Photo essay: The border is …

Based on autobiographical data, the paper describes six ideal types of teacher identities conceived as different patterns of perceiving and coping with professional demands. One hundred and twenty full‐time seventh through ninth grade teachers were selected in a stratified random sample. Teachers’ experience ranged from 5 to 29 years and 12.5% of the selected teachers were female. Data were collected in the form of semi‐structured interviews that started with a short overview of the interviewee's professional biography [Stegreiferzählung]and continued with self‐image and attitudes, social and professional mobility, vocation, start as a classroom teacher, professional competence, best years and burn‐out, professional satisfaction, and social network questions. The first step of data analysis included content and frequency analyses of these topics. In a second step, the Stegreiferzahlungwas analyzed by classifying the different biographical phases and defining biographical types. In a third step, identity‐types were constructed by using the biographical type as an “independent” variable to analyze the systematically explored topics according to Mex Weber's method of forming ideal types. This led to the six ideal types of teacher identity: the stabilization‐type, the development‐type, the diversification‐type, the problem‐type, the crisis‐type, and the resignation‐type.     

Teaching at the border of despair and hope: supporting the education of non‐traditional working class student teachers

This study focuses on a group of working class adult students' experiences and reactions to their encounters during a foundational series of university courses required of all preprofessional education students. It finds that sharing stressful events and personal information during analytical discussions led to the development of a collegial learning community and added to participants' respect for difference and diversity. The study also finds that these non‐traditional undergraduates viewed their own academic learning experience, as well as their role as college students, through a standpoint of struggle and distress. However, their future professional goal, being a teacher, was defined from an opposite point of view. Education and learning as a profession was viewed as a liberating experience, a way out of poverty and other stressful conditions. The dissonance between these two perspectives is explored from a variety of theoretical perspectives and the discussion ends with a call for more inclusive and flexible university programs that support working class and non‐traditional students' perspectives and needs.