Being caring and disciplinary – male primary school teachers on expectations from others

The article explores how male primary school teachers view and relate to other people's expectations of them as teachers. The empirical data consists of interviews with seven teachers working in compulsory school grades three to five in a large-sized town in Sweden. The theoretical work on relations among masculinities developed by Connell and the theoretical concept of care discussed by Noddings are used in the analysis work. Results show on one hand that the teachers view themselves as privileged due to their minority position and on the other hand feel considerable pressure from others as well as from themselves to perform a certain kind of masculinity. The teachers' descriptions of their everyday practices show that they sometimes gather in homo-social groups and demonstrate a care orientation by trying to constitute the welfare of the pupils.