Emotional Labor in Education Essay (Article)

Emotional labor is no more than the manifestation of the generally preferred feelings at any work place. Emotional labor encompasses the “control of a person’s behavior to display the appropriate emotions” (Chu, 2002, p.21). Essentially, lecturers at colleges and universities belong to the sphere of service provision, hence not segregated from emotional labor.

The situation that is required is for the college and university tutors to work “with students on recognizing and managing their emotions in order to facilitate transformative learning” (Huyton, 2009, p.1). However, the concepts of emotional labor are also evident, not only in workplaces, but also in every aspect of an individual life.

An individual charged with service work has a noble obligation to ensure suppression of his or her emotions. One may deem this inappropriate to conformity with social affiliations since emotional labor constitutes essential catalysts for cute success in service provisions. Disclosure of entire personality traits to students according to Mortiboys “…is rarely appropriate in the courses in higher education” (2002, p.28).

Given that learning institutions’ overall goal is to indulge in practices that lead to substantial transfer of knowledge without impairing the students’ community in any negative way, the lectures would thus definitely find themselves demanded to conceal some of their personality traits as part of conformance with the goals of the institutions.

“Everyday experiences diminish students, making them vulnerable, damaged, and unable to exercise agency and resilience” (Huyton, 2009, p.4). This prompts the tutors to subscribe to the deployment of emotional labor by incorporating emotional intelligence in their work as part of the ways to hinder strategies that may push students into emotional vulnerability.

The opinion that “students need to view tutors as role models, which places on them a responsibility to be enthusiastic, confident and happy people” (Huyton, 2009, p.4) further escalates the concept of the need of the lecturers to participate in emotional labor.

In my opinion, emotional labor is troublesome, as it impedes tutors in colleges and universities to amicably portray their true ‘selves’ during teaching since attempts to practically institute and express certain unreal emotions results to surface expressions which more often than not is not reflective of internal emotions.

This argument seem consistent with Huyton (2009) claim that, “practitioners will, on occasions, need to marshal the skills to communicate enthusiasm and confidence, when perhaps these are not genuinely felt” (p.3). In as much as it results to positive effects on the students’ part, I feel that people need to look surface portrayal of enthusiasm deserve as problematic.

Demarcating between display and feeling, on a different perspective end up problematic. Consider a situation in which a tutor is dissatisfied by a student’s performance or perceptions in some certain area of study. Attitudes of discontent and anger stand out as unavoidable on the part of the tutor. The tutor would feel relieved if he or she directs his or her anger towards the student.

References

Chu, K. (2002). The Effects of Emotional Labor on Employee Work Outcomes. Virginia: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Huyton, J. (2009). Significance Of Personal Disclosure: Exposing the Support and Development Needs of Higher Learning Engaged in Emotion Work Associated With Supporting Students. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 1(1), 1-18.

Mortiboys, A. (2002). The Emotionally Intelligent Lecturer. London: SEDA.