Parents as customers, students as consumers: Exploring emotional rules and regulation strategies of academic tutors in China

The emotional labor of academic tutors within the private tutoring sector remains under-researched compared to that of teachers in mainstream educational contexts. Within a for-profit educational service setting, tutors navigate a dual identity as both professional educators and front-line service providers. This study investigates the emotional rules and regulation strategies employed by 31 tutors, supplemented by perspectives from their managers and clients. Findings reveal that tutors operate under a “parents as customers, students as consumers” ethos, obliging them to follow two emotional rules: committing to efficient and engaging teaching with passion, and providing excellent service with heart and responsibility. In contrast to schoolteachers, tutors possess limited autonomy to genuinely express their emotions, leading them to rely on surface and deep acting, including disguising, ignoring, and self-persuading, to regulate their emotions. By highlighting the distinct emotional demands placed on tutors, this study illuminates the implications of emotional labor in commercial educational contexts and offers critical perspectives on the evolving nature of teaching under neoliberal reforms, as well as the dialectical interplay between the emotional labor landscapes of schoolteachers and tutors within a linked professional ecology.

Duke Scholars

Author Yisu Zhou DKU Faculty