Four Religious Education Teachers: Four Retrospective Career Trajectories

Abstract

This article examines the career paths of Finnish Religious Education (RE) teachers who were born in the 1930s, through a retrospective, self-autobiographical life history approach. The material reported here is a part of wider data of mainly written narratives (N = 62) from RE teachers who recount their career trajectories. In these career-focused life histories, the teachers outline their own professionalism as embedded in changing sociohistorical contexts, where to a great extent they tell about the active development of the school and the teaching of their particular subject to answer to the changing needs and challenges. Some teachers have, along with their teaching, also been actively involved in different communities or associations. Many of the Religious Education teachers here reflect on their career paths in relation to their profession as a teacher and often also with double qualifications as pastor trained theologians. At times, this constructs a possibility for tension between the roles of a teacher and that of a pastor, and in the perceptions of RE as a school subject and as something "preached" in the pulpit-some see their professionalism above all in relation to their religious life. This also includes a notable gender divide in the data, as at the time when these teachers gained their professional qualifications, it was only possible for men to be ordained in the Finnish Lutheran Church. Succeeding this, the male teachers in these data commonly have pastorhood as their first profession. For the purpose of this article, the career accounts of four teachers have been selected for further analysis, as they were perceived as telling examples of the wider material in terms of more or less typical career paths.

Finnish and Turkish Student Teachers’ Views on Virtual Worldview Dialogue

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When the Gap between Academic Theology and the Church Makes Possible the Orthodox–Evangelical Dialogue

“…On the other hand, their contribution concerns the instruction of believers in local churches according to their specific spiritual needs. Therefore, religion teachers could be a strategic interface between church life and academic theology and a catalytic factor for stimulating theological reflection in relation to the spiritual needs of the Christian community (Luodeslampi et al 2019). Finally, by being present in schools, they could support the culture of interfaith dialogue and knowledge and respect for the diversity of expression of the Christian faith.…”

The learning trajectory of emerging professionalism: A Finnish student teacher negotiating world-view education and early childhood education and care superdiversity

“…Previous research has examined teacher professionalism and world-view education in schools (see Everington et al, 2011; Freathy et al, 2016; Luodeslampi et al, 2019) and ECEC professionalism (see Campbell-Bar, 2019; Karila, 2008 Vandenbroeck et al, 2016), especially following the academization of ECEC teacher education. However, professionalism in ECEC world-view diversity has received scant attention, and the present study aims to contribute to filling this gap in the research.…”