Hospital school teachers: Identities, challenges, and sense of professional success
Abstract
Research objectives (aims) and problem(s): The purpose of the study is to explore the reality of hospital education from teachers’ perspectives. Special focus is placed on perceptions of the goals and tasks of education, general support offered to hospitalized children and youth, and teachers’ professional identity and strategies. The article poses the question of the circumstances under which different professional identities are formed and how they shape interactions with students, parents, and medical personnel.
Research methods: Qualitative research methods were used: group and individual interviews with teachers and principals of hospital schools (N=10), participant observation and research walks in two hospital schools, and desk research. The study design was ethnographic.
Process of argumentation: Whereas most national and international studies are focused on pupils’ perspectives of hospital education, our attention is on the teachers’ side: identities, strategies for coping with everyday school life, the construction of these strategies, and their professional roles. The aim of this article is to explain how teachers define their position in the process of hospital education.
Research findings and their impact on the development of educational sciences: The study reveals a typology of four basic models of professional identity conceptualized through the lens of action strategies employed by teachers working with hospitalized youth and children: Chameleon, Rescuer – Clown Doctor, Rescuer – Therapist, and Braveheart. All of them reveal different forms of coping with the tension between the perceived mission of supporting youth and children with complex educational, emotional, and psychological support and an unfavorable institutional environment, lack of psychological competencies, and other barriers.
Conclusions and/or recommendations: The study’s main recommendation is to provide complex support for teachers employed in hospital schools. It should include training in psychological and emotional support, clarifying formal relationships between the primary institutional actors involved, and sharing responsibility for hospital education of youth and children.
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