A critical autoethnographic study of compliance and resilience

This critical autoethnographic thesis questions how teachers can reconcile themselves within the system of education by identifying the underlying political context of their role and suggesting methods of navigation in creating an agentic and professional self-identity. At the heart of this work is the fictional story of Miss Kenny, a young, resilient Northern teacher, who offers the reader a redemptive thread of hope, despite her daily struggles with compliance and performativity in teaching. Aiming to connect emotionally with the reader, this narrative synthesis created through a number of critical incidents creates both space and dialogue in the form of a messy text so that the transformative journey may be felt on a more personal and connective basis. The findings conclude that Miss Kenny perceives the government to be leading education astray, creating a misalignment between the rhetoric of professionalism and the reality of teaching but is able to address her concern by improving her emotional well-being and resilience, creating an agentic self, forged in research. This enables her to become a miraculé of her lived domain. The implications of this research provide a way in which teachers can not only survive, but thrive in education by understanding their personal positioning in relation to values and identity, as well as considering their own moral purpose as they negotiate notions of compliance and resilience in a transformative journey of research.