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Objectives or purposes:
This presentation proposes a dialogic framework for exploring how tensions between religious and teaching identities can be negotiated in a teacher’s work and life. Researchers largely agree that because the teaching profession demands significant personal investment, success and longevity in the job depends on ongoing reflection and attention to one’s identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Beijaard et al., 2004; Day et al., 2006). However, the role of religion in the development of teaching selves is rarely the focus of teacher identity research (White, 2009). Studies that do examine religion in teaching (e.g., Hartwick, 2012) have not applied dialogic theory to their data. By applying a dialogic theory to the interrelationship between teaching and religious identities, I aim to explore heretofore unexamined complexities in the ways teaching identities are constructed.
Theoretical Framework:
Although in separate fields, dialogic theory (Bakhtin, 1981) has been useful for studying the complexities both of teacher identity (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011) in educational research and religious identities (Bielo, 2011; Garriot & O’Neill, 2009) in anthropology, but it has yet to inform cases when both teaching and religious identities interrelate. Akkerman and Meijer (2011) proposed a Diaological Self Theory (DST) of teacher identity, arguing that the full complexity of teacher identities are done justice when identity is explored not as an end point, but as an ongoing and dialogical process. As such, teacher identity can involve different dialogical negotiations depending on one’s context. Similarly, Garriot & O’Neill (2009) proposed an anthropology of Christianity that revolved around“ an appreciation for the dialogic process [...] through which Christians and Christianity emerge” (388). Instead of defining what Christianity is, a dialogic approach explores processes of how those who identify as Christians negotiate their understanding of their religious identities.
Modes of Inquiry and Evidence:
To illustrate the affordances of a dialogic approach to teaching and religious identities, I draw on a dataset from a prior descriptive case study (Authors) exploring ways in which a white Evangelical English teacher negotiated her religious and teaching identity against the backdrop of a Cristo Rey Catholic school. Data consist of transcribed interviews with Amy (a white Evangelical English teacher), as well as ethnographic field notes and analytic memos constructed during or shortly after 10 classroom visits.
Conclusions and Significance:
The ethnographic data for this study resulted in three key findings. First, although Amy’s religious identity was certainly more defined than her teaching identity, both identities were mutually influential of one another. Second, corroborating Hartwick’s (2012) studies of religious identity in public school teachers, Amy’s religious identity motivated, alleviated, supported her teaching, but it also challenged her teacher identity. And third, the study showed that teacher identity reflected, nuanced, and challenged Amy’s religious identity. By joning conversations around dialogic approaches to teaching identity and religious identities, educational researchers gain access to an ignored set of processes and operations that undoubtedly operate beneath the surface of most if not all educational contexts (Schweber, 2014).