Splitting Image: reconceptualising teacher identity through the use of pictorial metaphor.

As a senior lecturer in RE, involved in doctoral studies, I am interested in teachers’ identities and in considering ways the teacher is traditionally positioned by students and others, both ontologically and epistemologically. I understand that teachers are often positioned as repositors and transmitters of knowledge. I use works of art to express my own pedagogical theory and practice. I draw meaning and significance from art forms not in an illustrative way but in a way that helps me to explain practice. I understand that forms of art can also be used to portray changing relationships and complex, richly ambiguous theories. Pieces are chosen for use in my own pedagogical practice, and I encourage students to use art in this way, too. Some of these pictorial metaphors reveal something of embodied educational and ontological values that speak of invitation to learn, to encounter, to engage but never of coercion, and take the form of movement, shape, colour and dance. Such art can in turn become significant elements in teachers’ own personal-professional identities. Thus, through studying some traditional and modern images, I hope to offer a model and picture of the teacher that is inclusional, relational and dynamic rather than one involving transmissive methodology and seek to offer artistic representations of good practice.