When cultural reproduction overshadows personal transformation: the case of Russian schools teachers in Estonia

Abstract

ABSTRACT The success with which minority teachers cope with socio-cultural integration indicates their transformative agency. However, teachers’ ideational projects, which are converted into a set of established practices, are tightly connected with their ideologies. In this case what they transform is not a matter of integration for them but is irrevocably intertwined with protecting their own culture. Applying a symbolic interactionist methodological lens and Archer’s ’social morphogenesis’ explanatory framework, in this qualitative research I aim to examine the unique educational context of Estonia. Schools with Russian as the language of instruction co-exist with schools where instruction is in the national language. The paper explores the mechanisms that stand behind the social agency of minority teachers and why their practices are considered ‘morphostatic’ for the whole education system. The paper concludes that these teachers’ agency is culturally mediated and their strategies are reflexive and morphogenetic in nature, even though they don’t lead to integration.