Rethinking teacher wellbeing and school punishment through the ethics of care
Teacher wellbeing is often framed in terms of workload, stress, and resilience. While these are important, teaching also requires moral and relational labour. Teaching is not only cognitively demanding but also emotionally and ethically complex, particularly when teachers are faced with the challenges of persistent student conduct problems. In such contexts, teacher wellbeing should be understood not only as a psychological or organisational issue, but as a moral and relational condition shaped by the ethics of care in educational relationships.
Drawing on the ethics of care tradition (Noddings, 1984), teaching may be thought of as a relational practice grounded in attentiveness, responsibility, and responsiveness. Care relationships often rely on some form of recognition or response from the cared-for (in this case, the students). In classrooms, this may take the form of behavioural change, engagement, or the gradual development of trust between student and teacher. However, when such responses are absent (as may be the case with persistent student conduct problems), the moral experience of teaching becomes more complex.
That is not to suggest that the students are obligated to reciprocate care, or at least not to the same extent that teachers are expected to offer it. Given the unequal power dynamic inherent in teacher-student relationships, placing such responsibility on a child would be inappropriate. But when teachers consistently invest emotional labour without any observable response, such as a reduction in conduct problems or signs of a relational connection, this can create a form of moral asymmetry within the student-teacher relationship. Teachers may experience this as emotional exhaustion, moral discomfort, and relational disconnect.
This dynamic can be particularly pronounced when working with students who present with specific characteristics referred to in developmental psychology literature as ‘callous-unemotional traits’ (Frick et al., 2014). These traits include low empathy, restricted affect, and lack of guilt or remorse. They often co-occur alongside significant conduct problems. Such traits can disrupt the relational feedback and emotional dynamics that typically sustain caring educational practice. Teachers in these contexts may experience ethical and emotional strain, as their efforts to build relationships and support students are met with little or no emotional reciprocity.
Compounding this challenge is the limited effectiveness of traditional school behaviour management strategies when used with these students. Children with callous-unemotional traits tend to be less responsive to conventional systems relying on the use of punishments for conduct problems (Viding & McCrory, 2018). A primary justification of punishment is often argued to be deterrence of the individual repeating the same behaviour in the future. Where punishment fails to deter future behaviour, this justification is undermined. A secondary justification of punishment could be argued to be that it serves as a deterrent for others. Yet this raises ethical concerns, particularly when the individual being punished is a child. Tadros (2019) argues that it is difficult to justify punishing one individual primarily for the benefit of others, especially when that individual is a child who may not yet possess full moral agency.
If punishment neither benefits the individual student nor can be ethically justified as a deterrent for others, its continued use becomes difficult to defend. For teachers, this creates an additional burden, where they may find themselves implementing strategies that are not only ineffective but may also possibly conflict with their moral intuitions. In such circumstances, punishment may become a source of frustration for teachers and a source of harm or alienation for the students, without delivering meaningful behavioural change.
Rather than persisting with punitive approaches that can lead to escalating cycles of conflict, there is a need to reframe behaviour management through the lens of care. In particular when working with students presenting with callous-unemotional traits, it is important to seek solutions that both support teachers’ own wellbeing and manage student behaviour in ways that are effective yet compassionate. Supporting teachers requires recognising the emotional and moral labour involved in caring for students, especially when relational reciprocity is limited. A care-informed approach will not eliminate difficulties, but it does acknowledge the ethical complexity of teaching and validates the experiences of teachers navigating these challenging circumstances. Noddings’ perspective shifts the goal from ‘making students behave’ to consistently modelling care and building trust over time. This reframes success for teachers, removing the expectation of immediate emotional reciprocity, and instead focussing on offering steady professional care. It also encourages structured but compassionate boundaries. This reframing may help to support teacher wellbeing over time when faced with persistent challenging behaviour from students.
Reconceptualising teacher wellbeing in this way shifts the focus from individual coping to relational conditions. A care-informed perspective highlights how teacher wellbeing is shaped not only by workload and institutional pressures, but also by the quality and reciprocity of student-teacher relationships. Recognising this ethical dimension is essential for meaningfully supporting teachers, particularly those working in emotionally demanding and relationally complex educational contexts. It also invites us to consider whether current educational behaviour policies truly serve either students or those who teach them.
References:
Frick, P. J., Ray, J. V., Thornton, L. C. and Kahn, R. E. (2014). Annual Research Review: A developmental psychopathology approach to understanding callous-unemotional traits in children and adolescents with serious conduct problems. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 55, 532-548. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12152
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: a feminine approach to ethics and moral education. University of California Press.
Tadros, V. (2019, August 20). Punishing children. Pedagogies of Punishment. https://www.pedagogiesofpunishment.com/blog/2019/8/20/punishing-children
Viding, E., & McCrory, E. J. (2018). Understanding the development of psychopathy: progress and challenges. Psychological Medicine, 48(4), 566–577. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717002847
Laura is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the PEDAL Centre at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her research interests focus on mental health and wellbeing in schools, with a particular focus on collaborative approaches to managing student behaviour. She is currently working on a postdoctoral fellowship with the University of York on a study exploring teachers’ experiences of teaching students who present with conduct problems and Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits, and the potential impact of these experiences on teachers’ wellbeing.