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Object: This article explores the experiences of professional hospice workers using a creative process for debriefing them in order to facilitate the expression and communication of complex thoughts and feelings. The creative arts workshops were developed with the understanding in mind that caring for terminally ill patients can be challenging and stressful and professional hospice workers are subsequently at risk of developing compassion fatigue. The workshops focussed on skills transfers as well as self-healing by experiencing and teaching a diverse range of creative arts like music, drama, art, touch therapy, storytelling and movement. Design: Case study design. Setting: Gauteng, South Africa. Methods: Data collection included individual interviews with 19 trainees at nine different hospices, focus group interviews, observations during the workshops as well as a researcher journal. Themes were generated through thematic analysis to describe the experiences of the caregivers. Results: We found that the expressive arts facilitated communication and self-care and improved the wellbeing of the professional hospice workers. Conclusion: These findings add to understanding of the healing effects of the creative arts and especially the benefits in the hospice setting.

The authors describe teacher professional identity as lived experience in the context of educational change. Adopting activity theory and its genesis in cultural historical theory (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004) as a framework, the article discusses the way teachers see themselves as professionals and how they compose their identities in schools, the educational space, which is their workplace. Activity theory is utilised as the broad theoretical lens and the design type and methodology are discussed accordingly. The school and the classroom are activity systems (Engeström, 1991), and social and semiotic ecosystems (Lemke, 1995). It is therefore in the tensions within the activity system that we capture and represent a constructed teacher conversation, composed of the voices of three social actors on an imaginary social stage, which is the empirical text of the article. Main findings speak to multiple roles, struggling voice and forging professional identity in the changing educational landscape.This article attends to teacher identity as lived experience in the context of educational change. In a young democracy such as South Africa, teachers play a critical role in educating the youth and advancing the social collective good. We argue that, in a society where the social capital divide is increasing, teachers are one of the last hopes for the young from especially rural and poor township communities. Adopting activity theory and its genesis in cultural historical theory (Stetsenko & Arievitch, 2004) as a framework, the article discusses the way teachers see themselves as professionals and how they compose their identities in schools, the educational space, their workplace. This workplace is neither fixed nor static, but a site for intersecting networks of relations, technology (tools) and practice which extend in complex interrelations beyond what is seen as the institution (McGregor, 2003). All of these aspects are enlarged in a society in transition where there are numerous structural and semiotic changes.

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