ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the way secondary-level religious educators (RE) who teach within the religious community they belong to see themselves and situate their role. Teacher identity is deeply embedded in one's personal life experiences, and it is therefore difficult to find a way to speak about teacher identity discourse without recognising the complexities in negotiating between one's personal life and one's role as a teacher in the classroom. As religious education takes places outside of the confines of a school, it is released of many of the limitations as well. The pressure from the community is also what leads to accountability and adds additional meaning and purpose to the teacher's role. The researchers used semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions to better understand the teacher's thoughts and experiences of their experiences as religious education teachers in Canada. Person-to-person interviews were the main source of data collection.
