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Higher education teachers’ professional well-being in the rise of managerialism: insights from China

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A Correction to this article was published on 04 December 2023

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Abstract

Connecting teachers’ professional well-being and managerialism, this study explored how teachers experience their professional well-being in navigating challenging working conditions. Supported by the well-being theory, document analyses were carried out and open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers at Chinese HEIs. The findings portray a landscape of tensions, conflicts, and challenges, where teachers’ professional well-being is dramatically confronted and even systematically overlooked. In a managerial culture in favor of performance and competence, teachers’ engagement, their perception towards the meaning of education, and their understanding of self-actualization were consistently informed, controlled, and rewarded against a reducible list of skills and outcomes. In this way, the meaning of being a teacher is narrowly focused but broadly standardized. The findings deepen understandings of teachers’ professional well-being, enable more critical examinations of managerialism in higher education, and allow promotion of teachers’ professional well-being for sustainable development.

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Funding

This work was supported by Department of Education of Guangdong Province under Grant 2022JKZG040.

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  1. School of Foreign Languages, Shenzhen Technology University, 3002 Lantian Road, **shan, Shenzhen, 518118, Guangdong Province, China

    **ghui Si

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  1. **ghui Si
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Correspondence to **ghui Si.

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Si, J. Higher education teachers’ professional well-being in the rise of managerialism: insights from China. High Educ 87, 1121–1138 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01056-2

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