| As the first resource and key subject in the development of basic education,primary and secondary school teachers bear the glorious mission of nurturing people for the country.However,the impact of educational ideals and reality,and the complexity and diversity of work tasks make frontline teachers suffer from different degrees of workload,which affects the smooth implementation of their teaching duties and adds to the physical and mental stress of teachers.The State has also introduced policies to reduce teachers’ workload,emphasising the need to create a good working environment for primary and secondary school teachers and to effectively reduce their unreasonable workload at source,indicating that relieving teachers’ workload is an important part of promoting quality development in education and teaching.Previous studies on teachers’ workload have been based on theories focusing on role theory and care theory,and fewer researchers have looked deeper into the topic of teachers’ workload from the perspective of Foucault’s theory of discipline.Therefore,this study shifts the perspective by understanding the current situation and types of teachers’ workload in primary schools,revealing the disadvantages of teachers’ overload,further exploring the underlying causes of teachers’ overload based on discipline theory,and proposing targeted strategies to alleviate teachers’ heavy workload.This will not only help to enrich the existing findings on teachers’ workload and broaden the disciplinary perspective of research on teachers’ workload in primary and secondary schools,but also help to create a good and pleasant working atmosphere,optimise the functions of the education administration and effectively reduce the workload of primary school teachers.This study adopts a qualitative research paradigm to investigate the workload of primary school teachers in the T-school field in M.It combines in-depth interviews,participant observation and physical collection to uncover the hidden workload of frontline primary school teachers and to investigate the mechanisms of work overload.Through in-depth interviews with 12 primary school teachers and four months of participant observation,it was found that teachers’ workload is first and foremost characterised by infinitely longer working hours and an overloaded workload,with five different types of workloads: teaching assessment,administrative workload,classroom management,home-school conflict and educational assessment.Under the pressure of multiple burdens,teachers suffer from neglect of their teaching duties,which hinders their professional growth;burnout,which leads to a decline in job satisfaction;physical strain,which weakens their mental capacity;and work-family imbalance,which leads to a lack of leisure time.The heavy workload and the dilemmas it brings are the result of a combination of external discipline and self-regulation,the result of both the external environment and the internal and external action of the teacher.Specifically,firstly,the external constraints of the government,schools and society are the external factors in the creation of teachers’ overload,mainly in the form of the overstepping of power by the administration,the institutional shackles of schools and the excessive expectations of society.Secondly,individual teachers’ self-regulation is an endogenous factor in the creation of workload,mainly in the form of teachers’ self-governance,i.e.their self-perception and self-competence.Based on the findings of this study,this thesis proposes the following countermeasures:firstly,government departments should clarify the boundaries of authority and responsibility to reduce teachers’ non-teaching workload;secondly,schools should give teachers more humanistic care;thirdly,society should create a good image of teachers and have reasonable expectations of their role;fourthly,teachers themselves should strengthen their self-care and improve their professional quality and competence. |
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