| What is the connection between religion and identity? In particular, how is it that teachers construct their identity at the places where religion and teaching intersect? What do their beliefs about religion mean in how they understand themselves (including whether and how it is connected to other elements of their identity, such as race or gender) and how do they work out the intersection of their beliefs about religion in the classroom? What do they experience interpersonally and institutionally in schools while carrying those beliefs with them, and what do they in their teaching practice and career choices as a result?;This research project comprises a series of ethnographic case studies connected to a conceptual analysis of the meaning of religion and identity that is directed at understanding how teachers make sense of the complementary and conflicting demands of their religious identity and their teacher identity. In it, I explore the participants' present sense of themselves as teachers and in terms of their religion and follow how and why they came to that place. I explore the relevance and importance of religion in comparison to other factors in terms of their motivations and choices in approaching teaching as a career and a profession, as well as their overt classroom activities on a day-to-day basis, the covert or subtextual messages that they both intentionally and incidentally convey, and they way they see, understand, and act upon diversity and difference. This includes religious diversity and difference, since understanding the influence of religious identity requires a look into how teachers perceive and process their own religious identity in relation to others and act to reinforce or combat privilege and marginalization of different groups. This project is focused on teachers from one particular religious identity, group---Baptist Protestant Christians---as the beginning of a larger process of understanding the modes in which teachers engage religious identity in their teaching work and their teaching career and suggests a typology for understanding those modes of thought and action. The hope is to better prepare aspiring teachers to deal with their own and others' religious identity in their teaching careers. |
