Temporal Regimes Maintaining the Daily Routine of Junior Secondary School Teachers

Abstract

The interest in the problem of teachers’ daily routine has been growing recently. However, in spite of the fact that literature concerning different aspects of everyday functioning of teachers is quite extensive, little attention is given to the issue of time, the temporal dimension
of daily routine. In this text, I present and analyse selected results of a qualitative study which is a part of a larger research project concerning teachers’ everyday experiences. I concentrate mostly on the recognition of temporal regimes maintaining the daily routine in a junior secondary school. The findings of a study involving phenomenological interviews with 7 junior secondary school teachers show that three main temporal regimes occur in a junior secondary school: planning, speed and control. These regimes help maintain the school daily routine, stability and the status quo, and consolidate the unreflective attitude to the performed tasks. Temporal regimes ensure the sense of predictability and reliability of the rules existing
at school. On the basis of the obtained results, it was suggested that following the regimes of speed, plan and control in the long run depraves teachers of the ability to act spontaneously and reflect on the complexity of the process they manage.