1.Research Question

     In recent years, the burden on Chinese teachers has become increasingly severe, with a deepening crisis of job burnout(Wang&Ning,2018;Liu&Bian,2024;Xue&Zhang,2024). Teachers are exhausted by a multitude of non-teaching tasks. Although the Chinese government has introduced a series of policies aimed at alleviating teachers' burden, the effectiveness has been limited. To move beyond an external observation of teachers as mere objects of measurement, this study argues for the necessity of entering their authentic life-world to understand their real lived experience.Based on this shift in perspective, this study is guided by three core research questions: “Why is the burden on Chinese teachers so severe?” “What are the specific manifestations of this burden?” and “How do Chinese teachers exercise their agency, and what coping strategies do they employ in response?” Addressing these questions aims to provide a deeper understanding of teachers' authentic life-world, offer evidence-based insights for alleviating their burden, and contribute meaningful references for the development of teacher education.
2.Theoretical Framework

     The research is grounded in Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action, specifically employing the dual conceptual framework of "System and Life-world." (Wang, 2024) Habermas posits that the life-world is the source of social order and the arena where consensus is reached through communicative action, with communicative rationality at its core. Communicative rationality constructs an "ideal speech situation," requiring that interactions among subjects satisfy the three validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness. It offers a theoretical pathway, through rationally motivated communicative action, to restore teacher autonomy and creativity, thereby providing a foundation for alleviating teacher burden and enhancing educational quality. The erosion by the system leads to the colonization of the life-world, which refers to the encroachment and control of the life-world by the system—a phenomenon particularly evident in modern society. The expansion of instrumental rationality results in the atrophy of value rationality. Economic and administrative systems, via the non-linguistic media of money and power, colonize the originally non-marketized and non-commodified private and public spheres, leading to a loss of meaning and value.

This framework allows for an analysis that transcends a simple subjective-objective dichotomy, instead viewing teacher burden as the result of the systemic (instrumental) colonization of the teachers' lived, experiential world (life-world).With the theory,the study investigates the phenomenon of excessive burden among Chinese teachers. Moving beyond conventional descriptions of burden as merely administrative or quantitative(OECD, 2014;Wang&Ning,2018), this research conceptualizes teacher burden as a process of systemic colonization of the teacher's life-world. The life-world, comprising the cultural, social, and personal dimensions of teachers' lived experience and professional interactions, is increasingly eroded by the instrumental logic of external systems ,such as administrative and economic systems(Habermas, 2004; Wang, 2024; Xia, 2024).
3.Conceptual Framework

     Teacher burden:Teacher burden refers to the multidimensional pressures educators face in their professional roles, stemming from systemic colonization of the life-world (Habermas, 2004). It encompasses pedagogical demands, role conflicts, administrative tasks, and adaptive challenges from policy changes, impacting well-being and job satisfaction.

     Teacher life-word:Rooted in Husserl’s critique of scientific abstraction, the life-world is the pre-reflective, experientially given realm of everyday life (Husserl, 2005). Schütz later sociologized it as a context for meaningful action. Habermas (2004) conceptualizes it as the background horizon of cultural knowledge, social norms, and personal identity. In this study, the teacher life-world denotes the integrated sphere where educators’ professional, cultural, and personal dimensions interact. It is where systemic burden are felt and where communicative rationality enables meaningful resistance and agency.

4.Contribution

    This study contributes a critical theory perspective（Communicative Rationality） to analyze the genesis of Chinese teacher burden and their coping strategies, offering a new framework to inform policy and enhance teacher well-being.

1.Methods This study adopts narrative inquiry within the qualitative research paradigm. The core of narrative inquiry as a methodological path lies in exploring individual experiences and social phenomena through the collection and analysis of narrative data. In educational narratives, both the self and society are constituted through narration, where social conditions, discourse, and narrative practices intertwine to shape the attributes of the self and its identity (Ding, 2008). As MacIntyre (2007) argued, "social life is itself a narrative, and individuals gain the meaning of existence by linking their birth, life, and death into a coherent story." The researcher aims to gain an in-depth understanding of teachers' life-world by engaging with their personal stories, which is considered a necessary pathway to accessing their lived experiences (Wang, 2010). 2.Data collection Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. This method allows for real-time adjustment of questions to probe deeply into the interviewees' meaning-making and experiential systems. As Wengraf (2001) notes, such interviews are a co-creation between researcher and participant, requiring immersion into the interviewee's everyday discourse. 3.Data analysis The data analysis followed established qualitative methods of situational analysis and categorical analysis. Situational analysis places data within their natural context, descriptively examining events and narratives in chronological order. Key steps involved repeated holistic reading of transcripts, identification of crucial concepts (e.g., local metaphors, recurrent themes), and the development of narrative impressions (Chen, 2000; Chen et al., 2023). Categorical analysis, the process of identifying recurrent phenomena and the concepts that explain them (Maxwell, 1996), was conducted through coding. This involved breaking down the data, conceptualizing it, and reorganizing it to distill core categories and themes. 4.Participants Based on the theoretical framework and research questions, this study employed purposeful sampling to select participants. The teachers were recruited from the Class Teacher Development Program at Beijing Normal University. Prior to the formal interviews, each potential participant was invited to briefly describe their daily work. Their responses were analyzed based on the keywords they used to characterize their professional experience. Ultimately, seven teachers were selected as the final participants. Their initial descriptions consistently highlighted themes of pressure, busyness, and anxiety, while also revealing coexisting experiences of achievement and fulfillment, thus reflecting the complex reality of the teaching life-world. Each teacher participated in 1 to 3 in-depth interviews, with each session lasting 40 minutes or longer. Data collection continued until thematic saturation was reached.

This study concludes that the burden on Chinese teachers is fundamentally a crisis of modernity within education, characterized by the colonization of the life-world by instrumentally rational systems. This colonization operates through five pathways: (1) Goal Colonization, where metrics like exam scores displace holistic education; (2) Institutional Colonization, creating a state of “coerced voluntarism”; (3) Role Colonization, leading to overload and boundary blurring; (4) Communication Colonization, where mono-logic directives foster “strategic silence”; and (5) Physical-Mental Colonization, which instrumentalizes health and normalizes working while ill. This model details how systemic logic erodes teachers' professional meaning, autonomy, and well-being. The core theoretical contribution reconceptualizes teachers as active agents of everyday resistance. Employing communicative rationality, they engage in micro-practices to rebuild connections through a triad of resistance: building solidarity with peers, establishing "I-Thou" bonds with students, and forging existential bonds with the self through reflexive praxis. This triad forms a vital "repair mechanism" that sustains educational meaning and defends subjectivity.Consequently, teacher education must undergo a paradigm shift: from training system technicians to cultivating agents of rational change. It must be reconfigured as a practice of empowerment, fostering teachers' communicative rationality to critically understand, defend, and reconstruct their professional life-world. This entails integrating critical theory, promoting collaborative practices, and advocating for policies that protect autonomy, thereby transforming teacher education into a foundation for sustainable agency.

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