This paper will present preliminary findings from an ongoing multi-sited ethnography investigating religious education teachers’ use of online social spaces. Looking particularly at the construction of RE teachers’ professional identities, the study focuses on two primary online social spaces: the TES RE Forum and the NATRE Facebook Page. However, also included, as secondary ethnographic sites within this multi-sited framework, are users’ schools and homes as a means of analyzing the interaction between the online and offline domains. The methodological approach is open and inductive, utilizing multiple data sources. The primary methods include: participant observation and analysis of online interactions; in depth narrative based online and offline interviews; analysis of networks; elite interviews; and analysis of RE/ religious discourses in the media. Themes emerging from the fieldwork will be discussed in this paper. In particular, the neutrality of the online social spaces being studied will be questioned and the relationship between the agendas of parent companies and RE teachers’ online engagement and understandings of themselves and their subject will be explored. Additionally, Goffman’s image of ‘backstage’ in his framework of performance will be considered as having useful theoretical implications for an understanding of the place online social spaces play in RE teachers professional lives.

1. Politics, Power, and
Performance
An ethnography of religious education teachers’ engagement in
online social spaces
James Robson
12 June 2012

2. Introduction
The Project in a Nutshell
 An ethnography of religious education teachers’
engagement and interaction in online social spaces to
gain a theorised understanding of these online
communities and how they feature in users’ professional
lives.

3. Background: What is RE
 A statutory subject, but locally determined
 Has been a popular GCSE full and short course
But
 Not included in the Ebacc – reduction in teaching time and
teaching staff
 Teacher Training reductions
 LA cuts and advisor redundancies – removing support networks
for already isolated sole subject specialists
Therefore, a feeling that RE is under threat and RE teachers are
isolated (NATRE 2011a &b)

4. Background: Online Social Spaces
 Where in the past RE teachers were able to interact with peers via LA
advisors, local groups and CDP, these opportunities are becoming increasingly
rare.
 However, access to the Internet is universal amongst UK teachers, making
online social spaces an important potential place for professional
interaction.
 Research undertaken by the Culham Institute has shown that the numbers of
RE teachers using these spaces has grown significantly over the last 5 years.
 More broadly, there’s an bourgeoning body of literature discussing
interactions in online social spaces and the implications of such interaction
for the construction of identity and personal and professional meaning.
 Therefore, I’m interested in investigating these issues in the context of RE.

5. Aim & Questions
The aim is to investigate the use of online social spaces
by RE teachers in their professional lives and how they
perceive and construct understandings of themselves
and their subject through such online engagement.
Underlying this is the wider aim of understanding how
RE teacher identities are constructed and the role
online social spaces may play in this.

6. Questions
This study is framed by an overarching research question:
How do RE teachers engage in online social spaces in the course
of their professional lives?
A number of sub-questions help answer this primary question:
 What motivates RE teachers to use online social spaces, what do
they hope to get out of it and what do they actually get out of
it?
 How is RE teachers’ engagement in online social spaces
incorporated into their wider online and offline lives?
 How is the engagement of RE teachers in online social spaces
influenced by the agendas of organizations, stakeholders and
interest groups?

7. Methodology
A digital ethnography
Conducting in depth ethnographic fieldwork in two professional
related online social spaces: the TES RE Forumand the NATRE
Facebook Page.
Defining the field
Both online activity and ‘being’ a teacher are necessarily
situated in offline contexts. Therefore the teachers’ school/
classroom and anywhere the teachers are located in when they
use the online spaces (e.g. home, bus, etc.) are included as part
of the wider focus.
The interaction between the offline and online is consequently
an important part of this study.

8. Methodology 2
Data comes from multiple sources:
 Network analysis
 Participant observation
 User interviews (online and offline)
 Targeted key interviews
 Grey literature (print media and increasingly online articles)
Analysis: An adapted version of Miles and Huberman’s matrix
approach (grounded, holistic, context focused)

9. Emergent findings
 Political identities and political action.
 Neutrality of online spaces?
 The importance of anonymity and performance –
Goffman and the TES forum acting as a back region.

10. Political Identities – Political
Action
 ‘I didn’t really get involved in the politics around RE
until I started using the forum’ - Charlene
 ‘With the Ebacc, I was angry, but with all the
information on the forum and Facebook about how to
write to MPs I was actually motivated to do something…
I ended up writing about 5 different letters…’ – Gemma
 ‘I love being political. I actually chased Gove down to
ask him a question about RE and part of me was thinking
this will make a really good story to share with the
forum’ – Mrs DMC

11. Lobbying
 Therefore, politicization isn’t just a natural product of
engagement, it is also an specific intention of these
sites to foster political discourse and action.
 ‘So here's Michael Gove's letter to Tim Oates in response
to the Primary Curriculum Review. There are plans to
revise the aims of the curriculum. Spot the total
absence of RE AGAIN. Time to write you our MPs again I
think’ NATRE 11th June 2012

12. Power - Neutrality of online
spaces?
NATRE users enter a crisis discourse because the dominant users
(NATRE representatives) emphasize a particular interpretation
of the state of RE. One which is in their interests.
NATRE – RE’s Pugilists
‘I note that we have had 12 education secretaries in the
last 22 years. This means they last, on average, one year
and ten months. Mr Gove has done 1 year and 3 months
now, but I think he is below average. Conservative
ministers last a shorter average than Labour… Here's for
sure: I intend to be around repairing RE from damage done
when Mr Gove has moved along.’ - NATRE Representative
unsolicited post

13. Performance and Anonymity
 Performance as a metaphor for both teaching and interacting
with peers in schools
 ‘For me teaching is a performance. I get dressed up in a
particular costume and act in a particular way wherever I am
in the school. In the classroom and the staffroom. I only let
my guard down in the pub and online’ – Charlene
 ‘I think my online interactions are more honest because my
school and job are anonymous so I can say things I wouldn’t
share in the staffroom’ – Gemma
 ‘I’ve got an image as the tough forthright one in my school, I
don’t want to lose that, so being online I can show
weaknesses and ask questions that I wouldn’t ask my
colleagues at school’ – Maybelle

14. Goffman and the TES forum as a
back stage
 Dramaturgical perspective of performative sociology: front
stage – back stage.
 Where Goffman has been used in online contexts, analyses
have normally emphasised anonymity and identity play and
online performances.
However, on the TES Forum, anonymity seems to provide a back
stage for RE teachers:
 A place to relax, complain, self-mock, show weakness, with
no risk to damaging front stage identities
 A place for users to shape themselves into more adept front
stage actors

15. Conclusion
Changing experience of being a teacher
 Membership of a group that previously did not exist
 Feelings of political empowerment
 Both reducing isolation, but increasing and emphasising
it in schools
 A new back stage area