Solidarity Preempted: Teacher Professional Identity and Resistance in Belarus

• In Event: Belarus IV: Dispossession and Disruption: Belarusian Professional, Religious, and Vulnerable Communities in Exile

Abstract

Entrusted with the responsibilities of educating next generations of citizens, teachers have always played an important role in the promotion or contestation of ideologies aiding nation-states’ projects (e.g., Markava, 2016), but also resisting them (Compton & Weiner, 2008). Whereas in democratic societies that permit open and collective action teachers often resist collectively through union strikes or social movements, such course of action is difficult in non-democratic contexts like Belarus. Besides an initial waves of teacher strikes in the early 1990s (Sutherland, 1999) there have been few instances of organized teacher resistance documented in the post-Soviet region which might be interpreted as evidence that teachers do not resist. Moreover, there is a documented pattern of post-Soviet teachers staying in their positions despite worsening material and economic conditions and decline in the status of teaching (Eklof, 1993; Long & Long, 1999).
Scholars interpret this pattern through the lens of professionalism and suggest that teachers stay because of their strong professional identity. Seeing themselves as sources of knowledge and morality and feeling professional obligations towards their students and the society, they teach what they deem appropriate for their students ignoring, and sometimes subverting, state’s directives (Millei, 2013; Niyozov, 2004). At the same time, there is very little understanding what Belarusian teacher professionalism entails, how it forms, and what potential is has for collective teacher action in the future.
This presentation, based on my dissertation research, addresses these gaps. Drawing on 50 hours of in-depth life history interviews with 16 Belarusian teachers in exile it examines how teachers understand their professional duties, balance them with state’s requirements, and resist in the context of an authoritarian state. First, I outline features of teacher professionalism derived from the interviews and discuss whether professionalism can be conceptualized as resistance to the state. Second, I discuss material and symbolic factors that hinder the formation of the professional teacher community in Belarus and act as serious obstacles for teacher collective action and solidarity.

Author

• Kate Antanovich, Pennsylvania State U