Conference Agenda

In this symposium, presenters engage in a ‘complicated conversation’ (Pinar, 2012) about teacher well-being, identifying and examining its perplexities, limits and contingency—its negativities (Rüsselbæk Hansen, 2024)—that are both produced by and a part of the current neoliberal social order. Psychological well-being is becoming a key aspect of a teacher’s social symbolic identity. Concerns about teachers’ mental health and well-being are pervasive with calls for “government commitment to increased support, resources, and practical help” (Lewis, Campbell and Flessa, 2022, n.p.). In some jurisdictions, government ministries are engaged in measuring well-being with a view to reducing work-related stress. The Department of Education in England, for example, issued a School Workload Reduction Toolkit comprising of “instruments and materials (such as, staff workload survey and software to conduct it; conversation templates; workshop presentations; impact graph template) and practical examples and recommendations (like establishing a school wellbeing committee; a workload and wellbeing action plan; examples of staff wellbeing policies; and even a pre-drafted staff wellbeing statement)” (Wilkins et al; 2025, p. 13). The assumption seems to be that teachers cannot cope with the demands of their everyday work lives and need psychological help to regain self-confidence and resilience to better deal with pressure (Zhang, 2017).

Narratives about well-being are reliant on idealizations of what a good teacher should be (dos Santos, 2024) – doing “incredible work under difficult circumstances” (BCTF, 2021). The well teacher is a good teacher who is hard-working but not excessively so, “self-efficient and agentic…but without real decision-making capacity, a ‘competent’ implementor not a ‘critical’ enactor” (Wilkins et al., 2025 p. 13). Enveloped in a psy-complex (a collection of ideas about the psychological/scientific nature of the self) and a broader well-being culture, teachers are encouraged to take responsibility for their teaching lives and the choices they make therein. A good teacher is distinguished from a neurotic one! Meanwhile, there is little acknowledgement that psychic maladies such as burnout and depression that seem to plague many teaching lives express “a profound crisis of freedom” (Han, 2017, p. 2), signs that in neoliberal society human freedom is “switching over into manifold forms of compulsion” (p. 2) such as self-optimization and self-exploitation. Rather than taking hold of life directly, “it ensures that individuals act on themselves so that power relations are interiorized—and then interpreted as freedom” (p. 28). As such, many teachers feel compelled via emotional manipulation to exploit themselves while, at the same time, being encouraged to foster psychological resilience—a new kind of ‘freedom’, if you will, necessary when labour has become a totalizing factor in our lives (Phelan, 2025).

Papers are set against present neoliberal preoccupation with teacher well-being in Denmark, Canada and Hong Kong. Paper 1 argues that today’s well-being discourse – and its underlying biopolitics – comes with an obligation to "be well", an obligation that is difficult to question or refuse. This discourse champions individual will-power discourages engagement with feelings of incompleteness and lack, and sets the coordinates for managing one’s life in "happy" (neoliberal) directions. Paper 2 explores how neoliberal policy reconstitutes the teaching subject as vulnerable and deprofessionalized, paradoxically governing it through fear while at the same time promising to protect it from "fearful" feelings. Paper 3 adopts a critical focus on how neoliberal policy, rather than addressing the structural and systemic causes of teachers’ experiences of anxiety and distress, hyper-individualizes well-being and deploys it as a means to control teachers’ mental states in ‘(un)happy’ ways. Together, the papers demonstrate that well-being is not concerned with being-well, e.g., freed from control, discipline, and regulation, but instead captured by neoliberal policy to fabricate loyal, conformist and "happy" subjects.

Happy and non-alienated teachers – who are in a ‘state of well-being’ – have become those who, ideally, are “resilient, agile or emotionally communicative” and those who “can absorb disturbances and risks to their mental health and working conditions” (Wilkins et al., 2025, p.16). Teachers’ well-being becomes a matter of ignoring – or concealing – negative thoughts, feelings, and bodily stress symptoms. “Smile and stay positive” has become what, in psychoanalytic terms, can be understood as a superego imperative: a command that teachers are expected to embody and enact. This imperative encourages teachers to redirect their desires toward various objects (e.g., mindfulness seminars) that promise to overcome alienation and make them complete within the socio-symbolic (educational) order (McGowan, 2020). By internalizing such a super ego imperative – and making it desirable – teachers can refuse to embrace alienation, even though alienation constitutes a central condition for education. Instead, they may be tempted to desire – and pursue – an “unalienated existence” – a ‘happy one’ – that reflects an ‘uncomplicated fit’ between one’s singularity and socio-symbolic identity as ‘teacher’ (McGowan, 2024, p. 9). Believing that happiness and well-being – understood as a state of wholeness or fulfillment – can be achieved will inevitably result in despair and disappointment, as such states never can be attained. Nevertheless, this seductive belief is embedded in today’s (tran)national educational policy (Viac et al., 2020) wherein it is assumed that teachers can overcome alienation and “shape [their own] existence…through the choices [they] make (Rose, 1998, p. 98). Happiness is turned into will-power, and it becomes a regulative obligation to choose not to be unhappy. Informed by the work of Giorgio Agamben (2013), we argue that it is not alienation that teachers ought to refuse but the biopolitical happiness and well-being imperatives that confront them with a duty to internalize these demands and use them to regulate their professional lives. However, a ‘happy life’, according to Agamben, is not something that can be produced by following a duty or imperative – you must! A ‘happy life’ in Agamben terms can be understood as a mode of being that is liberated from idealizations, moralisations, and biopolitical classifications such as ‘wellness’ (Agamben, 1990; Prozorov, 2017). Such classifications render life unfree by resisting its indeterminate state of being, its ontological singularity. To rest within the plurality of forms-of-life – alienated-lives – without a predetermined form and content, is to affirm what is constitutive of human existence and subjectivity, rather than to resist it.

Agamben, G. (1990). The Coming Community. Translated by Michael Hardt. University of Minnesota Press. Agamben, G. (2013). Opus Dei. - An Archaeology of Duty. Stanford University Press. McGowan, T. (2020). Superego and the law. In Y. Stavrakakis (ed). Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalytic Political Theory (pp. 139-150). McGowan, T. (2024). Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn’t Try to Find Ourselves. Repeater. Prozorov, S. (2017). Living à la mode: Form-of-life and democratic biopolitics in Giorgio Agamben’s The Use of Bodies. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 43(2), 144-163. Viac, C. and Fraser, P. (2020). Teachers well-being: A framework for data collection and analysis. OECD Education Working Paper No. 213. Retrieved January 8, 2026 from https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2020/01/teachers-well-being_bdafdeaf/c36fc9d3-en.pdf

In Canada, neoliberal policy regimes are being influenced by far-right wing and neo-conservative movements that aim to ban books (Kirkland, 2023), remove sex education (Bialystok et al., 2020), pander to extraction corporations (Hodgkins, 2010; Lowan-Trudeau & Fowler, 2025), deny colonial violence on Indigenous people (White, 2025), and promote back-to-basics instructional approaches, such as those promoted by the “science of reading” (Sinclair et al., 2025). These neoconservative curricular constrictions result in white-washed, pro-corporate curriculum that undermines teachers’ autonomy (Ball, 2003; Janzen et al., 2025), advances the interests of corporations, and ultimately erodes our public institutions and democracies. This paper aims to document the effects of teacher competence discourses in relation to this now-risky curriculum. Drawing on research data from teachers in Manitoba, Canada and informed by theoretical and philosophical insights, we will explore teachers’ fears arising from newly developed teacher misconduct legislation—which denotes competence as a feature of teacher conduct (see Janzen et al., 2025)—and the threats of teachers being deemed incompetent if reported for teaching the now-risky curriculum. As Han (2024), explains, “fear is a popular tool for rulers” and the teachers we talked to have many fears regarding the now-risky curriculum, including fears of reprisal from the public or from far-right interest groups who can now make anonymous (and/or vexatious) complaints contesting their competency as teachers. The problem with fear, as Han (2024) describes, is that, “a climate of fear produces continuation of the same. Conformism spreads. Fear blocks the paths toward the other.” Rather than conceptualizing fear psychologically and as a threat to teacher well-being, we see fear as an effect of the neoliberal regime, enlisted to increase individualization and self-responsibilization (Han, 2024). At the same time, according to Han, fear is also integral to hope, as cultivating “the what-is-not-yet,” and as the trigger for the emergence of possibility. Revealed in the teachers’ stories about fear, including the intimidation by parents, far-right groups, and discursive regimes of “fear mongering”, we see how fear is experienced by teachers but also consider how it might act as a “catalyst for the revival of the tired or otherwise floundering modalities of living” (Ruti, 2013, p. 155). This paper will enhance understandings and the effects of fear on teachers’ subjectivities and will explore the possibilities of fear for provoking hope and thus of “connect[ing] us to a cause larger than ourselves” (Ruti, 2013, p. 143).

Han, B.-C. (2024). The spirit of hope. John Wiley & Sons. Hodgkins, A. (2010). Manufacturing (il) literacy in Alberta's classrooms: The case of an oil-dependent state. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies (JCEPS), 8(1). Janzen, M. D., Petersen, C., & Iwamoto Tosi, R. (2025). Teacher competence discourses: Exposing, controlling, and punishing the ‘bad’ teacher. Journal of education policy, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2025.2600315 Kirkland, A. B. (2023). Sleeping with the elephant: Canada deals with the scourge of censorship sweeping across America. Canadian School Libraries Journal, 7(2). Lowan-Trudeau, G., & Fowler, T. A. (2025). Exploring sociocritical perspectives on renewable energy education in Alberta, Canada. Environmental Education Research, 31(7), 1532-1550. Ruti, M. (2013). The call of character: Living a life worth living. Columbia University Press. Sinclair, J., Nickel, J., Fraser, A., Brethour, M., Critch, T., Hope, L., ... & Worden, J. (2025). Teaching Reading in Canada: Curriculum and Assessment Policy Updates from the Provinces and Territories. Journal of Teaching and Learning, 19(5), 106-155. White, C. (2025). It’s textbook: Controlling the narrative about residential schools in Ontario classrooms. Information Research an international electronic journal, 30(CoLIS), 237-253.

This presentation aims to extend understanding of semio-capitalism’s gravity in reshaping education and its implications for teacher’s well-being. Semio-capitalism, which “coagulates in semiotic artefacts without materializing itself” (Berardi, 2007, p.76), fundamentally restructures time, space, and subjectivity (Saltman, 2025). As children and adolescents grow up immersed in virtual worlds, Haidt (2024) characterizes them as The Anxious Generation, noting that excessive digital exposure generates social deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction. Such exposure induces racing thoughts that shift rapidly between objects, amplifying feeling itself (Ahmed, 2014). Semio-capitalist logic perpetually destabilizes student subjectivity: dopamine-driven engagement with digital platforms diminishes concentration, while online subcultures distort ethical judgment about their own adequacy. Teachers are also experiencing heightened anxiety. A critical paradox emerges in how teachers’ well-being is instrumentalized against the very structural causes that undermine it (e.g., increasing emphasis on performativity and accountability). Institutional responses often reproduce semio-capitalist logic by individualizing anxiety through well-being policies, where “happiness” becomes a mandatory mental state for promoting cognitive and emotional monitoring (Robertson & Beech, 2024), via mobile apps for example. These approaches obscure semio-capitalism’s production of pathology-proofed, emotionally optimized citizens (Williamson, 2007) as productive human capital. Han (2015) explains that “[t]he self-as-a-work of art amounts to a beautiful but deceptive illusion”(p. 28), facilitating fuller and more comprehensive exploitation. Teachers are expected to manage and model wellness for themselves and their students, where anxiety is reframed as an individual deficiency requiring self-care. This self-emotional entrepreneurship increasingly supplants education itself, further masking systematic and socio-political failures (Pinar, 2023). Hong Kong vividly exemplifies these dynamics. A recent survey (HKFEW, 2023) revealed over 80% of teachers experiencing chronic stress characterized by anxiety, exhaustion, and frustration, and 70% discouraging others from entering the profession. Although local political dynamics (Tsang & Wilkins, 2025) may be a factor, institutional responses remain individualized rather than structurally responsive or contextually sensitive. Therefore, the task now is to reclaim the language of education from the grip of capitalist reason, and to cultivate reflexivity within situated struggles (Robertson & Beech, 2024). As Haidt (2024) suggests, youth anxiety signifies not mere despair but also a latent collective attunement to new possibilities. Teachers could also participate in a solidarity of becoming, a collective deterritorialization (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983) that resists the semio-capitalist circuits producing subjectivities bound to the alienating well-being of anxious “(un-)happiness.”

References Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2nd ed.). Routledge. Berardi, F. (2007). Schizo Economy. Substance 36(1): 75–85. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (R. Hurley, M. Seem & H. R. Lane Trans.). Athlone Press. (Original work published 1977). Haidt, J. (2024). The anxious generation: How the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. Penguin. Han, B. C. (2017). Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power. Verso Books. Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers (HKFEW). (2023). Teacher Physical and Mental Health Questionnaire Survey 2023. Robertson, S. L., & Beech, J. (2024). “The unbearable lightness of being” a post-industrial learner: Contemporary capitalism, education and critique. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-12. Saltman, K. J. (2025). Smart Drugs, Attention Doping, and Screen Addicts: The Drug Attention Industrial Complex in Education. Bloomsbury Publishing. Tsang, K. K., & Wilkins, A. W. (2025). The politics of teacher wellbeing: ’Sung baang’, neoliberalism and power struggles in Hong Kong. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1-15. Williamson, B. (2017). Big Data in Education. The Digital Future of Learning, Policy and Practice. Sage.