Work-life balance of early-career, female teachers in Icelandic compulsory schools

Abstract

This study is about what 11 young female teachers in Icelandic compulsory schools (age levels from 6–16) did to gain and maintain work-life balance. As Da Silva and Fischer (2020) point about teachers working conditions, ‘their duty hours extend beyond the work setting and can impact the quality of life and work-life balance’. They also argue that ‘unlike employees of other occupations, teachers and the teaching profession have received relatively little study ’ of the work-life balance. The current study is based on literature of teachers’ work conditions and on theories about emotional labour and emotion work in the line of Hochschild (1983). Serial interviews were conducted with 11 early-career, female teachers from fall 2021 to spring 2023, two to four times with each interviewee, altogether 38 interviews. The interviews were read after each round of interviews to find threads to follow up on in the upcoming interviews. In round two, we asked specific questions about work-life balance, but the issues we discuss here could be found in any interview. The main results are organised around five intertwined themes. First, much responsibility was placed on the shoulders of the young teachers. The working day was loaded with not only teaching but with various other tasks, such as preparation for teaching, and parent conferences. The interviewees also reported temporary periods of harder work. Second, our interviewees made an effort not to bring specific tasks to work on at home. For that purpose, they for instance worked longer hours during the day. Another common strategy, in the case of participants who were mothers, was that the spouse picked up the child from preschool. Importantly, one of the reasons that it was not always even possible to bring tasks home to work on was the fact that most of the interviewees were involved in much teamwork with co-teachers which needed to be completed during the day. Third, there is a theme that we label as organising, cooperation, prioritising. The interviewees explained that they had also developed more calmness and also the attitude of being fair to themselves in terms of ‘not doing everything 150% perfectly’ , as one interviewee put it. More experience of teaching during these early-career years also helped the interviewees in becoming confident in their work. Fourth, while the teachers found ways to work at home without having the work intruding into family life, such as by working on the tasks when their children were asleep, they found themselves contemplating about their work at home. They did so while doing routine housework, such as doing the laundry or ironing, or worrying about something when going to bed. The fifth theme we call emotions, guilt, joy. The interviewees described examples from parent communications that required much emotion management. They described emotional demands placed upon them, such as taking care of the children when they did not feel well. The feeling of guilt was mentioned in two contexts: feeling guilty for not being prepared enough for the lessions or not being able to attend to every child’s need in the classroom, and feeling guilty about not taking care of their own children. Our interviewees also described the work as ‘giving and joyful’; some told us that they could not think of themselves doing another job, such as working on a computer all day long. The findings underline that emotions are vastly important in the work of teachers. They underline that this job, teaching, cannot be left behind within the school building; the teachers will continue to think about it while at home. The findings also portray that there are methods and routines that teachers can use to find a reasonable work-life balance; however, such methods are not likely to prevent the possibility of anxiety for the next days’ or next weeks’ tasks. We call for further studies on teachers’ work-life balance; for instance, about what experienced teachers do