Anerkennung und Lehrkräftegesundheit: Zu den analytischen Potenzialen von Judith Butlers Anerkennungstheorie für die Lehrkräftegesundheitsforschung

Lack of recognition is considered an essential difference criterion for distinguishing mentally impaired and healthy teachers. Theoretically, these studies refer to the Effort-Reward-Imbalance Model (ERI) which has become prominent in research on stress, strain, and workersʼ health. This model sees recognition as central to understand the stress and strain experienced by teachers. However, the ERI Model is inadequate for researching the relationship between recognition and teacher health. It conveys a narrowed understanding of recognition as a mode of positive affirmation action. As a result, the ERI Model describes the recognition process in a sub-complex manner and is not suitable to understand stress generation in teachers. Judith Butler’s understanding of recognition as subjectivation offers, in contrast, the analytical potential to capture recognition in stressful situations in terms of its social embeddedness, complexity, conflictuality and ambivalence more appropriately. Based on Judith Butler’s theoretical considerations, this paper offers a concrete research agenda for a recognition-based teacher health research. This makes it possible to consider the health of teachers more than before as a condition and consequence of recognition processes and orders.