Gray Matters in Institutional Ideology: How Ideological Dilemmas Affect Orthodox Teachers in North American Community Schools

ABSTRACT This paper looked at ideological dilemmas for Orthodox Bible teachers in pluralistic Jewish high schools in North America. A phenomenological approach was used to identify sources of tension and drew on data from 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with teachers of diverse Orthodox affiliations. Findings indicated that teacher tension resulted from inconsistencies in institutional lived and intellectual ideologies, with regard to hiring practices, goals and missions of the school, and curricular and pedagogical autonomy. Tensions were exacerbated by teachers’ outsider status, which caused them to have difficulty interpreting religious, cultural, and social nuances of the school context.