Resilience, resistance and ‘giving back’: teachers from working class backgrounds and their journeys to teaching

Abstract

Precipitated by a recent policy focus on diversifying Ireland’s homogeneous teaching profession, there is an emerging research base focused on the experiences of teachers from under-represented groups. However, the life stories of teachers from lower socio-economic groups remain underexplored. Responsive to the mostly atheoretical nature of research on initial teacher motivation and employing a narrative life history methodology grounded in phenomenology, interviews were conducted with six teachers from working class backgrounds. Consistent with the generative capacity of habitus, the participants’ stories of becoming a teacher are ones of resilience, resistance, and aspiration to make a difference in their local communities. Their experiences of schooling and initial teacher education and the various challenges they encountered, highlights the systemic and cultural change required to ensure not only a more diverse and representative teaching profession, but one that is also critically conscious and culturally responsive.

Keywords:

• Teachers’ life stories
• habitus
• class and education
• diversity
• initial teacher education

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.