Beginning art teachers' negotiation of their beliefs and identity within the reality of the public schools

This study followed the ways beginning art teachers negotiated their beliefs and identity. Understanding the complexity of the way teachers' identity and beliefs are constructed contributes to the notion that becoming a teacher, and being one, is more than learning to fulfill a function through possessing pedagogical skills, gaining experience in the classroom, or learning updated theories.; The research presents four case studies of student teachers, who graduated from the School of Art, Beit-Berl College in Israel. I collected the data over six years. I started to study their beliefs and the way they constructed their teaching identity within and against the discourses of the School of Art, as they became art teachers. Then I followed them as art teachers at various public schools in Israel as they gained four or more years of teaching experience.; My main research question was how these beginning art teachers negotiated their beliefs and identity within the reality of public schools. Through this question I examined how they renegotiated their practices and beliefs about their goals in art education. Had they kept the same set of beliefs that they developed as student teachers? How did they negotiate their beliefs in light of the educational system's expectations and norms? How did they make sense of who they are, who they are not, and who they would like to be, in an environment that marginalizes art and art teachers?; The partial tales I collected from the art teachers and rewrote described impressive teaching practices, employing different discourses to address the complex reality they had to face. These stories provide particular examples for feminist poststructuralist theories that suggest that being a teacher is a constant process of becoming through employing knowledge and discourses in a specific socio/cultural environment. They provide interesting examples of how the art teachers shaped their schools while being shaped by them. The stories described a variety of conflicts and challenges the art teachers encountered in the public schools and ways they negotiated them. The descriptions of the conflicts and the meaning the art teachers made out of their struggles can help us understand what it means to constantly become a teacher.