Emotional Demands and Moral Rewards: A Story Told by Fifteen Teachers

In several publications, Doris Santoro has argued that modern schools emphasize success to such a degree that they exclude the possibility of the moral rewards embedded in good teaching. Lack of such rewards, she says, leads to demoralization that is commonly misdiagnosed as burnout. Commenting on her work, Jeff Frank has argued that teachers may need to live with the fact that their work cannot in the foreseeable future be the way it should be. This paper is based on interviews with 15 teachers in Iceland and Greece. They all described boosts and payoffs in terms that fit into Santoro’s account of moral rewards. The stories they told us indicate that although the dark clouds of demoralization hang over their workdays, they also enjoy the sunlight of pedagogical freedom and professional autonomy. The reality they experience is a mixture of shadows and light.