Changing Professionalisms as a Constant of Re-Subject(ivat)ion: Life Histories of Greek Cypriot Elementary Teachers (1950s–2010s)

• In Event: Social and Discursive Contexts of Teachers' Work: Across Time and Place

Abstract

This paper explores teacher professional subjectivities as emerging in sociopolitical and historicized contexts, where both continuity and change are possible, by focusing on 58 Greek-Cypriot elementary teachers’ life hi/stories across six cohorts corresponding to different periods in the history of the Republic of Cyprus (late 1950s-2010s). Specifically, we focus on mapping out the multiple narrated meanings of professionalism that emerged within and across cohorts, as those were linked to teachers’ personal biographies, but also to local, institutional, sociopolitical, and broader transnational contexts. We inquire the discourses of love/care, excellence and social mobility as techniques operating across and in given space-times, that both subjected and subjectivated teachers as emergent yet solidified types of professionals, whose recognisability remained constant, yet shifting.

Authors

• Stavroula Philippou, University of Cyprus
  Presenting Author

• Stavroula Kontovourki, University of Cyprus
  Presenting Author