2022 IJRSE – Volume 11 Issue 2
Available Online: 23 January 2022
Author/s:
Canete, Jonathan James O.
De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines (ncanete976@gmail.com)
Abstract:
The study determines the perception of 99 religious education teachers on their identity as religion teachers using Qualitative methods in data gathering. The researcher asked series of open-ended questions, formulated for a class by Dr. Carolina Dionco, to the respondents about their understanding of what a religious education teacher is all about, what are the challenges and difficulties of being a religion teacher, and the possible intervention in addressing the identified problems. Upon close examination and inductively interpret the responses, three categories were determined to systematically capture the essence of the responses – vocation, rootedness, and formation. The respondents have a strong conviction that being a religious education teacher is a vocation, a calling from God to proclaim the Gospel to the learners. Moreover, that vocation should take its root with the one who calls that is no other than God in the person of Christ. However, such vocation is not without any challenges from the pedagogical aspect of teaching the faith down to the spirituality of the educator, that is why professional and spiritual formation is necessary. The categories were appropriated with the Discipleship Process Framework by Lewis to systematize the relationship of each category together with the hopes of coming up with a new way of understanding what does it mean to be a religion teacher. The appropriation has resulted to the formation of the Discipleship Identity of Religious Educators Framework (DIREF) which understands religious education as a discipleship process, and the identity of religion teachers as a discipleship identity.
Keywords: discipleship, identity, reflection, religious education, teacher
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2022.215
Cite this article:
Canete, J. J. O. (2022). On being a religious education teacher: A reflection on discipleship identity. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 11(2), 99-107. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2022.215