Exploring the role of yoga in teachers' professional identity and pedagogical approaches
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21561269 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Florence Cross (Japan Graduate School of Education University), Andrew Fisher (0000-0002-2505-2160, University of Nottingham, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 181 |
| Pages | 105691 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Teaching and Teacher Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0742-051X • E-ISSN: 1879-2480 |
| Publisher | Elsevier BV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.tate.2026.105691 |
| OpenAlex | W7165110950 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, this study examines how teachers who completed yoga teacher training made sense of its implications for professional identity and classroom practice. Consistent with an interpretivist and hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the study focuses on how participants interpreted and attributed meaning to lived experience, rather than treating identity or pedagogy as directly observable constructs. Teachers described yoga as a resource for stress management, resilience, agency, and renewed vocational purpose within performative educational cultures. Identity was articulated relationally, with participants blurring personal and professional boundaries and describing more collaborative classroom dynamics centred on shared regulation and attention to the whole child. Yet yoga remained marginalised, frequently coded as feminine, non-academic, and peripheral to subject pedagogy. The findings suggest that performativity constrains professional flourishing and indicate the need for embodied, reflective CPD, institutional recognition of wellbeing, and longitudinal research examining how such interventions reshape teacher identity over time
Flourishing · Interpretative phenomenological analysis · Performative utterance · Performativity · Psychological intervention · Teacher education · Early Childhood Education and Development · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
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Good education in an age of measurement
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Improving classroom learning environments by Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (Care)
Understanding teacher identity
Investigating Early Childhood Teachers’ Perceptions of a Preschool Yoga Program
Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity
Panoptic performativity and school inspection regimes
Carry on Caring
Schooling citizenship and character in a therapeutic society
Teaching Mindfulness in an Unmindful System
Chapter 3
The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity
Secular, religious or spiritual? A sociological portrait of UK mindfulness teachers
Shaping mindful citizens
Promoting mindfulness in education
| Highly cited | No |
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