Frontiers in psychology · 2026
Boundary work in marketized parent-school relations: an insider autoethnography of teacher emotional labor in a Chinese international school.
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Yue Zhang, Shikun Zhang
Аннотация
BACKGROUND: The marketization of international schools embeds teachers' work within family choice, service commitments, expectations for educational advancement, and satisfaction-based evaluation.
OBJECTIVE: This study examines how parent-as-client logic enters teachers' everyday parent-school communication in a Chinese international school, how it shapes teachers' emotional labor and perceived professional autonomy, and how teachers engage in boundary work to negotiate professional identity and occupational wellbeing.
METHODS: The study adopts an analytic insider/practitioner autoethnographic approach. The data comprise systematic reflective teacher logs, synthesized critical incident narratives, teacher-generated professional materials, de-identified institutional discourse materials, and reflexive analytic memos. The analysis combined thematic analysis with theory-driven coding.
RESULTS: Parent-school relations partly shifted from an educational partnership toward a client-service logic; teachers undertook invisible emotional labor in parent-school communication; parental expectations and school service commitments exerted soft pressure on professional autonomy; teachers maintained professional judgment and psychological resources through communicative, pedagogical, evidentiary, and identity boundary work; and teachers experienced identity tensions among the roles of educator, service provider, school representative, and professional decision-maker, while reconstructing professionalism through boundary work.
CONCLUSION: This study extends research on teacher emotional labor beyond classroom interaction to marketized parent-school relations and advances research on educational marketization by foregrounding teachers' micro-level psychological experiences. The findings suggest that boundary work is an important mechanism through which teachers sustain professional autonomy, occupational wellbeing, and professional identity. In marketized school contexts, teacher stress emerges as a psychological process jointly produced by emotional rules, organizational relations, and negotiations of professional identity.
OBJECTIVE: This study examines how parent-as-client logic enters teachers' everyday parent-school communication in a Chinese international school, how it shapes teachers' emotional labor and perceived professional autonomy, and how teachers engage in boundary work to negotiate professional identity and occupational wellbeing.
METHODS: The study adopts an analytic insider/practitioner autoethnographic approach. The data comprise systematic reflective teacher logs, synthesized critical incident narratives, teacher-generated professional materials, de-identified institutional discourse materials, and reflexive analytic memos. The analysis combined thematic analysis with theory-driven coding.
RESULTS: Parent-school relations partly shifted from an educational partnership toward a client-service logic; teachers undertook invisible emotional labor in parent-school communication; parental expectations and school service commitments exerted soft pressure on professional autonomy; teachers maintained professional judgment and psychological resources through communicative, pedagogical, evidentiary, and identity boundary work; and teachers experienced identity tensions among the roles of educator, service provider, school representative, and professional decision-maker, while reconstructing professionalism through boundary work.
CONCLUSION: This study extends research on teacher emotional labor beyond classroom interaction to marketized parent-school relations and advances research on educational marketization by foregrounding teachers' micro-level psychological experiences. The findings suggest that boundary work is an important mechanism through which teachers sustain professional autonomy, occupational wellbeing, and professional identity. In marketized school contexts, teacher stress emerges as a psychological process jointly produced by emotional rules, organizational relations, and negotiations of professional identity.