Classroom management as community building: a primary schoolteacher’s integrated rituals, emotional labor, and professional improvisation

This single case study illuminates the complexity of successful classroom management. Framing classroom management as ritualized community building (Bell, 2009), we show how a teacher’s interaction rituals (Collins, 2004), emotional labor (Scheff, 1994), and professional improvisation (Sorensen, 2023) are integrated in this process. Based on observations of a primary schoolteacher’s classroom management, a chain of interaction rituals could be discerned. Furthermore, in a subsequent in-depth interview with the same teacher, these rituals could be connected to specific emotions, and improvisational acts. According to the interview, the teacher primarily strived to maintain a ‘cozy ambience’, and to establish participation as the norm. Through abductive analysis, a coherent framework for the teacher’s complex classroom management was outlined, where all action and emotions appeared to derive from a moral core value of ‘feeling social responsibility’. Theoretically, this study contributes a complex ritualized model of emotional labor, professional improvisation, and community building in classroom management that teachers can use for reflection and improvement of their own practice. Empirically, results highlight how challenging classroom situations can become opportunities for social bonding and community building. Results also demonstrate that even the most experienced teachers need assistance to simultaneously satisfy the varying needs of different pupils.