Teachers’ understandings of indoctrination as ‘affective’: empirical evidence from conflict-affected Cyprus

AbstractThis paper examines teachers’ understandings of affective indoctrination in a conflict-affected society, focusing on how teachers’ political orientations are entangled with these understandings. The exploration is conducted through a qualitative study of Greek-Cypriot primary and secondary school teachers who are identified as either conservative or progressive. The findings highlight that regardless of political orientation, teachers interpret the term indoctrination through a negative lens. However, teachers of progressive orientation view affective indoctrination as a part of everyday educational practices, whereas teachers of conservative orientation understand affective indoctrination as an exceptional case. The paper discusses the implications for teaching and teacher education. The relevance of teachers’ political orientation makes it all the more necessary that teachers and teacher educators delve deeper into the political and pedagogical implications of the entanglement between political orientations and understandings of affective indoctrination in schools.Keywords: IndoctrinationaffectconflictteachersCyprus Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 We are Greek-Cypriot researchers working in different education subfields—i.e. educational theory, curriculum analysis, sociolinguistics, language education—doing research on issues of ethnic conflict, peace, identity and language in the Greek-Cypriot educational system. This is our first study on affective indoctrination, but we have conducted several studies on these issues over the past several years (e.g. Zembylas et al., Citation2016; Zembylas & Loukaidis, Citation2021).2 Besides theoretical reasons, a pragmatic reason for choosing not to draw a hard line between affect and emotion is that there is no word for ‘affect’ in the Greek language. So, in our interviews, we use the term ‘emotion’ although both we and the participants make references to events and processes that include both an emotion or feeling and force (see also note #5).3 Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have always been educated in separate educational systems; although there is a very small number of Turkish-speaking students in a few Greek-Cypriot schools, the two educational systems have been ethnically homogeneous. Given the political sensitivities (e.g. the issue of ‘political recognition’ of the other side), it is difficult to include data from both communities, although there are efforts in recent years by some researchers in both communities to do so.4 Since, during participant recruitment, we asked around (teachers, inspectors, colleagues) to identify participants who were seen as ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’, those who accepted our invitation to be interviewed were put into these preliminary categories.5 As noted earlier, we chose to translate the word ‘συναίσθημα’ [sin′esthima] into ‘emotion’, given that there is no distinction between affect and emotion in Greek. Also the prefix ‘sin’ in the word sin-esthima (rather than ‘esthima’ i.e. feeling) in Greek adds a social dimension (συν-αισθάνομαι), a ‘togetherness’ which could relate to the word emotion as a recognizable cultural and discursive expression. Although we may use different terms (e.g. feeling, emotion, affect) when discussing and paraphrasing participants’ words in reference to ‘sin′esthima’ based on the context, in our analysis we use both emotion/affect to reflect our theoretical choice, as explained earlier in the paper.Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichalinos ZembylasMichalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus, Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, and Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in education, particularly in relation to social justice, decolonization and politics.Xanthia AristidouXanthia Aristidou is a Research Associate at the European University and a Senior Researcher/ Project Manager at CARDET. Her research interests include identity studies, nationalism studies, multi/intercultural education, inclusive education, cultural studies, early childhood education and discursive ethnographic methods.Constadina CharalambousConstadina Charalambous is Associate Professor of Language Education & Literacy at the European University Cyprus (PhD in Sociolinguistics & Education, King’s College London, 2009). Her main research interests revolve around language education in relation to larger cultural and socio-political ideologies and especially in relation to peace, conflict and (in)securitization.