“I guess that’s how I kind of slipped into it!” Experienced teachers teaching religious education (RE) as an out-of-field subject in Australian Catholic rural and regional schools

While much of the research indicates that out-of-field (OOF) teachers tend to be either graduate teachers or those in their first three years of teaching, this is not always the case. Drawn from a larger Australian project, this paper reports on findings from survey (n = 64) and interview (n = 4) data showing that in Religious Education (RE) across regional and rural Catholic schools, nearly one third of participants had been teaching RE OOF for more than 12 years, with a combined 27 teaching RE as an OOF subject for five or more years. Analysis of the reasons given for what led them to teach RE as an OOF subject indicates that an ‘ethic of care’ functions as a boundary object – an artefact that fulfils a bridging function to enable teachers to cross the boundary from their in-field subject to an OOF subject, in this case, RE. Since these responses were provided by those for whom teaching RE has become a part of their professional work, questions about their motivation pertain to very established and mature attitudes on their part and is an area that warrants further research and discussion.