The Use of Occupational Images in Counselor Supervision

Counselor supervision occurs during a critical stage when counselors‐in‐training (CITs) are actively developing their career self‐concept as they adapt to professional life and responsibilities. This article provides an application of a narrative approach for supervisors helping CITs understand how their personal occupational images interplay with adjusting to the work environment. With this understanding, CITs are able to identify aspects of the professional career image that they want to develop and portray in their pursuit of a career in counseling.     

The relational selves of female graduate students during academic mentoring: from dialogue to transformation

This study, framed by social constructionism, retrospectively examines how faculty mentoring influenced the transformations of 10 female graduate students’ relational selves and their professional identities as qualitative researchers and scholars. Participants reported that effective mentorships often resulted in collaboration on research projects, as well as shared decision‐ and meaning‐making. Effective mentoring also led to the development of the students’ research skills while simultaneously constructing their professional and academic selves. These situated mentorships were shaped by the diverse values, expectations, and hopes that the participants associated with mentoring. Additionally, the local practices, power structures, and relationships at the department or university level influenced, and possibly discouraged, active communication and ongoing dialogue regarding the individuals’ experience of mentoring. Ultimately, participants described how their experiences of mentoring welcomed them into the scholarly community and ensured their professional competence as researchers and academics, which, in turn, transformed the students’ broader sense of self.     

Teachers' personal learning networks (PLNs): exploring the nature of self‐initiated professional learning online

In the field of Literacy Studies, online spaces have been recognised as providing many opportunities for spontaneous and self‐initiated learning. While some progress has been made in understanding these important learning experiences, little attention has been paid to teachers' self‐initiated professional learning. Contributing to the debates about learning online, this article explores three teachers' self‐initiated professional learning about digital technologies through their Personal Learning Networks. It reports the findings from a larger qualitative project and examines how the participants' digital literacy practices shaped their deliberate professional learning. The analysis identified several attributes of the participants' learning which, according to them, made professional learning appealing and effective: social, personalised, active and reciprocal, ongoing and blended. The article concludes by discussing how these findings can be used to draw out implications for teachers' professional learning.     

Information Policy and Social Media: Accept or Decline

In this article I examine how intersections between information policy and social media affect professional ethics and instructional decision making as considered through the lens of professional development and continuing education. The discussion uses techniques from autoethnography such as personal narrative, figurative language and scenarios. Data are extracted from my field notes, observations and writings. My experiences as an instructor of information policy and as an academic with a Ph.D. in Educational Communication and Technology who teaches online courses to graduate professional learners are included. My conclusions are: (1) The formal information policies of social media platforms create an environment requiring instructors to apply professional ethics considerations when deciding how students will use social media platforms. (2) The informal information policies which students hold affect their responses to the information policies of social media platforms used for educational purposes. (3) Instructors can examine the intersections of information policies, professional ethics and student preferences to aid their instructional decision making regarding the integration of social media platforms into professional development and continuing education.     

Habitual practice vs. the struggle for change: can informal teacher learning promote ongoing change to professional practice?

In this article the relationship between teacher change and teacher learning is analysed. Data presented here were gathered through self‐study research over a 30‐month period, during which the author, as a teacher‐researcher in Malta, systematically recorded observations and reflections into a reflective journal. This article addresses issues such as: (a) how habitual routines that are technical in nature are formed, and how these tend to distance the practitioner from consciously developing and learning, and subsequently changing and improving professional practice; (b) how uncertainty regarding an innovation in the educational field might induce the need for both change and development; (c) how continuous learning and critically questioning beliefs and assumptions is important for change to occur; (d) how important determination on the practitioner's part is in the fight against the status quo; and (e) how reflective practice can be seen as a corrective to experiential over‐learning.     

积累 探究 反思——浅谈化学教师专业成长的三个阶段

教师的专业成长是教师自身发展的需要,也是新课程改革成败的关键。文章以教师专业成长的三个阶段——学习积累、研究创新、总结反思为基础,结合化学教学的学科特点,初步探讨了化学教师在教学过程中如何不断积累反思,如何结合现代教育理念和技术进行不断的研究创新,促进教师专业成长,达到自我发展的目标。     

Trainee teachers with dyslexia: personal narratives of resilience

This paper tells the stories of two trainee teachers and their personal experiences of dyslexia. Both informants were English and training to be primary school teachers in England. Through drawing on their own experiences of education, the stories illustrate how dyslexia has shaped the self‐concept, self‐esteem and resilience of each informant. The narratives presented in this paper illustrate powerfully the ways in which teachers can have a positive or negative impact on the self‐concepts of students with dyslexia. Both had been inspired by teachers they had met, and these positive role models had given them the confidence to pursue their own ambitions. However, both had encountered teachers who lacked empathy and patience, and these teachers had a detrimental impact on their self‐concepts. For both of these trainee teachers, personal experiences of dyslexia also shaped their professional identities as teachers. Both trainees described themselves as caring and empathic teachers, suggesting that personal experiences of dyslexia had a positive impact on teacher professional identity.     

A narrative inquiry into the fostering of a teacher-principal’s best-loved self in an online teacher community in China

This study revolves around an organically lived online community of Chinese elementary teachers. The teachers shared their reflective journals and engaged in conversations with the facilitators and also with their peers. Following one participant’s postings over a span of thirteen months helped the research team to narratively explore how the teacher, through reflections and interactions with his other fellow community members, refined his personal practical knowledge and cultivated his best-loved self as a teacher-principal in a rural school in China that lacked learning resources. Highlighted in the discussions are how the participant integrated his personal being with his professional being and eventually became the teacher he wanted to be. This research study adds to the literature about teachers as agents of change. This knowledge contribution, among others related to technology, shows how professional development and the development of teacher identity can be promoted in online teacher knowledge communities. Implications for teacher education are also discussed.     

Profiling teachers’ sense of professional identity

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers’ job satisfaction, self‐efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Using two‐step cluster analysis, three distinct professional identity profiles have empirically been identified, based on data of 1214 teachers working in secondary education in the Netherlands. These profiles differed significantly regarding the indicators of teachers’ professional identity. Teachers belonging to the found profiles did not significantly differ in their amount of experience.     

Boundary Crossing during Pre-service Teacher Training: empowering or hampering professional growth?

Yuli Rahmawati’s paper presents an auto-ethnographic inquiry into her lived experiences as a science teacher in different countries. Through her reflections and analysis of events, Yuli captures and builds a model of her identity and explores the influence of inter- and intra-cultural perspectives in shaping how she recognizes herself and brings meaning to her professional life. Yuli’s insights and explanations of teaching within different cultural contexts highlight the importance of personally relevant and meaningful knowledge, where expectations and accepted norms, that might fit well within one community, may be seen quite differently in another. While for Yuli, this led to professional growth as she inquired and made sense of her new context, my concern is that the social and cultural change could, in some instances, lead to disengagement rather than professional growth. My concern is that the conflict that arises from boundary crossing may be experienced even stronger by inexperienced professionals, such as pre-service teachers. The learning trajectory of pre-service teachers is steep; they need to gain stronger knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy and an awareness of how their students learn. They also need to build confidence in their professional self and what they can do to support and trigger student learning. For this to happen, in the tight time frames available on teacher education courses, pre-service teachers need to understand and engage with the new community that they are placed in very quickly, to make sense of both their role and that of others within the community. This paper suggests that pre-service providers should carefully consider the learning opportunities offered by school contexts, that may vary dramatically from the social and cultural contexts experienced by their teachers as part of their own education, to prevent disengagement or misunderstanding hampering professional growth.     

Crossing borders to teach English language learners

A teacher’s identity is thought to evolve in a continuous, situated fashion, amidst dynamic interaction between cognitive, affective, social, cultural and political factors. However, the literature provides little insight into the impact on the ongoing identity construction of class teachers when they encounter a few students with English as an additional language (EAL) in their mainstream classes. This paper reports on a year‐long study involving eight class teachers in four different New Zealand primary schools. Data from in‐class observations, interspersed by a series of individual reflective discussions, revealed how the presence of EAL students in the mainstream setting created tensions, the resolution of which shaped class teachers’ professional identities. Tensions surfaced in data on class teachers’ self‐efficacy perceptions, selection of teaching roles, relations with support teachers and professional development priorities. These findings thus provide fresh insights into how new situations may impact on class teachers’ self‐identities. In particular, this investigation suggests the need for schools, teacher educators and policy makers to assist teachers in challenging, and indeed moving outside of the socially prescribed borders that have traditionally defined their professional identities within the school, in order to build shared practices and more collaborative ways of solving problems.     

Authoring oneself and being authored as a competent teacher

What kind of self is being made available and denied to student teachers as they participate in life in their teaching practice schools? In addressing this question empirically, the article seeks to show the forms of meaning being made and experienced by student teachers and the identities that are authored, authorised and constrained. A sociocultural perspective on professional learning, with its emphasis on participation agency and identity, illuminates aspects of the process of becoming a teacher and highlights the tension that is there for students within available meanings. Having to opt to be a teacher at the expense of a learner identity constrains what is available to be appropriated in professional settings with potential consequences for how beginner teachers frame themselves, their learners and their colleagues.     

‘It's good for their self-esteem’: the substance beneath the label

This paper provides an informed and critical understanding of the concept of self-esteem. It explores this psychological construct in relation to its use in adventure education and outdoor learning. Enhancing a participant's self-esteem is perceived to be fundamentally a good thing and is culturally linked to the Hahnian notion that implies outdoor education is good for character-building and more recently personal development. This paper suggests that the improvement of self-esteem has become a reified programme outcome as well as an argument for the value and importance of outdoor education programmes. In this paper I seek to address the often uncritical and at times evangelical claim that outdoor programmes enhance self-esteem. This paper looks at the development of self-esteem generally and then considers its appearance in the outdoor education literature. Aspects of this that relate to outdoor learning and adventure education include: development of the self, behaviour, disaffected young people, recent UK developments and common misconceptions regarding self-esteem. These are explored and their implications for practice and research are considered. The essence of this paper is that outdoor educators need to be more critical, informed and specific about exactly what it is they are trying to achieve, how their programmes are evaluated, particularly with outcomes that are related to potential changes in ‘self’ and how these changes are measured.     

Narratives of practice and the construction of identity in teaching

The importance of the concept of professional identity lies in its relationship to professional knowledge and action, but these links are complex. A traditional notion of identity is of something essential about ourselves, a fixed and stable core of ‘self’. More recently, however, identity has been seen as an ongoing and performative process in which individuals draw on diverse resources to construct selves. This process is seen as emerging in and through narratives of practice. This paper, based on research into teachers’ professional identities in relation to behaviour management, presents a narrative analysis showing how ‘Dan’ draws on available resources to construct himself as a teacher and how this process is shaped by the institutions in which he is situated.     

Developing professionally: examining the value of an external agent to the professional growth of teachers experimenting with mobile digital technologies

This article presents and discusses findings related to the relationship between a university researcher acting as the external agent and three self-selected teachers involved in a professional learning and research project. The role of an external agent in supporting teachers’ professional development is of interest because it has not always been a role that has benefited teachers. The focus centres on how these three teachers viewed this role at the end of a two-year partnership. The wider project is centred on developing these teachers’ proficiency and knowledge of the value of iPads to both their own professional growth and classroom practices as well as their students’ learning. Some digital aspects of the project have already been addressed by Wright and colleagues, but not the perceptions of teachers regarding what value they put on the external agent role. Bevins and Price’s conception of school/university partnerships inspired this focus on wondering about the impact of the researcher acting as an external agent intersecting with teachers’ professional lives as we tracked their progress in using the iPads.     

Through the looking glass … preservice professional portfolio's

Abstract

This article shares one institution's experiences using professional portfolios to assist future teachers in becoming effective practitioners and making the transition between school and work. It describes the portfolio development process and the exit presentations. Both give students a peer/faculty forum to showcase their competencies, growth, and promote reflection, self‐confidence, job search preparedness, and an increased awareness of professional standards. In order to ascertain students’ perceptions regarding the development of a professional portfolio, faculty administered a questionnaire. Student feedback highlighted the benefits of portfolio development and offered suggestions for future improvements. They overwhelmingly viewed the invested time as worthwhile, saw the process as an appropriate program exit assessment, and recommended its continuation with future students. In addition, their suggestions held implications for portfolio use in teacher training programs.     

Insourcing the management of knowledge and occupational control: an analysis of computer engineers in Norway

This article explores self management in professional work in the context of a shift from traditional professionalism to forms of governance where functions and responsibilities previously attributable to the professional communities are ‘insourced’ to the individual worker. Drawing on data from an interview study among recently educated computer engineers we examine how professionals within this field engage themselves in continuous learning and knowledge management by exercising what Foucault calls technologies of the self. Our data suggest that the computer engineers employ a range of techniques related to risk management, career monitoring, self motivation and knowledge control that enable them to cope with the multiple demands of the present. They also connect to new expert communities and engage in new forms of community alignments. However, the long‐term effects of the current modes of regulation are more uncertain.     

Transitions to becoming a teacher on an initial teacher education and training programme

This article is based on research with a group of one‐year Postgraduate Certificate in Education secondary trainee teachers during their initial teacher education and training in England. It considers tensions between trainees’ prior experiences and conceptions of teaching and their training programme. In doing so, it seeks to examine how a trainee’s dispositions as revealed through practice in various contexts are reflective of Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’. Associated with this, the paper also examines how particular forms of pre‐existing cultural capital and manifestations of biographical identity also pre‐dispose trainees to form affinities and disaffinities within particular fields. Lacanian concepts of the symbolic, imaginary and real are used to help explain how trainee teachers articulate resonance and dissonance during their field experiences, particularly in relation to ontological concerns of securing a professional stable sense of self.     

Analysing the socio-psychological construction of identity among pre-service teachers

A teacher’s representation of self is crucial in how they construct their identity. In this article, it is argued that pre-service teachers’ identities are intricately linked to their perceptions of the teaching profession. This paper explores the social construction of identity among pre-service teachers and the implications for professional identity. It focuses on pre-service teachers in Kenya. The findings presented here are primarily based on semi-structured interviews distributed among students enrolled in a Kenyan university. They highlight pre-service teachers’ difficulty in overcoming the negative perceptions of the profession and building positive identities of self as teacher. They also underscore the need for training programmes that take perceptions and representations of the teaching profession into account when formulating training curricula.     

Learning intentions and success criteria: learners' and teachers' views

It is generally accepted that Assessment for Learning (AfL) strategies are effective in teaching and learning. Approaches within this framework include the use of formative feedback, self and peer assessment and setting and discussion of learning intentions (LIs) and success criteria (SC). There has been a great deal of research into AfL strategies, but perhaps less into the way that the use of LIs and SC are actually perceived by teachers and their pupils. The purpose of the research described in this paper was to investigate teachers’ and pupils’ perceptions of AfL strategies, focusing specifically on LIs and SC within lessons. Findings showed that while both cohorts agreed on the usefulness of LIs and SC, in practice they were rarely discussed in class. Teachers displayed a variety of understandings regarding their purpose, and some learners, while appreciating their value for revision purposes, also expressed frustration at the tokenistic way in which they were implemented. The results of this study could be helpful in informing the wider education community about how LIs and SC are viewed by teachers and learners with a view to ensure understandings are consistent with research and policy through focused professional development courses.