothers were more fragmentary. The participants sat in a circle and took turns to telltheir memories. Often, however, the shared memories evoked further memories andcaused the participants to recall something they had not thought about before (Davieset al. 2001). During or after someone had told about her memories, the othersresponded in various ways: they asked questions, responded non-verbally, commentedor reflected the topic against their personal experience of being teachers. Collectiverecalling was continued for about an hour. After this, the discussion turned to thefuture. As our interest lies in teacher memories and the relationships revealed throughthem, we will here concentrate on the part of the session when the participants weresharing memories as a group.

Process of analysis

The focus of our research took shape gradually in the course of it (Clandinin andConnelly 2000; Craig and Huber 2007). The process of analysis was characterised byinductive reading of the memories, which helped to extract phenomena from thememory material itself. Our analysis recognised the memories as the result of a collec-tive process of recalling (Davies et al. 2001). We saw the memories as formerstudents’ experiences of their teachers, while acknowledging that these formerstudents were now themselves teachers. The memories were not treated as mutuallyseparate individual accounts, but they were studied in the group context. Four distinct,though overlapping phases can be distinguished in our analysis:

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(1) In the group. The analysis of the memory material was started in the group,since both of us were present, and after the session, we shared our observa-tions. These first observations were quick impressions of, for example, howthe group participants were telling about their teacher–student relationships.Transcription was supplemented by notes on non-verbal expressions, bodilypositions and movements of the person recalling her teachers.

(2) First readings of the transcription. The memories were situated in time andplace. They pertained to the Finnish educational system, both formal andinformal occasions, with the exception of the memories of one teacher, who isoriginally from another country. The participants mostly concentrated on theirearly school years (day care centre and primary school), but they seemed tomove back and forth between past and present.

(3) Clarifying the focus of research. Further readings confirmed our initial obser-vation: teachers were recalled in relationship with their students. As wethematically analysed the recalled relationships, the importance of gender andemotions in the relationships became obvious. It made us ask: how is theteacher remembered as a woman or a man? What kinds of memories do formerstudents have of their female and male teachers? How are emotions present inthe recalled relationships? What kind of teacher–student relationships are theformer students telling about?

(4) Reading teacher–student relationships from the viewpoint of gender andemotions. We decided to focus on gender and emotions in teacher–studentrelationships and began to analyse these themes in more detail. The remem-bered teachers were first identified as women or men. After these identifica-tions, however, the stories portrayed many different kinds of female and maleteachers. It was not possible to distinguish any typical relationships of femaleor male teachers with their students. The variety of emotions was also vast.

While watching the videotaped recording of the session together, we paidattention to the recalled events that were highly emotional, but only suggestedthat a teacher was involved without specifying the teacher’s gender. Thesememories could not be ignored, because they also told about the relationshipsof female students with their teachers. The teacher was implicitly present inthe memories, and the memories were full of emotions.

Our attention drew to the particular ways how the participants were tellingabout teacher–student relationships. They either kept returning to each other’smemories of particular kinds of relationships or some recalled relationshipswere followed by intense and active discussion (that did not involve furtherreturning). Based on this we distinguished memories of admired teachers,teachers who seemed to be frustrated with their work, teachers who had hurttheir students’ feelings and teachers who constrained or provided possibilitiesfor the students. We use these distinctions to illustrate the complexity andintertwining of gender and emotions in relationships.

Memories of gender and emotions in teacher–student relationships

Admiration of teachers

We will first deal with teacher–student relationships where the teacher was admired.This perspective was introduced by Heidi, who begins by recalling her piano teacher.Heidi is in her thirties and works in post-secondary education. She starts by identifying

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her teacher as ‘a lady in a red shirt’ and by showing a photo of herself and her childwith her piano teacher. Heidi emphasises the teacher’s significance for her both profes-sionally and personally as she describes her:

this teacher’s significance was such that, without her, I don’t think I would have chosenthis career and I wouldn’t have what it takes. She somehow had the courage to demandthings from me, she was the first person to start to demand anything at all from me. …Afterwards I have thought that I really grew up with her, she was there for me all thattime.

In this story Heidi ascribes gender to her memory by describing her teacher’s appear-ance and her being a role model for herself towards becoming a teacher. She identifiedher teacher as a woman, which was common: the recalled teachers were identified aswomen or men.3 This labelling seemed to be self-evident and is apparently done at aglance through the body (Mitchell and Weber 1999). The labelling is not surprising,however. According to Gordon (2006, 6), ‘bodies in space are constructed as femaleor male’, and Paechter (2006b) also reminds us of the meaning of body while discuss-ing the concept of gender. The emotional nature of this teacher–student relationship isevident in Heidi’s comment on the teacher’s contribution to her growth. The relation-ship has since continued as mutual friendship. Although Heidi seemingly admires herteacher, her admiration is not without critique, as she later says that she would notnecessarily teach her students in the same way.

At first, no-one takes up Heidi’s memory, but later Maria, a 40-year-old teacherworking in a day care centre, resumes the theme by telling about her teacher who ‘wasso wonderful that I adored her’. The memory dates back to the time when Maria was9 or 10 years old.

Maria: But the teacher was a woman and then came her birthday. I was really excitedabout that and I bought her a pen because her own pens were always lost. I hadbought her a pen and came to school with the present. It turned out that someonewas having a surprise birthday party and when they saw I was coming with thepresent, they almost ripped off the present from my hands and put it in the sameplace with the other presents. They had arranged a surprise birthday party for myteacher and I had had no idea. I was so disappointed and it bothered me when allthose presents were put in the same place. Of course as a child I hoped that theteacher would have come to know that I was the one who gave her the pen.[Laughs. Others agree, mmm…], but now I think it doesn’t matter. It was sowonderful that all pupils were involved, but where was I when I had not figuredit out that they were arranging a party for her. Nobody had told me. Or was itbecause all kinds of things had been happening, and I just had not noticedanything [Laughs.] … So now, no wonder if Hannu [Maria’s younger son]doesn’t know where Matti [Maria’s older son] is. [Laughs. Others laugh.]

Maria introduces her teacher as a woman. Her memory reminds us of pupils’ emotionstowards their teachers and continues to demonstrate the significance of teachers in thechild’s life. Whereas teachers are often described as the caring parties in teacher–student relationships (Noddings 1992), the child in this memory wants to show hercaring emotions to the teacher. When Maria started her storytelling, she explained thismemory to have affected her lately: ‘I notice how little, in the end, children know ofwhat is going on’. She explains that this memory of hers helps her understand her ownchildren better. Maria’s story reflects on what Grumet (1988) emphasises: the need toview teaching through domesticity and through women’s experiences of nurture. The

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way Maria describes the meaning of her memory in relation to her own children seemsto highlight teacher–student relationships as repeating the mother–child intimacies ofone’s own childhood and parenting (Grumet 1988, 86–7).

Airi’s story adds to the tapestry of memories of admired teachers. She recalled atime ‘around 50 years ago in a remote village’ where she went to primary school. Airi,a day care centre teacher in her fifties, begins by saying that teachers were usuallyfemale, but her class once had a recently widowed male teacher. ‘This Ville teacherhad a violin and he played to us quite often.’ Again, the teacher is identified as a maleteacher, and in Airi’s memory this is also shown by his name.

Airi: … and then there came this moment when three of the pupils needed to haveglasses, and I was one of them … this teacher brought us to [a town] in hisVolkswagen. Two boys and a girl. We went to the eye specialist and then wewent to a florist’s, and I then thought there that oh how beautifully the ladyowner of the shop and this teacher of mine smile to each other. [Others laugh.]And then he seemed to be very much in his thoughts and dreams while we weredriving back over 100 kilometres, and when the next Saturday came … he tookthat violin right away and played with the violin Sä kasvoit neito kaunoinen[Others laugh.] isäsi majassa4 [The teacher had often played a different song.],and later I heard and I knew that they were in love. After that I have alwaysunderstood that if two adult people look at each other really beautifully, then itis true love.

Airi’s story actually consists of two stories about emotional relationships. On the onehand, it is a story of a caring male teacher who took pupils to the eye specialist’sappointment, played the violin, and was ‘a really wonderful teacher’. On the otherhand, it is a story about how a pupil is watching an episode at the florist’s, which sheinterprets as a love story between the male teacher and the female florist. Through herteacher’s body, Airi interpreted his emotions and understood what love really is, andwhat it looks like when two people are in love. The look is essentially dialogical, asGrumet (1988, 97) states. And she continues that, like speech, it can be ‘given andreceived, returned or refused’.

The teacher’s body taught Airi about love and emotions without the teacherprobably even realising it. Elina pursues Airi’s theme by saying, ‘I often think, whenI am with my pupils, that they read me all the time, and I sometimes wonder what apupil is thinking’. A teacher may even use her/his body very consciously in teaching,as did Michalko (2003), who through his blindness demonstrated the privileged roleof sight in knowing, and questioned some established norms. Elina, who is a primaryschool teacher in her fifties, tells about her godfather. Again the teacher is labelleddistinctively as a male teacher.

Elina: … every Christmas for four or five years I got from them, from this man, an itemthat he had made himself … and I sometimes had the impression that he waspretty tired in his work, and I thought that still he went through the trouble ofmaking that kind of present every year for her goddaughter, he had a big family… I have been thinking that in the middle of all that tiredness in his life he didthat … I think that he must have had some kind of inner fire when he whippedup that kind of [item].

Both Airi’s and Elina’s stories remind us that the most important things at school oftenoccur outside the formal education in the informal bodily curriculum (Lesko 1988).Compared to the formal school curriculum, the bodily curriculum has diverse regimes

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of how to behave and act. As Elina’s story reveals, the same person, in Elina’s caseher godfather, can be both tired and frustrated and caring.5 These memories of Airiand Elina challenge the stereotypic images of female teachers being carers and maleteachers being authorities.

Frustrated teachers in relationship with their students

Some participants of the group remembered their teachers as frustrated with theirwork. Elina’s memory of her godfather was expanded on by Virpi, a primary schoolteacher in her forties. She started to tell about her own male teachers, emphasising thatshe had not ‘remembered the feeling’ until Elina told about her godfather. This is anexample of how other people’s memories and a collective process of recalling one’steachers evoked emotions.

Virpi: … back then when I was a child and went to school, I just now realised that thiskind of thing came to my mind, that all the male teachers I can remember, theyall seemed to be frustrated with their work. Women were such that they didtheir work somehow, but all men were somehow, they seemed to have somekind of a problem. Like, one did his work half-heartedly, all [the pupils] knewthat he is there with us, but that in reality he doesn’t like his work. They wereall men.

Virpi makes a sharp contrast between male and female teachers. Female teachers atleast accomplished their tasks moderately well, but all male teachers in her story hadproblems. Virpi interprets her male teachers’ emotions, feeling that they were frus-trated with their work. The memory reveals what it means for a student to feel that herteacher ‘is there with us’, but ‘in reality doesn’t like his work’. This memory of Virpi’sseems to reflect the expectation that teachers should control their negative emotions,such as frustration, in their desire to be good teachers and only express positiveemotions (Isenbarger and Zembylas 2006, 132; Zembylas 2004).

Elina responds to Virpi’s recalling and explains that the male teacher she was tellingabout was her godfather, and that she was not his pupil at any point. She then starts toretell her memories of her godfather and emphasises his role for her as an intellectualrole model and as one capable of mediating values to his students, ‘which a super-energetic female teacher would not necessarily be [capable of doing]’. Now Elinamakes a contrast between female and male teachers, but she points out the good abilitiesof her godfather in comparison to ‘a super-energetic female teacher’. The expectationsinscribed to females and males (Gordon 2006, 6) show in the contrasts made by theparticipants between their former teachers.

The teacher–student relationships become realised in the body and in bodilyactions, through which the teacher is present and works (Estola and Elbaz-Luwisch2003). The indifference and frustration of Virpi’s male teachers showed in theirbodies, and the students sensed it with their own bodies. Virpi describes how

it’s kind of a feeling that I have had of male teachers as a child. They all did their workonly half-heartedly and in such a way that you sensed from them that they were not reallypresent at work but somehow the work got on their nerves.

In this memory, the teacher’s body reveals what the work means to him, and Virpiuses very bodily metaphors to describe this, such as ‘work only half-heartedly’6 and

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‘the work got on their nerves’. Virpi’s memory of her male teachers being frustratedwith their work is an example of how the students interpret their teachers’ emotionsand how important these students’ experiences are for teacher–student relationships(see Zembylas 2004).

Virpi continues to emphasise how she ‘cannot remember a single man from therewho would really have put his heart into it’. However, at the end of this episode, Virpichanges her point of view and describes how the situation has changed and seeminglyimplies that female teachers’ work has not changed, or that nowadays male teachersare doing their work the way they should do, as female teachers do. In the followingquote, Virpi interprets male teachers’ emotions from the point of view of being ateacher herself.

Virpi: … as I have said to my husband, that today male teachers are much more motivatedin their work when they can use computers and they have all these gadgets, theyall have ZZZZ [Makes a sound.], they are so happy. [Others laugh.] So that theirjob has changed. It is not similar anymore.

Maria: Well, let’s not yet generalise. [Laughs.][Others laugh.]

This part of the group discussion clearly compared male and female teachers and theirway of relating to the students. The discussion seemed to highlight the differencesbetween male and female teachers. It mattered whether the teacher was a woman or aman, and Virpi attributed her teachers’ frustration to them being male. Yet, althoughsome of the participants agreed with Virpi, this image of male teachers was not sharedby all of them. For example, Maria commented critically by referring to her own expe-riences, and we already quoted Elina and Airi, who told about their male teachers ascaring and admired.

Teachers hurting the student’s feelings

Some stories of teacher–student relationships turned out to be hurtful for the students.Maria’s memory dates back to a nursery school held by nuns and relates to anoffensive incident. Such situations, in which the teacher from the pupil’s point of viewfails to encounter the child, can become moments that seem to define the whole rela-tionship with the teacher (Uitto and Syrjälä 2008).

Maria: …but about this nursery school, think, although I was so young … I recall thatwe were to sit in a circle and then they came to pick up the children in ones andtwos. Then one teacher came and she grabbed me by the hair and did like this.[Grabbing her own hair and pulling it backwards.] She looked that no, boom[Lets go of her hair.], so she was looking for someone’s children. [Laughs.Others laugh too. Maria turns serious.] I remember that, and it really hurt myfeelings. It really did. I have thought about it many times. The image often comesto my mind. And I think that I won’t do anything that hard, not even by accident,to other children. But the nuns were strict.

Maria’s memory is an example of how a schoolgirl is controlled through her body(Connor et al. 2004). Maria tells about herself as an object that was merely bodilydealt with by the active subject, the strict authority, the nun, and how her emotionswere not taken into consideration. What mattered was not merely what the teacher did,but how she did it (Paul and Colucci 2000, 49). While sharing her memory, Maria

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empathises bodily, demonstrating the teacher’s actions and how they affected herbody: by grabbing her own hair at the back of her head and by then letting it go.Maria’s memory illustrates how also a female teacher in early childhood educationcan be experienced as a strict authority.

When Maria describes the offensiveness of the situation, she turns totally serious.This seems to reveal something about the situation’s offensively emotional nature.Maria presents her teacher’s actions as non-desirable, as something that she as ateacher and as an adult would never herself do to any child. As she talks about thehurting nature of the incident, she seems to be taking a position within the story ‘as towhat comprises the “good”’ (Smith and Perez 2000, 109).

What seemed to make this event even more emotionally important to Maria is thespecific time and place where it happened. Hence, when Kirsi, a teacher in a daycare centre in her forties, explains that Maria’s memory brought back into her mindsomething similar from her textile work class on the first grade, Maria interrupts andcorrects Kirsi by explaining that her memory was from nursery school. Maria’s andKirsi’s stories show how the process of telling stories and recalling became embod-ied (Davies et al. 2001; Hargreaves 2002) and enabled the listeners to ‘imagine theexperience being described’ (Davies et al. 2001, 169). Clothing, hair style, nameand, in this memory even the subject taught are all suggestive of the teacher’sgender.

Kirsi: …Well my fringe had grown so long that the teacher attached it aside with apiece of masking tape [Shows with her hand how the hair was attached asidefrom the eyes.] [Others react; one comments, ‘how awful!’.] and told me to sayat home that my fringe must be cut because I can’t see anything. [Laughs. Othersreact; some start talking quietly with each other.] This is one of this kind ofmemories, and of course it did not feel too bad back then, but afterwards I havemany times [thought about it] and I do remember it well. So for a child it reallymust have felt weird…

Maria: We also in the day care centre will start to put masking tape on all [Shows withher hand.] let’s mark those children [Laughs.]

Kirsi: [Laughs.] Yes.

Kirsi’s and Maria’s memories are examples of teachers’ use of power towardschildren and their bodies. Gender is performed with bodies (Paechter 2006a, 2006b),and Kirsi’s memory reminds us of how the appearance and being of schoolgirls,including their clothes, hair and behaviour, are under control in school (Lesko 1988).Paechter (2006b, 127–9) explains that, since educating the mind has been highlightedin school, a lot of time has been spent on disciplining and confining the students’bodies.

Similarly to Maria, Kirsi shows with her hand how the teacher attached her hairaside with a piece of masking tape. We learn to attach many kinds of feelings to thecontrolled and gendered body. In Maria’s and Kirsi’s memories the past events werere-lived through the bodies when the repressive experiences were re-enacted as bodilymovements and as a still remaining emotion of experienced injustice. When the partic-ipants recalled their teachers, they named and verbally communicated emotions, butMaria’s and Kirsi’s memories show that the experience of emotions is also ‘an embod-ied process’, as Gordon (2006, 5) puts it. Through one’s body it becomes visible thatthe bodies still recall how they were made to feel (Kosonen 1998). The discussion isbrought to the present time by Maria’s remark, and it is followed by Virpi’s commenton what she has done and said as a teacher:

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I probably have said to some pupil when the pupil may say that my eyes hurt all the time,they may complain all the time, that you must go and cut your hair … Never have I yetused any masking tape.

Teachers constraining and providing possibilities for students

Some of the participants told us memories of teacher–student relationships, in whichthe practices of teachers constrained students or provided possibilities for them. Thesememories included emotional events, but only suggested that a teacher was involved.In Kirsi’s memory from the day care centre, the teacher is setting the rules and restric-tions. This piece of discussion is an example of how the participants were collectivelyreconstructing their memories and how Elina’s comment offered a different perspec-tive to Kirsi’s story:

Kirsi: … and lunches were awful when you had to eat, and I really was a lousy eater,and I cried. I remember this when I was crying with this cold, this kind of egg,what was it back then, this white sauce that had egg on it?

Eila: White sauce.Kirsi: White sauce with egg.Elina [simultaneously with Kirsi]: But that was good.

[Laughter.]Kirsi: It was cold and it was bad [Others laugh.], and all the others came already in

from the break, and I was still crying over that plate, and from this I still haveaw- awful school memories, but I guess that otherwise the time in kindergar-ten was nice.

The memory describes how Kirsi as a child had to follow and obey the rules setby the teacher: ‘you had to eat’. She reflects the discipline and order against herobedience as a schoolgirl (Palmu 2007; see also Lesko 1988). Her story shows theway a student comes to understand how to behave in certain situations: through suchexperiences of physical contact, remembering the bodily, and in this case alsoemotional, reaction to the contact and becoming informed of how not to behave(Connor et al. 2004, 507).

Kirsi proceeded to tell about teachers who organised, took care of things andprovided possibilities for the students. She tells how important it was at birthdays to‘get a card and then be allowed to peep into a basket where there was, where yougot to choose a small item’. This story of teacher–student relationships is continuedlater by Maija, who is a primary school teacher in her forties. Although Maija doesnot state explicitly whether her teacher is a woman or a man, we wonder if theteacher is so obviously female that she does not even have to say it (cf. Grumet1988).

Maija: … I have been thinking that it must have somehow guided me to thisteacher’s profession, when I always got to, when others had their nap time …Maija got to go and sit there as a teacher, and I read a fairytale to the othersand then when they all fell asleep one after another, I was then there next tothem [Nodding.] [Laughs.][Others laugh.]

Maria: Did you get a reward?[Laughter.]

Maija: I don’t remember what I got, but I never had to sleep, and it was probably thenthat I was just there watching when the others were sleeping. I was very mucha teacher. [Gives a laugh.]

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Maija’s memory from the day care centre indicates that she was allowed to do some-thing other than the other children and had privileges given by a teacher. When sherecalls her watching other children sleep, she keeps nodding; these nods seem toemphasise the meaning of this event for her as a child. For Maija, this memory offeeling special had been a significant experience on her path of becoming a teacher.Maija ‘got to go and sit there as a teacher’, and she ‘never had to sleep’. Her story,however, is different from those told by most participants, who described themselvesas having been wild and lively girls. Maija’s memory of how she ‘was very much ateacher’ and got to read a book to the other children are examples of the transfer ofthe practices of caring and responsibility from women to girls (Crawford et al. 1992;Grumet 1988), and they show how teaching is culturally constructed as femininework. Children actively regulate their teachers’ gender, and teachers similarly regu-late their students’ gender (Renold 2006, 446).

Conclusions

In this article we have discussed the teacher–student relationships described by agroup of seven teachers when recalling their own former teachers. The participantswere collectively sharing their experiences of being female students in relationshipswith teachers. We illustrated how gender and emotions complexly intertwine witheach other in the relationship. There were teachers who were admired by the students,teachers who, from a student’s point of view, seemed to be frustrated with their work,teachers who hurt their students’ feelings, and teachers who constrained and providedpossibilities for their students.

The memories opened up female students’ perspectives on their teacher relation-ships. After the remembered teacher was often identified as a woman or a man, theparticipants continued to tell about how these teachers related to their students, howthey treated them and made them feel (Hargreaves 2002). The body seemed to beimportant in these identifications and relationships (see Paechter 2006a, 2006b). Forsome of the storytellers, being a man or a woman determined the teacher’s way ofbeing a teacher in the relationship, and contrasts between male and female teacherswere made. Yet, there were also stories that questioned these contrasts and showedthat there are many possible ways to be a female or male teacher. Female teacherscould be authorities and male teachers carers. In addition, the participants sharedmemories that only implicitly suggested that the person behind the events was ateacher. For these memories, the relevant thing was not whether the teacher was awoman or a man, but what her/his practices were like, how they felt, and what kind ofemotions they evoked.

The participants’ descriptions of emotions in teacher–student relationships demon-strate how teaching activates, colours and affects the students’ feelings and actions(Hargreaves 2000, 2002). They recalled how they as schoolgirls had felt during aparticular event or towards their teacher. Some of these emotions were retrospective,but some were also interpreted in the present context from the perspective of thestudents now being teachers themselves. The memories showed how the students hadinterpreted their teachers’ emotions and how the emotions had shown in their teach-ers’ way of being in a relationship with the students (see Hargreaves 2000). Emotionsalso revealed the effects of power (Zembylas 2004). Some of the participants had‘stored’ in their bodies movements that had to do with their teacher’s use of power andthe way they had touched the students’ emotions and space.

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While recalling their teachers, the participants were at the same time exploringthemselves as female teachers and as teachers with emotions. They reflected theirvalues and ideals on what kind of teachers they are and want to be. The participantsseemed to be moving back and forth between their experiences of domesticity andteaching, between being with children of one’s own and children of others (Grumet1988, xv) and between being students of teachers and teachers of students.

Our research contributes to the efforts to make school a more democratic, caringand equal place by encouraging teachers to become aware of their histories (see Smithand Paul 2000). We recognise that a group working together for a long time has poten-tial significance for its participants. The group helps the teachers to reflect on thedifferent phases of their own life-stories. Stories of other teachers can provide peersupport and open up new and different ways to look at one’s own story. Working longterm with a group makes it possible for the researchers to provide interpretations ofthe participants’ stories. This may promote participants to reflect teaching as arelational practice, in which gender and emotions are significant. In addition, method-ologically, storytelling and recalling as collective processes can make visible themesthat are rarely recognised. Groups that provide a place and time to reflect on personalexperiences, to share them and to listen to others’ stories are needed in both pre-service and in-service teacher training.

AcknowledgementsWe want to thank Dr Tricia Connell from the University of Worcester, UK, for her commentsconcerning our article.

Notes1. We see it as important to acknowledge the bodies in education (Mitchell and Weber 1999;

Paechter 2006b). In our previous researches we have studied the embodied nature of teach-ers’ work (Estola and Elbaz-Luwisch 2003), and how the teacher and the student encounteras bodies (Uitto and Syrjälä 2008). In this article we understand body to be significant fromthe perspectives of both gender (Paechter 2006b) and emotions (Gordon 2006).

2. The project in the course of which the material of this study was collected took place in co-operation between the City of Oulu and the University of Oulu. The project was supportedby the Finnish Work Environment Fund, the Academy of Finland and Emil AaltonenFoundation.

3. Differently from the English language, Finnish only has one gender-neutral third-personpronoun. This makes the labelling all the more striking in our material: teachers werelexically referred to as ‘men’ or ‘women’.

4. A traditional Finnish song that was usually sung by men to women on particular occasionssuch as weddings.

5. It must be noted that the group of teachers primarily aimed at supporting teachers’ copingand renewal at work, and Elina’s memory should be understood as rising from that contextas well.

6. The original Finnish idiomatic expression ‘heitti vähän toisella kädellä sitä hommaa’ andput slightly in another way ‘vähän toisella kädellä heittäjiä’ used by Virpi refers directly tothe body. Word by word the translation into English of the expression would be somethinglike ‘working with only one hand’.

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Documents

Gender and emotions in relationships: a group of teachers recalling their own teachers