Not my circus, not my monkeys: Using Bakhtin's carnival to explore teacher identity and experience

This PhD artefact consists of an anthology of short stories collectively titled ‘Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys’, and an accompanying exegesis titled ‘Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys: exploring the creative process and product’. The short stories document the experiences of teachers from the early days of their careers to a time before retirement. Each story uses Bakhtin’s carnival to explore the experiences of teachers in their everyday workplaces and beyond. The carnivalised stories convey the emotional aspect of the job and how this dimension of the workplace is marginalised when talking about the teacher profession. The stories highlight how within English and Australian educational systems, the individual teacher’s voice is also marginalised or silenced. The narratives examine the impact on teachers as people and the exegesis enters into a scholarly debate regarding a profession that is struggling to keep its newer recruits. An enduring theme of teacher identity underpins the stories and this theme is also debated in the exegesis using an autoethnographic methodology. The writer’s choice of creative writing as a vehicle for examining teacher identity and experience is discussed in the exegesis, and the elements of short story writing are also investigated.