Introduction: The Healing Touch to Excessive Entitlement: Bringing Humanity Back Into Education and Society

Abstract

This introductory chapter begins by outlining the background of this book: how the concept of excessive teacher entitlement took shape and was progressively enriched through my collaborative work with Cheryl J. Craig. Our ongoing informal dialogues gave rise to an invisible college where we co-created new meanings to deepen the understanding of professional inertia. We saw professional inertia as a manifestation of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement constantly adrift in a yin and yang relationship with their best-loved self. This insight came from challenging the narrow mainstream view of the notion of excessive entitlement as a purely volitional act of autonomous individuals which leads to blaming and pathologizing teachers/faculty. Instead, a Vygotskian cultural-historical perspective is proposed. This perspective facilitates a more complex historicized view of the phenomenon by directing attention to the historically and culturally mediated nature of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement and the means to alleviate it. The healing touch to excessive teacher/faculty entitlement repeatedly surfaces as humanizing pedagogy. This involves helping teachers/faculty develop empowered entitlement and work towards realizing their dreams, their best-loved self. Finally, this introductory chapter provides a brief overview of the 15 chapters that follow. They explore the notion of excessive teacher/faculty entitlement in diverse sociocultural contexts and examine promising approaches to address this problem from different theoretical and methodological angles. You are invited to join us in this rich journey of inquiry and transformation.

Citation

Ratnam, T. (2024), "Introduction: The Healing Touch to Excessive Entitlement: Bringing Humanity Back Into Education and Society", Ratnam, T. and Craig, C.J. (Ed.) After Excessive Teacher and Faculty Entitlement (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 47), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720240000047001