Negotiating spirituality in teacher education

Teachers teach out of who they are (Palmer, 1998), and teaching, or enacting curriculum, is what all teachers do, whether working in teacher education or at some other level of education. When the whole teacher is drawn into a relationship with their students, when connections are established, teaching is then a gifting of the teacher’s self, a relational engagement (Palmer, 2003). If education is about making choices, it needs to address the ethical responsibility of recognising wholeness in education and the “recognition of the person as spiritual” (English, Fenwick, & Parsons, 2003, p. 4). Engaging with spirituality in teacher education is not without its tensions. The practice then becomes a case of pushing boundaries. The aim of this article is to uncover the inherent complexities and challenges of negotiating spirituality in teacher education in order to advance conversations on who is the spiritual self that teaches.