Middle School Teachers' Leave Process: Life Stories by Narrative Construction

Abstract

 The purpose of this paper is to describe how the process leading to the leave of absence is constructed as a narrative in life story interviews with two middle school teachers.

 The normalization of work that exceeds the "death line of overwork" and the significant increase in the number of teachers on sick leave have attracted considerable attention to the way teachers work. At the same time, however, there has not been a sufficient expansion of research. In discussions of teachers' work, it has undoubtedly been assumed to be a priori established by busyness and stress/burnout, with leave of absence as a consequence. In other words, the diverse and complex processes that lead teachers to leave schools have been completely overlooked.

 Therefore, this paper reveals how the leave process on the part of research collaborators is constructed, based on insights into the "narratives" that express the process and experiences of individual teachers. This is a pioneering attempt to open up new possibilities for research and discussion of labor issues concerning teachers in Japan by overlapping and setting up blind spots in previous studies as issues that have also been faced in teachers' life history studies.

 This paper's research collaborators are two public middle school teachers in their late 20s who have taken leaves of absence. The author has been interviewing teachers working in schools on their life stories in order to conduct life history research. The two teachers, who met through these interviews, agreed to and were given the opportunity to take part in the study. Except for their close age, the two teachers differed in many ways, including their work styles, their subjects, their schools, and their school duties. The individual life-story interviews included semi-structured exchanges on a wide range of topics related to the teaching profession, in addition to the processes of becoming a teacher and taking a leave of absence.

 The analysis revealed the following two points. First, the teachers did not/were not able to limit themselves to a single "narrative" in explaining their different and unique processes of leave. Second, on the one hand, their "narratives" were also used to express the anguish they allegedly experienced at the schools where they worked, that is, the reality of "not being protected" and "not being able to share their problems" in a situation where it was difficult for them to perform their own agency as teachers. This suggests that these are realities faced by all teachers involved in school education in Japan today. Therefore, in the future, the discussion of educational labor should be based on the context (and how it is formed) that makes it narrated in this way.