ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the effects of fear and love in teachers' lives in a little more detail. The presence of fear in public policy and the operations of national governments, including its role in Foucault's notion of 'governmentality', is well documented. Fear also has a long history when it comes to the lives of school teachers and students. The fear of students failing while on one's watch is not only a fear on the students' behalf, so to speak; and perhaps to a loss of love or respect in the eyes of those students and maybe of one's colleagues. Fear may appear to us as a relatively straightforward concept – but love less so. The chapter explores how love might prompt or support teachers in resistance to or management of fear, including resistance to aspects of public education policy that they may feel to be harmful to their students even as they are compelled to implement them.
