Teachers’ spaces for coping with change in the context of a reform effort

Abstract In this paper, we are interested in the emotional responses of teachers inthe context of a reform effort, and our study is oriented toward describing thesignificance of these responses with respect to the space teachers create to deal withreform in their school. Our interest for educational reform incorporates and buildson the work of spatial theories and theories of emotions in education, and mostnotably the work of Andy Hargreaves whose conceptualization of ‘‘emotionalgeographies’’ provides an insightful link between emotion and space. This is donethrough a 2-year ethnographic study with six teachers that were involved in scienceprogram restructuring in their school. In this study, we explore three aspects of thespaces for coping with change that were created by this group of elementaryteachers: (1) time and space as sources of social and emotional support; (2) teachercollegiality and trust; and (3) teachers’ moral values and concerns. Finally, this paperexplores the implications for practice and policy from the development of spaces forteachers to process their feelings about change.

Keywords Change Æ Educational reform Æ Emotions Æ Spaces for coping ÆTeachers and teaching

Introduction

The ever-expanding field of teacher change informs us that reform in schools isabout conflict, unpredictability, resistance, and some loss in self-image. Teachers are

M. Zembylas (&)Open University of Cyprus, 5 Ayiou Antoniou, Strovolos,Nicosia 2002, Cypruse-mail: [email protected]

H. B. BarkerDepartment of Education, Regis College, Regis University,3333 Regis Boulevard, DenverCO 80221-1099, USA

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J Educ ChangeDOI 10.1007/s10833-007-9025-y

Teachers’ spaces for coping with change in the contextof a reform effort

Michalinos Zembylas Æ Heidi Bulmahn Barker

Received: 23 April 2006 / Accepted: 31 January 2007� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

considered by most policymakers, curriculum developers, and school change expertsto be instrumental in the process of educational change (Datnow, 2000; Fullan, 1998;Hargreaves, Earl, & Ryan, 1996; Hargreaves & Fullan, 1998; McLaughlin, 1998). Yetteachers respond to school reforms in a variety of ways: some teachers are happy tosupport and sustain reform efforts, whereas others feel fear, frustration or loss andresist such efforts (Datnow, 1998; Datnow & Castellano, 2000; Hargreaves, 1994,1997, 1998a, b, 2004, 2005; Lasky, 2005; Van Veen, Sleegers, & Van de Ven, 2005).However, reform efforts rarely address the emotions of change for teachers(Hargreaves, 2004; Schmidt & Datnow, 2005). Two recent reviews of research onteachers’ meanings regarding educational practice (Van den Berg, 2002) and policyimplementation and cognition (Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002) have broughtattention to the emotional implications of reform efforts on teachers. Both reviewsemphasize the need for research that pays attention to the emotional aspects ofteacher practice and reform initiatives, and moves beyond a ‘‘dispassionate cognitiveperspective’’ (Spillane et al., 2002, p. 401) of teacher sense-making. Spillane et alstate specifically that emotions are an ‘‘overlooked and understudied aspect of thesocial sense-making with respect to reform’’ (p. 411); similarly, Schmidt and Datnow(2005) assert that this sense-making about reform is fundamentally emotionallyladen.

In this paper, we are interested in the emotional responses of teachers in thecontext of a reform effort, and our study is oriented toward describing the signifi-cance of these responses with respect to the space teachers create to deal with reformin their school. Our interest for educational reform incorporates and builds on thework of spatial theories (Rose, 1993; Soja, 1989, 1996) and theories of emotions ineducation (Boler, 1999; Zembylas, 2005), and most notably the work of Hargreaves(2001a, b) whose conceptualization of ‘‘emotional geographies’’ provides aninsightful link between emotion and space. The concept of emotional geographieshelps us describe various forms of distance or closeness in teachers’ interactions andrelationships. This paper explores largely the implications for practice and policyfrom the development of spaces for teachers to process their feelings about change.

In particular, we use the metaphorical term spaces for coping with change (Barker,2004; Zembylas, 2005) to identify the spatiality of emotional relations and under-standings of teachers’ responses to educational reform. Space may sound like a vaguemetaphor until we realize that it describes experiences of everyday life (Palmer,1993). We know what it means to experience a sunrise; we know what it means to beon a crowded rush-hour bus. In teaching, teachers know best what it is to be pressed,their space diminished by the urgency of demands, especially in the context of reformefforts that may exclude them. Needless to say, there is ample evidence of the chancesof innovations when teachers feel some ownership of the change process (Fink &Stoll, 1996; Fullan, 1993; Sarason, 1996). But regardless of whether teachers feelownership of the change process or not, they somehow have to make an affectivemeaning of change and move on. The term ‘‘spaces for coping’’ is used precisely todescribe this notion: the literal and metaphorical spaces that teachers create to copewith and make sense of their feelings about the change processes.

We want to further explore the notion of ‘‘space’’ here because its relevance isseen as central to school reform efforts (Hargreaves, 2001b, 2004, 2005). The idea of‘‘spaces for coping’’ is important in this paper as an overarching concept, because ithelps us to identify the intersection between individual experience and social powerrelations (Beatty & Brew, 2004; hooks, 1991). In other words, spaces for coping are

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places where it is possible to explore how people’s emotional responses are sociallyand politically contextualized (Kelchtermans, 2005; Zembylas, 2005). For instance,spaces for coping imply defenses or resistances that may have to be breached forchange to occur. But the creation of spaces of coping may also imply resisting thosetendencies to clutter up a renewed consciousness about teaching; it is then thatpossibilities are opened up for real change. While more work is being done in thearea of teacher emotions and the impact of high-stakes accountability and stress-inducing reforms (e.g., Troman & Woods, 2000; Vandenberghe & Huberman, 1999),research on teachers’ emotional efforts in the context of reforms has not been thesubject of extensive research and thus requires more in-depth analysis (Day, 2002).In a world of unrelenting and even repetitive change (Abrahamson, 2004), under-standing the emotional aspects of educational change is essential, if reform effortsare to be more meaningful and successful.

Theoretical framework and previous research

Spatiality and emotionality

A key idea of spatial theorists is that space is fundamental to social life; socialspaces are produced and transformed by our practices (Harvey, 1989; Rose, 1993).There is a co-constructive relationship among individuals, groups, and their envi-ronments; in other words, our social space is producing and is produced by us.Space is conceptualized as an arena of social, historical, and political relations thatimply certain assertions about social interaction, race, class, gender, identityformation, and power (Soja, 1989, 1996). According to this conception, our being-in-the-world is simultaneously historical, social, political, and spatial; social acting,then, has to be understood within spatial contexts. The field of geography hascontributed significantly to our understanding of the role of spatiality in humanrelations, although more often than not space has been theorized in ways that havebeen complicit to the exploitation of individuals (Rose, 1993).

What seems to be an important contribution of spatial theories to our discussionhere is the notion that spatial aspects create emotional experiences in teaching.Spatial aspects such as physical closeness, social relations, moral values, professionalideas, and power relations are characteristics of schools. Hargreaves (2001a, b) hasutilized the term emotional geographies to emphasize the spatial and experientialpatterns of closeness and/or distance in human interactions or relationships withinschools. He identifies five key emotional geographies of teaching: sociocultural,moral, professional, political, and physical distance. It is important to reiterate thethree caveats that Hargreaves (2001a) suggests regarding emotional geographies ofteaching. The first one is that there are no ‘‘universal’’ rules of emotional geographyin teaching, meaning that there is no ideal closeness or distance between teachersand others that is culture-free. The second caveat is that emotions have imaginarygeographies of psychological closeness as well as physical ones. And the third caveatis that distance and closeness are not just structural or cultural conditions that shapeteachers’ interactions but active accomplishments by teachers who make or remakethe emotional geographies of their interactions.

Similarly, Spillane (1999) introduced the term teachers’ zones of enactment torefer to the spaces in which reform initiatives are encountered within the worlds

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of practitioners and delineate those zones in which ‘‘teachers notice, construe,construct, and operationalize the instructional ideas advocated by reformers’’(p. 144). For this reason, there is a need to understand and theorize the role of spacefor processing emotional experiences in school cultures. Both Hargreaves’ ‘‘emo-tional geographies’’ and Spillane’s ‘‘zones of enactment’’ offer important contribu-tions to discourses on educational reform: they emphasize the (positive or negative)‘‘emotional labor’’ (Hochschild, 1983) involved in teachers’ efforts to cope withchange as well as the need that teachers’ emotional responses must be consideredwhen reform efforts are undertaken. More recently, Beatty and Brew (2004) havealso examined how emotional epistemologies address the power of connecting withself and others in emotional meaning making, which may very well underlie‘‘emotional geographies’’ and ‘‘zones of enactment.’’

We want to build on this work and conceptualize a term which we believe cap-tures more specifically the collection of teachers’ efforts and practices to deal withthe emotional aspects of educational reform. For this purpose, we suggest the termspaces for coping to theorize space by bringing together the various kinds ofmodalities—emotional, political, cultural, and social—that produce an active (not apassive) locus of interactions and relationships among teachers. This term articulatesa conceptualization of space as a product (Lefebvre, 1991) that contains (1) thesocial relations among teachers, students and parents, along with the specific orga-nization of the school; and (2) the emotional labor—positive and negative—ofteachers as a result of their involvement in reform efforts. Spaces for coping areproducts of physical, social, moral, professional, and political processes enacted byteachers in the context of educational reform.

By spaces for coping we mean those spaces emergent through the enactment ofpractices that attempt to deal with educational reform in terms of awareness,thinking, feeling, and relating. Thus, our position is not merely a metaphoricalconceptualization of space but an understanding of coping in terms of signifyingpractices and processes. In other words, the term ‘‘spaces for coping’’ captures theinseparable components of the dynamics of spatial production. The concept ofspaces for coping explores how efforts to attend to and through processes andpractices can work to extend rather than diminish the emotional field in whichteachers move. This extension is facilitated by a deepening of the analysis ofteachers’ emotional entanglements with change. Therefore, we are interested in howspaces for coping with change provide contexts through which to apprehend issues ofemotionality and educational reform.

Emotionality and educational reform

Emotion and change are closely linked (Hargreaves, 2004). Teachers’ emotionalresponses toward change are the result of the ways teachers perceive, interpret, andevaluate their relationship with the changing environment (Blase, 1986; Troman &Woods, 2001). When teachers resist reform efforts, it is often because it threatenstheir self-image and their emotional bonds with students and colleagues by over-loading the curriculum and intensifying teachers’ work and control from the outside(Hargreaves, 1994, 2005; Nias, 1999a, 1999b, 1993, 1996; Van den Berg, 2002).Teachers’ resistance to change has often been attributed to stubbornness, lack ofimagination, and laziness. However, teachers grasp the negative consequences the

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reform agenda—often imposed from the outside—will have on them and their stu-dents; thus, teachers resist reforms when the rhetoric of change does not match withthe reality of their everyday experiences (Bailey, 2000; Schmidt & Datnow, 2005).Emotional disappointment with reform arises not only because of the unwantedimposition of reform demands, but also because of the cumulative effects of therepetitive and contradictory nature of such demands (Little, 1996). Van Veen et al.(2005) extend the work of Little and further show that even when teachers subscribeto the reform agenda, the working conditions under which the reform has to beimplemented elicit more negative emotions than one would expect on the basis ofthe teachers’ (cognitive) assent. It is not surprising, then, that attempts for educa-tional change may be unsuccessful not only because they may exclude rather thaninclude teachers, but also because these attempts may have predominantly negativeemotional implications for teachers (Hargreaves, 2004).

There are many models of school reform that are based on the idea that change is aproblem to be solved through appropriate needs assessment, followed by theimplementation of appropriate strategies. Such perspectives on school reform arebased on the idea that change is primarily a ‘‘rational’’ and ‘‘technical’’ process. Thedifficulty with such models of reform is that they overemphasize the rational andconsequently do not take into account the complexity, ambiguity, and uncertaintyacknowledged to be part of change in schools (Hargreaves, 1994, 2000, 2005; Nias,1999a, b). Rationality is often the driving force behind reform initiatives. In suchcircumstances, teachers’ emotional responses to change are often seen less important.

However, change does not only occur as a result of outlining a set of problems todiagnose and solve (Vince & Broussine, 1996). It can also be approached throughidentifying the emotions (e.g., anxiety and loss) and relations of collegiality and trustthat challenge the ways in which teachers think and feel about themselves andothers. In the last two decades, educational reformers have emphasized the impor-tance of collegial relations, collaborative networks, and trust among teachers inenriching the school organizational climate while providing teachers powerfulopportunities for self-renewal (Alfonso & Goldsberry, 1982; Hargreaves & Dawe,1990; Little, 1990; Marlow & Nass-Fukai, 2000; Sergiovanni, 1992; Wallace, 1998).True collegiality, according to Marlow and Nass-Fukai (2000), involves ongoingprofessional interaction and trust; in these interactions there is validation of col-leagues as equals. Despite the conceptual vagueness of the terms collegiality andtrust, professional collegial relationships are suggested as one way to reduce isola-tion and develop greater coherence and integration to the work of teaching (Little,1990).

Several authors acknowledge the advantages of social and emotional support inteachers’ efforts to cope with change (Hargreaves, 1994, 2001a, b, 2004; Nias, 1998,1999a, b; Van Veen & Lasky, 2005). For example, Nias (1999a) argues that collegialrelations appear to strengthen the moral perspectives and values of teachers.‘‘Collegial’’ or ‘‘collaborative’’ teacher cultures (Nias, 1989) are characterized bymutual support and caring in which

individuals feel able to express their emotions, negative, and positive, to admitto failure and weakness, to voice resentment and frustration, to demonstrateaffection. By contrast, a culture of individualism tends to increase emotionalstress for its members by fostering an illusion that others are coping and thatone’s own fears are born of a unique incompetence; by requiring individuals to

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pretend to feelings they do not own; by failing to promote the habit ofday-to-day communication so that small interpersonal or professional differ-ences build up into major problems. (Nias, 1999a, p. 235)

Nias (1998) also emphasizes that teachers who have the time or subject matterrelatedness value talking and listening as a means of sharing emotionalexperiences—especially, in times of frustration or despair such as during stressfulreform efforts. The benefits of this kind of teacher talk are important: first, teachersget to know one another much better, both personally and professionally; second,teacher talk builds trusting relationships and mutual openness; and third, teachersdevelop a shared language that contributes to the success of what they do (Nias,1998). Interpersonal relationships among teachers—especially in the sharing of‘‘play’’ activities and humor—contribute to the emotional health of the staff group;these relationships have added benefits such as improved cooperation, communi-cation, and emotional commitment (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1995; Leithwood,Menzies, Jantzi, & Leithwood, 1999). Hence, trust and emotional support amongteachers seems to facilitate effective and meaningful collaborative working rela-tionships.

Teacher collegiality and trust are based not only on contextual factors (e.g., time,subject matter relatedness) but also on personal moral values (Hargreaves, 1994).Teachers’ moral values contribute to the school emotional culture and subculturesand affect teachers’ emotional practices in school reform efforts. Often, someteachers’ coping practices with reform efforts have damaging consequences for theireffectiveness in the classroom and for their capacity to connect with students(Hargreaves, 2000; Woods, Jeffrey, Troman, & Boyle, 1997), because externalreform efforts can work against the moral values and beliefs held by these teachers.In addition to the fact that the personal self-image of teachers is usually at stake,teachers’ efforts result in the adoption of often insufficient coping practices such asretreatism or downshifting (Troman & Woods, 2000). Thus, change for someteachers can invoke a sense of powerlessness (Smylie, 1999) and vulnerability(Kelchtermans, 1996, 2005; Lasky 2005), when teachers evaluate their capacities,values and will to respond to change as incompatible.

Increasingly, change theorists acknowledge that resistance to change is part of theprocess—in fact, it has a modifying influence—and that the ambivalence and con-fusion teachers have toward change can be understood on the basis of how indi-viduals respond to change and why they change. To accept reform costs teacherssome loss in self-image and vulnerability (Hargreaves, 1998a, b, 2000; Nias, 1999a,b). This threat to self-esteem and the resulting vulnerability can work against reformefforts (Kelchtermans, 2005; Lasky, 2005). There needs to be acknowledged, ofcourse, that sometimes reform is needed, even conceding that it will be emotionallydestructive for some teachers who are involved. Nevertheless, as Blackmore (1996,1998b) argues, the issue is not so much about the rational versus emotional views ofreform, but it is about issues of commitment to certain values and certain types ofsocial relationships. That is, Blackmore asserts, change theorists still fail to considerhow individuals’ emotions intersect with the politics of change. Thus any attempt tounderstand school reform needs to take into consideration both the individual andthe collective coping practices of teachers. Evans (1996) suggests that change hasemotional investment which cannot be altered by rational explanation or technicalapproach alone; change is part of the context of specific relationships with friends,

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colleagues, family, and how change impacts on such relationships. Thus social,emotional, and material support for teachers during times of reform is necessary forthe emotional well-being of teachers as well as for the successful implementation ofreform efforts (Hargreaves, Earl, Moore, & Manning, 2001; Van Veen et al., 2005).

Context of the study

The data presented here was collected as part of a 2-year in-depth ethnographicstudy of reform efforts in one central Illinois elementary school. A science literacygrant was written by the district in collaboration with a nearby university as part ofan on-going in-service support for teachers in terms of time for conversation,planning, and resources to assist them in understanding and working to implementnew curriculum and pedagogical approaches to teaching science. Although theschool was doing excellent on the state tests, the school administration, teachers, andscience educators from the nearby university felt that science teaching and learningwas too text driven.1 Thus, this grant provided the support for teachers to work inpilot groups in order to move from a text-based approach to teaching and learningscience to an inquiry approach. The district administration realized that schools inthe district needed a science education program that was aligned to the reformsadvocated by the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996).

In the old science curriculum, the teachers used a series of textbooks which hadfour basic overarching units: earth science, life science, physical science, and health.In each grade level the students studied content related to these units as individualchapters in their science texts. This was what the teachers followed as their mainscience curriculum. In the text, the science content, or facts, was seen as the focus ofthe learning. Many teachers added in some activities and lessons of their own designto support the textbook content. It was this practice that led to initial discussions forchanging the science curriculum. Some teachers saw a need for a more inquiry basedcurriculum and others saw a need for a science study that did not overlap betweengrade levels.

In general, the reform effort involved the planning and implementation of scienceunits that involved activities in which the students had to investigate science ques-tions by asking and refining their own ideas, debating ideas, making predictions,designing experiments, collecting and analyzing data, drawing conclusions, andcommunicating their findings to others. In other words, in the units developedchildren had to perform all aspects of inquiry and investigation. In this type ofcurriculum the focus of study was on learning and applying inquiry skills to solve aproblem or find an answer to a question. Scientific facts and content were to belearned while doing the investigation or in conjunction with the investigation tosupport the learning of inquiry skills.

1 Like many communities, its state test scores are published in the local paper. A local paper ratedthe school district the highest of 46 area school districts. It based the rating on the annual schoolreport cards mandated by the state. The scores on the state mandated tests have been above averagewith over 90% of the students meeting or exceeding the State Performance Standards and all of thedistrict scores exceeding the state averages in all subjects (e.g. see Illinois School Report Card, 1998).These scores seem to give the community, the teachers, and the school administration a sense ofpride in their schools and their work.

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The two curricula, the old and the new, had very different views about the natureof what was worthwhile for children to learn in science (‘‘received’’ knowledgeversus ‘‘constructed’’ knowledge) and also about what the nature of science was. Thediffering philosophies about the ways that children gain understanding in science waspart of the underlying tension of changing curricula for the teachers in this district. Itwas the perennial question of what knowledge was worth teaching (Kliebard, 1975/1997). This tension manifested itself in the ways that teachers saw the reforms, in theways that they related the reforms to the standardized tests and their colleagues, andin the ways that they enacted the ideas of reform in their classrooms.

Participants

During the first year of the study, ten units were piloted in the district. Fourteenteachers were involved in the teaching of these units. During the second year of thestudy, a total of 22 units were piloted. All teachers who taught science in the districtelementary grades (K-6) were involved in the teaching of these units during thesecond year (30 teachers). Although, we collected data from all the teachersinvolved, this paper focuses on describing the emotional responses of six teachersthat were involved in the project from the beginning of the 2-year period. Thecriteria used for the selection of the six case study teachers were the following: (a)we wanted to include teachers who reacted positively as well as teachers who reactednegatively to the reform initiatives; and (b) we also wanted to have a representationof teachers from different grade levels as well as teachers who had a varied back-ground and experiences in science teaching. As it will become clear from theirstories, the initial interest of these participants in the reform efforts was not nec-essarily due to their agreement to the proposed science teaching philosophies; infact, several of them questioned the purposes of the changes. However, our interestwas on exploring various complexities in the teachers’ efforts to cope emotionallywith change.

The six teachers who participated in this study were the following.2 Jan and Gailwere both veteran teachers with over 50 years experience between them; they hadtaught second grade together in neighboring classrooms the past 12 years. Rob andMary were sixth grade teachers. Both had taught in the district their entire careers:Rob for 2 years and Mary for 10. Finally, David and Karen had also been teachingthird grade in the district for almost 15 years each. In choosing the stories we presenthere, we have left out a myriad of others. These particular stories were chosenbecause we believe that they were representative of the wide range of teachers’emotional responses to change as well as the teachers’ spaces of coping with change.

The research questions in this study were: (1) How do teachers enact theirpositive and/or negative feelings about reforms in their school? (2) How do teacherscreate spaces for coping with change and what are some aspects of these spaces?

Methods

Qualitative research methods enabled us to examine the above questions. One of us(Heidi) worked with the participants from the beginning to the end of this effort

2 For the purpose of confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for all school, person and place names.

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documenting their experiences, beliefs, and emotional responses to the reform ini-tiatives. She also participated in grade level planning meetings where teachers dis-cussed and shared feelings, ideas, and thoughts about the changes in sciencepedagogy and curriculum. Data sources included audio-tapes and field-notes ofinstruction, tapes of conversations and interviews, meetings, written reflectivecommentaries by the participants, and copies of student written work. A total of 12interviews with each of these teachers were conducted; each interview averaged 1 hor longer. The focus of the interviews centered on both the process of the lesson aswell as the content. Aspects of cognitive coaching were utilized: i.e., questions wereused to guide teachers about why they thought particular aspects of the lesson wentwell, what did not go well, and how they would proceed next. The conversations alsocentered on the kinds of support teachers were utilizing as well as the support theyneeded to continue. All interviews were guided by semi-structured protocols andwere taped and transcribed verbatim after each visit. A total of 12 observations ofeach of these teachers implementing the new units in the classroom and monthlyparticipation in grade level meetings occurred over the 2-year period. Because this2-year period was designated as a time to pilot the units of study, most of the lessonsobserved were the first time that teachers had taught the lesson within their class-room.3 A variety of lessons within a unit was observed, but not the entire unit ofstudy. Also field-notes were written which we later compiled with the aid of theaudio-tapes of the sessions, into a narrative record of each observation. In theserecords, our aim was to preserve the sequence of interactions taking place in theclassroom or during a staff meeting. These records were also used during the indi-vidual interviews with each teacher to elicit further thoughts and emotions.

Using a grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin,1994), we used initial data to generate concepts and ideas that guided the subsequentdata collection and analysis. Data collection, coding, and analysis were continuallyintermingled throughout the analysis process. Following grounded theory methods,we used data gathered in the first year to guide our data collection and analysis duringthe second year. To ensure validity, we worked separately and collaboratively, using aninterpretive method of coding to ascertain confirming and disconfirming evidence ofassertions arising from our data sources. We independently read and coded the datafollowing the open-coding techniques outlined by Strauss and Corbin (1994). Obser-vational and interview transcripts were analyzed using a line-by-line analysis; that is,short segments of each interview (or observation) were assigned brief descriptivesentences. The descriptive sentences assigned to these references were groupedtogether to form tentative categories. A category was considered for inclusion in ourgrounded theory if it were consistently present across interviews and observations.Based on these categories we developed the themes that are described below.

Findings

Our research questions and the data analysis led us to discuss three aspects ofteachers’ spaces for coping with change in the school we studied. These aspects are:

3 Some teachers had taught some of the lessons during a summer science camp the district anduniversity collaborated on to give both teachers and students opportunities to learn science inquirymethods.

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(1) time and space as sources of social and emotional support; (2) teacher collegialityand trust; (3) teachers’ moral values and concerns. In the next sections, we willattempt to provide context and meaning for those aspects of teachers’ spaces forcoping with change as well as give examples from our data to show the significance ofcreating these spaces in teachers’ efforts to deal with imminent change in theirschool.

Time and space as sources of social and emotional support

The teachers in this study strove to balance their personal goals for reform, theiremotional responses, and the external pressures. Opportunities like time and spaceset aside for conversations with grade level teams, focused coaching in the classroomabout science lessons, and time set aside for planning or practicing ideas providedteachers with sources of social and emotional support in their efforts to deal withchange. Out of conversations in structured settings came many of the decisions aboutthe direction of the curriculum, future learning, or planning sessions. Teachers madedecisions about topics, supplies, materials, resources, and also shared questions andconcerns as they made these decisions. Teachers also collaborated in times that werenot structured by their teaching such as in their own planning time, during lunch, atrecess, after school, and in passing between classes.

In this section, we focus our discussion on some events from Rob and Mary’scases to show how time and space made an impact on these teachers’ efforts tocreate spaces in which reform could be negotiated. These particular events areclearly not the only ones in which time and space as sources of social and emotionalsupport made an impact; however, they represent powerful ways that indicate howwell the existence of opportunities for time and space worked for these twoteachers—for each teacher, in a different way.

The first unit that Rob and Mary’s classes would pilot was a unit on plants whichinvolved experimentation with the variables that effect plant growth, things likeamounts of light, amounts of fertilizer, and spacing of plants. The teachers had nevertaught a hands-on science unit on plants before. Mary was very anxious about doingthis and she wanted to spend a lot of time organizing this. Before the unit began, sheasked Heidi to help her do an inventory of the supplies and make sure that sheunderstood what each of the items would be used for. Mary had done the same thingfor every single unit that she implemented. Organization was an important factor forher; she said that she always wanted to know what she was ‘‘getting into’’ beforebeginning anything new. She emphasized that she wanted to ‘‘plan everything so thateverything would be in order.’’

After getting to know Mary over the following 2 years, visiting her classroom andtalking with her, we could see that her style of teaching needed this straightforwardcontrol over the supplies and set up. We gradually found out that her understandingof the reform effort was very different from that of other teachers at the school.Mary was mostly happy with the previous curriculum and felt that the school did notneed any change especially because it was doing so well on state tests. Consequently,she felt rather unhappy with the district’s decision to reform the curriculum. Shemade every attempt to ‘‘adjust’’ the reform effort to her own understanding abouthow to teach science. This meant that she resisted reform efforts but she did notexpress any loud discontent with it; she simply went on doing things in her own way.

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For example, in the new curriculum the teachers were encouraged to use a variety ofrubrics and descriptive ways to provide feedback to the students. From her point ofview, Mary insisted to assign points for everything students had done. Thus, she usedthe time set aside for planning so that she could be ready to implement the newcurriculum on her own terms. As she pointed out in one of our conversations: ‘‘I’mglad I’m having this planning time... I need this time to figure out how to adjust thisnew curriculum into what I have been doing so far.’’

On the other hand, Rob’s classroom and teaching became a contrast to Mary’steaching even though they were working from the same curriculum and had evenplanned some of the teaching ideas together. Rob was very happy to go along withthe planning and preparations for the new science curriculum. An example of hisperspectives about the reform efforts and his positive emotional response to suchefforts became evident during the first unit that was taught. During the time set asidefor planning, Rob constantly repeated how excited he was about implementing aninquiry approach to the teaching of science. Also, it was evident by the way that Robput his work together and the quality of the writing and art in his journal, that he wasvery proud of doing this. Rob’s case indicated how time set aside for planning orconversations with grade level teams provided him with an opportunity to create aspace in which he could experiment with the reform initiatives, and find socialsupport for what he did. As he said: ‘‘I am extremely grateful for this planning time. Ican talk to my colleagues, share new ideas and receive feedback on the kind ofactivities we can do to get kids excited!’’

Rob and Mary’s struggles with the reform efforts constitute highly individualtales. These teachers embraced or rejected reform for quite different reasons; theybrought to the reform efforts certain commitments and had particular emotionalresponses that effectively undermined or supported the proposed changes. On theone hand, Mary, who was against the reform effort, valued time set aside forplanning ideas so that she could find ways to ‘‘adjust’’ the reform to her own needsand beliefs; on the other hand, Rob, who embraced the reform efforts, valued timeset aside for conversations with grade level teams and focused coaching in theclassroom about science lessons so that he can be more successful in implementingthe reform. Both teachers, in their own ways, used the provided time and space tocreate practices of coping with the reform effort.

There were numerous other incidents in which both Rob and Mary, as well as theother four teachers who participated in this study, commented how time and spaceworked well for them and allowed them to cope with change—each individual indifferent ways, of course. For example, Jennie said that, ‘‘My most favorable thing inthese efforts is talking with other teachers about their units. I would like to havemore time to spend discussing successes and lessons that need refining... I like havingan open space between us, within which we can connect.’’ Similarly, Jan, who wasoverwhelmed with the implemented changes emphasized that, ‘‘I appreciate havingthe time to get together and talk and share ideas and how we felt about those... Evenif I don’t particularly like these reforms, I can always use some support to cope withchange.’’

These examples illustrate the role of time and space in coping with change—bothfor teachers who supported the reform efforts and for those who didn’t. What we aresuggesting here is that sensitivity to teachers’ needs for emotional and social supportis essential to their work. Creating such networks of support can gradually makespace for the feelings that help weave community and cultivate relationships. There

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are always the mixed feelings of excitement and anxiety teachers have at the outsetof a new reform effort. Opportunities for time and space as sources of emotional andsocial support may work well for teachers, especially for those who resist change. Onthe one hand, having such opportunities might create opportunities for the futuretransformations of those teachers who initially resist change. On the other hand, itshould not be ignored that such opportunities may in fact subvert reform efforts,despite the fact that ‘‘oppositional’’ teachers find their much needed support to copewith change.

Teacher collegiality and trust

So far we have discussed how teachers used opportunities for time and space toengage in ongoing conversations, planning, and sharing. The next theme focuses onhow teachers gained much satisfaction from collegiality and relationships with col-leagues in the ways that they coped with change. Not only did teachers in this studyfind individual ways to make the changes work for them, to make the changesunderstandable to them, and to create the practices that changes fit with their ownideas (as in the stories about Rob and Mary), but also we saw that relationshipsplayed a large role in how teachers created their own ‘‘reality’’ of the changes anddealt with those changes in their own classrooms.

In their interactions, teachers shared failures, successes, and concerns about theimplementation of the reform efforts. They also voiced frustrations and strugglesand demonstrated affection and caring to each other. The following is an example ofa conversation from a teachers’ meeting. It is very typical of the kinds of exchangesthat took place when teachers shared their emotional experiences, as they wereengaged in planning. This meeting was held in the fall of the second year study. Gailis telling Rob how she felt about implementing a unit on plants.

Gail: The kids loved looking at them! We got out those magnifying glasses thatwe have from the rock unit. We used them all the time—looking at the plants,the bees, looking for the pollen [...] This made me feel great, because I can seethat kids love doing this and they learn a lot of new things as well! [...] I thinkI’m gradually overcoming my initial fears about this new curriculum.Rob: Me too! I used to be afraid of the negative or ambivalent feelings that Iinitially had. But now that I see how exciting this is, I feel much better.

This exchange shows that there is a genuine comfort level between Gail and Rob.Here are two teachers being excited about teaching in new ways, exchanging theirfeelings, and acknowledging their fears. The space they created seems pleasant andcomforting primarily because of the interpersonal relationship they graduallydeveloped. This relationship and the resulting space allowed them to express feel-ings, ideas, and uncertainties. This finding supports results by other researchers inlanguage and literacy areas in which space for feelings is seen as a medium throughwhich supportive and collaborative relationships can be established (Acker, 1995;Blackmore, 1998a).

However, in some cases, relationships among teachers brought up some unantic-ipated issues with respect to the influence of collegiality and trust on teachers’ effortsto cope with change. In the following example, Gail and Jan (both second-gradeteachers), who had worked closely together for over 10 years planning their teaching,

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sharing ideas and materials, and supporting each other felt a very strong allegiance tokeeping their sense of togetherness in this time of intense reform efforts. They werequite clear of the importance of a close relationship between them.

One day Heidi visited Gail’s classroom after school. Gail was very excited aboutthe way things were going in implementing the new science curriculum. Her studentswere really enjoying the activities, she felt they were observing and reporting well,and she was also enjoying the inquiry learning. But she was concerned about howthis new curriculum was perceived by her friend and collaborating teacher, Jan: ‘‘Iknow that Jan is not having such a good experience and I am hesitant to push it. Idon’t want to ‘grand-stand’.’’ Gail was struggling with her successes with the newcurriculum because she did not want to jeopardize her collaborative relationshipwith Jan. When people are working together—especially, when they have beencollaborating for a long time—and the outcomes are not positive for all, the rela-tionships may become more important than the project and its ideas and aims.

Gail continued to try out new ideas and decided on her own to implement more ofthe lessons than her teaching partner. Gail and Jan collaborated on much of theirteaching ideas and science was only a part of that collaboration. For this reason it washard for Gail to separate the science reform and its impact upon their relationship.Gail knew that Jan was not as happy with the reforms and to her it was important notto stray too far from the collaborative relationship that they had worked out for thepast 10 years. This is part of their conversation and reflection about a unit.

Gail: The kids were excited and they did look forward to it. They didwatch—whether it was sand settling or whatever. They were curious.Jan: I felt overwhelmed with all the supplies and then having to monitorbehavior. Next time I’m going to be able to see what I need to addressbeforehand.Gail: Like the magnifying glasses. We need to have them out before we wantthem to look at the soils. They could read the newspaper with them orsomething.Jan: Yes, like I do with the rulers at the beginning of the year. Flip themaround, do all those things so it’s not a novelty anymore. I did try to write somethings that I need to change in my book.

This conversation shows Gail’s effort to take Jan’s side a bit and suggest that itwas alright if Jan needed more order than she did. Gail also seemed to express somehope that Jan might eventually come around; she clearly valued her relationship withJan and knew that she had to work hard on creating a comforting space in which herprofessional and personal relationship with Jan would continue to exist. As Gailadmitted in one of the conversations that Heidi had with her: ‘‘My friendship withJan is more important than any reform effort in the world... I would do everythingpossible to save this friendship.’’ Gail wanted and needed the support of her teachingpartner, had enjoyed a long relationship of sharing ideas, supplies, and support andwanted to continue experiencing the positive aspects of the relationship they hadfostered over the years. But she faced a paradoxical conflict in the range of emotionsabout this reform effort: on the one hand, she felt excitement about the prospectsand potential of the reform effort for students’ learning and her own teaching and onthe other hand, she experienced discomfort about the fact that her teaching partnerdid not share this excitement.

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In examining Jan and Gail’s relationship, we can see that ideas of trust, collab-oration, shared meaning, and moral support are challenged. Gail’s own emotionalneeds and experiences were at odds with those of Jan. Jan trusted Gail not to ‘‘grandstand.’’ Gail felt an obligation to continue their collaborative relationship in plan-ning and sharing ideas even though the two teachers did not share similar ideasabout the ways that science might look in their classrooms. This example shows theimportance of considering the impact of collegiality and trust on teachers’ efforts tocope with change. It also indicates the power that colleagues may have upon eachother and the need to take explicit account of this power in the context of reform.

For most teachers in this study, the relationships they shared with their gradelevel partners and with other teachers in their building and district were a naturalcontinuation of the relationships that they already shared. Various social and pro-fessional activities were ways of connecting with one another. This point was madeclear in the following statement by Rob: ‘‘I like being with my colleagues. It’s notonly the professional relationship we have but also it’s good to spend social time withthem. I think it’s important that we have this social side of our relationship too... Thisis something I deeply appreciate.’’ Other social gatherings included visiting eachother, going for coffee and lunch, and participating in their children’s soccer andfootball events.

As is evident from the discussion above, teachers invested in their personal andcollegial relations one way or another; although not all teachers were so stronglyconnected with their colleagues, there were small groups of usually two or threeteachers (like Gail and Jan) who seemed really to be close and did things together.The teachers exchanged ideas, reflections, and supplies in working through commonteaching experiences. The time and space carved out for sharing ideas also createdemotional and social support and a collegial atmosphere was built upon existingrelationships and past experiences. This space provided teachers with opportunitiesthat allowed feelings to arise and be dealt with.

Teachers’ moral values and concerns

The final aspect of teachers’ spaces for coping was the role of teachers’ moral valuesand concerns on their understanding, appreciation, and implementation of the re-form effort. How such values and concerns were configured was important to thedevelopment of the kinds of spaces for coping with change, especially when teachers’purposes were at odds with those of the reform effort. Nevertheless, havingopportunities to discuss these differences made an impact, as we already pointed outearlier.

The first example indicates how the emotional geographies of moral values—inparticular, Rob’s moral values—seemed to place some teachers in an intenseemotional zone. An example of Rob’s beliefs about teaching science and his openexpression of these beliefs became evident during the teacher course part of thesummer science camp. Part of the course requirement was a completion of anature journal so that teachers themselves could experience some of the inquiryprocesses they would later ask their students to be involved. In this inquiryassignment, the teachers chose an aspect of nature that they would observe closelyfor a week. They would express their careful observations through writing and artactivities. The teachers were asked to share their journals with us, telling what they

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thought about the assignment, how they felt it contributed to their learning ofscience or science teaching, and either read or show at least one of their activities.Although most of the teachers were modest in talking about their own work, it wasevident by the way that they put their work together and the quality of the writingand art, that they were mostly proud of the finished products, their level of interestin their topic, and the learning and questions that their observations had produced.When Rob read his poem to our group of 15 sitting in a circle in the library of theschool, everyone seemed to be engaged and listened politely enjoying thecreativity of the rhymes. The type of poem that Rob based his writing on was a‘‘fact-based poem’’ described as a poem intended to find the answers in scientificstudy by ‘‘looking at the moon through the eyes of a scientist.’’ The poem ended asfollows:

A very telling fact which just goes to show,You cannot always trust what scientists say about the past,And with that I come to my conclusion at last.Always study the evidence and there is so much more that will show,That the Creator made the Moon around 6,000 years ago.

When Rob read the last line of the poem, there was a pregnant pause before thegroup clapped as we had been doing when each teacher completed his or her sharing.There was definitely an indecision on how to react to the way that Rob was inter-preting the science of his inquiry, one that didn’t seem to fit with the way that theother teachers saw religion and science working together in this public school sys-tem. There was also some shock in the boldness of Rob reading his ideas like this insuch an open forum. Heidi had seen him do this in his classroom in a discussionabout a video. The video was about pollination of various plants around the world. Itshowed the intricate ways that the plants were structured to work with their envi-ronment to ensure pollination. He built a discussion around one idea. ‘‘Do you see amaster plan at work here? These are not random actions. These plants have beencreated with a plan in mind.’’

This describes and shows a tension that exists when teachers have the freedom tomold the curriculum to fit their own beliefs and values about learning. Rob did notseem to have any issues with the new science curriculum—although it was spelledout in the reform document that evolution was to be taught—and was very happy toimplement the new units. Grumet (1988) adds an interesting twist on this, describingteachers who ‘‘quietly sabotage’’ programs that have been imposed upon them, as aresponse to their lack of power to influence school or district policies. Is it possiblethat Rob simply realized that he could not change how evolution was to be taughtthus he decided to do his own thing anyway?

At another level, one also wonders what happens to the collegial relationshipswhen a teacher’s philosophy about teaching or what constitutes science does notagree with his or her teaching partners. Westheimer (1998) puts it as following:‘‘Many schools that advocate strong professional communities boast mutual sharedobligations and commitments. But these are often slogans such as ‘‘acceptance of allchildren’’ or a ‘‘desire to serve ideals.’’ Whose ideals? What do these teachersbelieve in? What kind of world do they strive for?’’ (p. 139). Heidi asked Mary aboutcollaborating with Rob one day after Rob, Mary and Heidi had brainstormed someproject ideas for their plant unit.

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Heidi: Does it help to work with another teacher in planning and evaluating theunit?Mary: I like working with another teacher when it is a reciprocal relationship,when both people have similar ideas. It is hard to work together when you havediffering beliefs about what science is.Heidi: I wondered about that.Mary: We [Rob and I] don’t work together as much as we probably could.

It is evident from the discussion above that relationships among teachers were notalways positive. Clearly, teachers’ moral values influenced these relationships elic-iting a range of emotions and coloring teachers’ spaces for coping with change.

The second example draws upon the emotional responses of two-third gradeteachers (David and Karen) and illustrates the role of personal values and purposesin their efforts to deal with reform in their school. David struggled to understandhow a new science curriculum based on inquiry learning was the best way to teachscience and still keep the scores high in state testing. As he wondered, ‘‘The newcurriculum is more interesting and the students learn a lot, but what about the statetests?’’ In his conversations with Heidi and his colleagues, David asked manyquestions about the need of this reform effort—not in terms of rejecting it, butsimply in terms of questioning what was presented to him. He too, like Rob andGail, began making adjustments in his teaching to fulfill his own need to fit the newcurriculum into his own understanding of his role as science teacher. As heexplained:

I am definitely more of a guide now. I’ve added a few vocabulary words thatwe’ve read about and we are going to have the students identify the rocks andminerals by name because I feel that the parents want them to be accountableand I do, too! Without these things it is hard to evaluate the students. How doyou evaluate thinking skills and how much hands-on is tested on theachievement tests?

David questioned the best way to evaluate what the children in his class had learned,what consisted of ‘‘science learning’’ to him and to parents. As he tried to answerthose questions, it was important for him to have a space in which he felt com-fortable asking these questions and adjusting his teaching.

Karen, another third grade teacher, struggled with a similar conflict as a result ofthe reform efforts. As she pointed out:

I understand that there isn’t always a right way to do things or a right answer tothe questions probed. The more I do the science myself, the more I feel con-fident about the science program. It [science learning] is more interesting. Ireally like this science program, but the gripe that I have had all along is that ithas to be done right. If you don’t have enough time to do it right, the kids missout on learning. Hands-on learning doesn’t lend itself to fitting science into ahalf-hour block like working out of a book might. With everything that I haveto cover for the tests, the pressure to make sure that students get all theinformation makes me worry that I’m not getting it all in.

Karen did not see the goals of the inquiry science program fitting with the realities ofteaching and learning—time constraints, expectations of state and localstandards—and her own understanding of what teaching and learning science should

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be. This tension made her feel stress and uncertainty. However, it was important forher to have the opportunity to raise these issues and create a space in which shecould find support to discuss her concerns. Thus, she began to explore why she didcertain things in her classroom. The following is an excerpt from what she wrote inher journal at the end of the second summer science camp

I have high expectations for my classroom and for myself—to provide alearning atmosphere where there is enough structure so that the students knowwhat is expected of them and enough freedom to feel comfortable and ac-cepted. It is within this framework that I have been trying to adjust my teachingto provide hands-on exploring and learning while at the same time feelingconfident that the children are achieving at a level expected by my school.After 2 years of teaching science this way [inquiry approach] I feel that I havemade progress toward this goal. I have put in a lot of time and energy studyingthe units and reading the manuals and now it is getting easier. It has also gotteneasier for the students because they have been exposed to this approach for2 years as well. I am still concerned about assessment. I feel that it is still trialand error on my part, but I will keep trying.

For both David and Karen, the new curriculum became a source of intense intel-lectual and emotional effort and thus the opportunity to entertain their concerns wasimportant in their attempt to cope with change. It is well known, of course, thatteachers try to modify new ideas to be consistent with or to support the ideas theyprefer and undoubtedly David and Karen were no exception to this. However, whatthis example illustrates, just like the previous one, is that teachers’ differing purposesand values redefine teachers’ spaces for coping, and they raise ambivalence aboutthe impact of emotional geographies on the direction of reform efforts.

Discussion and implications

Our attempt in this paper was to understand some aspects of the emotional geog-raphies of a reform effort and in particular, to explore the spaces for coping thatteachers created to deal with change. The notion of spaces for coping is a usefulconcept for engaging in analysis about the teachers’ enactment of emotions duringan educational reform effort, because it turns our attention to two things: howschools structure teacher interactions in ways that hinder or promote the processingof teacher emotions, and how teachers respond emotionally to professional expec-tations (Ball & Cohen, 1996; Hargreaves, 2000; Spillane, 1999).

This research has confirmed many of the findings of previous studies aboutteachers’ emotional responses to educational change. We have shown that teachersdiffer in fundamental emotional ways with regard to how they create spaces forcoping with reform efforts. Our analysis also suggests that working conditions, socialrelations, and moral/personal values and concerns engage teachers emotionally withthe reform effort and signify what is ‘‘at stake’’ for them (Van Veen et al., 2005),regardless of whether teachers support or object the reform initiatives (see alsoHargreaves, 2004, 2005). Educational change, then, seems inevitably to be a deeplyemotional sense-making experience for teachers. Consequently, allowing emergingfeelings to be dealt with is not about helping teachers to feel ‘‘better’’ about reformpressures, but is a valuable contribution to teachers because it helps them practically

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to find ways of integrating and/or reconciling opposing or conflicting feelings aboutreform. On the one hand, teachers must understand that in the process of educa-tional change, conflict, tensions, and disturbance to long-held beliefs are not to befeared; on the other hand, teachers also need the emotional and social support totake reasonable risks to cope with reform (Schmidt & Datnow, 2005).

However, it is often assumed that all or most teachers will produce a uniform setof responses to reform—i.e., they will want to teach and behave in the mannerexpected of them (Hargreaves, 1994). Such uniformity hurts the emotional vari-ability of teachers and teaching and limits teachers’ role to that of a technician.Therefore, an important implication of this finding is that reformers have toacknowledge the significance of emotional diversity and provide opportunities forteachers to create their own spaces of coping with change. Change is not aboutforcing all teachers to subscribe enthusiastically to new ideas; a reform process needsto allow teachers to carve out spaces for themselves in order to work individuallyand collaboratively and find ways to reflect on their practices. Teachers need spaceand time to make sense of change and to make reform efforts part of their ownteaching. In their own classroom, teachers hold the power for the success or failureof school reform efforts (Sarason, 1996). The consequences of the emotional geog-raphies of reform may eventually influence the success of reform. As Cherniss (1995,p. 166) explains: ‘‘People can make their lives better or worse but what they think,how they feel and what they do are strongly shaped by the social [and emotional]contexts in which they live.’’

In our study, teachers’ spaces for coping reflected their attempts to adapt thereforms in ways that were consistent with their own moral values and concerns, andyet that limited their own frustration, anxiety, annoyance, and related stress inresponse to the proposed changes. The findings of this study add support to theresearch which suggests that the personal, social and emotional aspects of changehave substantial effects on classroom practice and reform efforts (Beatty & Brew,2004; Hargreaves, 2001a, b; Little, 1996, 2000; Nias, 1999a, b). These findings are notso unusual; however, it seems that these aspects of change need to be directlyaddressed in schools undergoing reform, because stressed and unhappy teachers cansubvert reform efforts in unexpected ways (Datnow, 1998; Datnow & Castellano,2000). In some respects, the success of reform efforts that are based on collabora-tions among teachers is directly related to the relationships that these teachersdevelop. Not surprisingly, then, teacher collegiality and trust create distinctiveemotional geographies (Hargreaves, 2001b) that influence reform efforts in twoimportant ways. First, teacher collegiality that is also based on friendship and trustmay intensely compete with interests for a successful reform effort (like in Gail andJan’s case); and second, teacher collegiality that is based on politeness and avoidanceof conflict may end up subverting the reform effort because the real issues are notaddressed (like in Mary and Rob’s case). The contribution of this study lies in thefinding that while social sharing and collegial relationships create important spacesfor teachers to cope with change in a non-threatening environment, it is also possiblethat these spaces may simultaneously undermine the reform effort.

Clearly, this ambivalence has interesting implications for efforts to create aneffective workplace for teachers to cope with the emotional pressures associatedwith reforms. In his work on the emotions of collegiality, Hargreaves (2001b) raisesthemes that support findings in this study, i.e., relations among colleagues mayimprove the emotional health of the teacher community, thus reducing emotional

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stress and burnout. However, as our study has shown, researchers and practitionersalso need to consider how it is not unlikely that teachers may avoid taking risks orpushing for changes, if teachers feel that their relationships with good friends andcolleagues may be threatened. This implication suggests the need for furtherexamining the joys and frustrations of reform and casting a critical eye on theemotions of teacher change at an individual as well as at a collective level.

In an increasingly changing educational environment in contemporary times, ithas never been more necessary to develop a depth in understanding teachers’ spacesfor coping with change. Building a better emotional understanding of educationalreform expectations, teachers, administrators, and reformers will become able toform more productive alliances (Hargreaves & Fullan, 1998), and redefine theemotional geographies of their relationships to make them more effective in dealingwith emotional risks and intensities. Better emotional understanding, as Hargreaves(2001b) argues, also requires a reversal in many educational policies and policyprocesses. Policy must seriously consider the emotional implications of professionalexpectations for teachers to change the content and learning standards, to limitteachers’ time out of class to interact with others, and to standardize teachers’interactions with those around them. Instead, policy must consider the ambivalencein the emotional geographies of teachers involved in educational reform, anddevelop practices that acknowledge the consequences of this ambivalence. Individ-ual and collective emotional responses to educational reform have to be analyzed intheir enabling and constraining aspects of spaces for coping and in terms of theirsustaining or shifting opposing practices.

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