In Chapter Two I discussed the emphasis on ‘making up’ the ‘good’ school citizen and argued that this was a process shaped by an increasing emphasis on forms of character education which take a largely individualist, performance-focused approach. This chapter explores teachers’ promotions of attitudes and values in relation to other individuals and wider society – what we owe to each other – and what teachers understand to be the affective range of feelings and attitudes held by ‘good citizens’, and their own emotions about the promotion of these values. The chapter has three main sections. The first discusses teachers’ accentuating of mutual respect and tolerance when discussing FBVs, and what part that plays in their understanding of their professional role. I then discuss my fourth approach to FBV – engagement– and some of the difficulties and possibilities connected with it. Finally, I consider which populations were understood by some teacher-respondents to be in particular ‘need’ of liberal values.

Teacher subjectivities

Chapter Three highlighted the direction of education policy in England which has emphasised competition between and within schools, target setting, teacher and school accountability for meeting those targets, and more traditional curricula and assessment methods (e.g. the recent large-scale removal of coursework from GCSE and A-level courses, the national qualifications taken at 16 and 18 years). Teachers are made responsible for policy but have no hand in shaping it. As Braun and Maguire (2018) note, the policy climate of constant and changing demands has produced what Ball (2003: 220) describes as ‘ontological insecurity’, where educators are beset by unease and uncertainty about what they should be doing, about meeting expectations and about what those expectations are (or will be in the next round of changes). ‘As teachers engage with policy and bring their creativity to bear on its enactment, they are also captured by it. They change it in some ways, and it changes them’ (Ball et al, 2012: 48). Braun and Maguire (2018) explore the impact of these changes, tensions and contradictions on teacher subjectivity.