This research examines the emotional themes and discourse of emotion of early childhood educators using a post-structuralist theoretical framework of emotion. The data selected and analyzed is taken from 4 two-hour discussion groups that were conducted over an eight-week period with four female early childhood educators. The emotional themes and patterns that emerged from the discussion groups and artifacts, teacher journals, and follow-up interviews were analyzed and then followed with a micro-level analysis. The findings revealed that the three most common emotion words discussed were 'stress', 'worry', and 'frustration', which were linked to surveillance and a discourse around persecutory guilt through institutional and relational systems, fostering implicit resistance among participants.

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The greatest intellectual challenge of our time is not how to design machines that behave more and more like humans, but rather how to protect humans from being treated more and more like machines. (Jackson, 1968: 66)