Current Research

In Search of Lost Time in the Practice of Teaching

This study investigates the relationship between teachers and time, positioning time as a central yet underexamined force shaping professional practice.

Drawing on historical and contemporary analyses of how schooling came to be structured around principles of efficiency, the research argues that teachers operate within an inherited “grammar of schooling” underpinned by performativity, workload intensification and market-oriented reforms. 

Using a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework, the project maps how these structural forces and teachers’ subjective experiences of time interplay within a school activity system. Data are gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus groups with teachers at various career stages and leadership levels, analysed via Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to capture the complexity of teachers’ lived temporal realities. By highlighting systemic contradictions—where “clock time” meets the “felt time” of professional practice—the thesis aims to better understand how teachers navigate chronic time scarcity and the pressures of performativity. 

In so doing, it explores whether entrenched operational norms can be reimagined, ultimately seeking opportunities for more sustainable models of teacher workload, autonomy and professional learning. The findings, although based in a single multi-campus school context, have broader implications for policy and leadership, suggesting that reframing teachers’ temporal experience could address persistent issues of stress, burnout and attrition. This research thereby contributes to a deeper understanding of the existential and organisational dynamics at play in teaching, offering a fresh lens on longstanding questions of how time, power and professional identity intersect.