Teachers’ professional identity in super-diverse school settings: teachers as agents of intercultural education

Abstract

This research study focuses on the ways in which teachers’ professional identity is being shaped and influenced in ‘super-diverse’ school settings. For the purposes of this research, we used the Cyprus educational system as our case study to investigate how teachers experience the enactment of intercultural education at the school level. To this end, 20 interviews were carried out along with 11 female and 9 male teachers of 10 primary schools, which presented diverse profiles of their student populations. Research data revealed that teachers’ professional identity and its underpinning constructs such as emotions, job satisfaction, professional commitment, autonomy and confidence were constantly challenged and negotiated within the changing educational setting. Contextual and professional factors such as work intensification, lack of training and resources, lack of respect and negligence of teachers’ previous experiences, ideologies, values and beliefs were found to affect teachers’ identity and consequently intercultural policy enactment. Therefore, the case is made that the complexity of professional identity needs to be taken into account by policymakers because teachers are the ones who embrace, reinterpret and develop the curriculum. The way and degree to which teachers understand, adjust, perceive and enact on educational policies are affected by the extent to which these policies interact with and challenge existing identities.

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