Abstract:

As a topic closely related to time, teachers’ workload needs to be analyzed from the three dimensions of the sociology of time: the commercial value, the political structure, and the moral norm. The scale effect of social time and its induced performance management lead to teachers’ high workload, stress and burnout. The hierarchical nesting structure and power structure of social time, as well as the time dilemma of public governance, make teachers’ self-time scarce, out of control and overdrawn. The moral tightness requirements and moral traps of social time devour teachers’ subject meaning and lead to teachers’ time poverty. The high-speed society strengthens the domination of the time norm over the subject and causes a series of morbid changes in teachers’ work. Therefore, it is necessary to fundamentally solve the problem of teachers’ workload through a series of methods such as value reconstruction, active deceleration, and technological innovation.

Key words: teachers’ workload, sociology of time, social acceleration