A Heuristic Inquiry: Examining the Negotiations of Identity, Self and Border Crossings of Rural Female Teachers in North Dakota

Abstract

This heurisitc study examines my voice, through a stream of consciousness, as an immigrant who moved from rural East Yorkshire, UK, to rural North Dakota, USA. I use the feminist lenses of intersectionality, the borderlands, and identity theory to examine my experiences as a rural female teacher; I also utilized those lenses to analyze other rural female teachers’ experiences. As a self-positioned outsider in the rural community where I have made my home, I expected to find that other women had different experiences than me. After conducting 18 semi-structured interviews, I coded the data using landscape coding, thematic coding, and emotional coding to emphasize the importance of place, relationships, and the experiences that these women shared. The findings revealed that women place a far greater emotional burden on themselves as they attempt to satisfy the cultural and place-specific needs. As such, a woman’s’ identity can become fragmented as she attempts to perform many different aspects of her identity in differing places. In times when these identities collide, the rural female teacher may speak out against societies expectations as she showcases an identity that does not seem to fit in that place.