Developing different identity trajectories: lessons from the Chinese teachers

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate how three Chinese teachers developed their teacher identities in a reform context. Drawing upon data from a larger social historical study, the work-life narratives of the three teachers at different stages of their careers were used as case studies to showcase three types of teacher identity development trajectories, namely, learning to be both professional educator and subject teaching expert，learning to be subject teaching expert, and navigating to balance between educator and subject teacher. This study also investigated the factors that influence identity development trajectories of teachers and develops a conceptual framework for understanding teacher identity development in China. The framework shows that Chinese teachers’ exertion of their individual agency is embedded in the institutional context. Meanwhile, interpersonal relationships can work as a buffer to alleviate the tension between the institution and individual teachers. The study also shows the ways in which Chinese teachers’ exert their agency when developing their identities. The findings have significant implications for teacher education in terms of how to develop positive teacher identity over the course of a teacher’s career.     

Academics' identity development as teachers

ABSTRACT

Teaching development programmes in Higher Education aim for a learning-centred teaching culture. In a shift from teaching-centeredness to learning-centeredness the teacher’s role changes from a bearer of knowledge to a facilitator of learning. This, in turn, influences the academic’s professional identity as teacher. Insights into this process of identity development are, however, scarce. The present study explores changes in the teacher identity of eight academics enrolled in a teaching development programme by means of episodic interviews and teaching portfolio entries. Data was thematically analysed. The eleven recurring topics were clustered into thematic fields reflecting three phases of the identity development of academic teachers: ‘Taking on the teacher role’, ‘Settling into the teacher role’ and ‘Finding a new role as a teacher’. This study suggests that the process of identity development is highly significant for the individual academic and influences teaching development programmes’ impact on the quality of teaching.     

Overarching professional identity themes in student teacher workplace learning

ABSTRACT

This study reports on how student teachers learn in the workplace. Data from 10 student teachers were collected by means of digital logs and in-depth interviews. By reconstructing data into stories and unravelling these stories, it became clear that the learning process of each student teacher was dominated by one specific theme, such as student-centred teaching or creating a positive learning climate. These themes could be typified as professional identity themes, because all appeared to be both personal and professional. Five student teachers experienced their workplace learning process as continuous: they integrated their teaching experiences relatively easily into their personal conceptual framework. The other five experienced their workplace learning process as discontinuous: they experienced tensions caused by frictions between personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher. Both types of learning can stimulate and hinder student teachers’ professional development. The findings indicate that reconstructing data into stories and unravelling these stories is a useful technique for understanding student teacher workplace learning as a result of the interaction between personal and professional aspects of becoming a teacher.     

Beginning student teachers’ teacher identities based on their practical theories

In this article, we investigate first-year student teachers’ teacher identities through their practical theories and ask what these practical theories reveal about their emerging teacher identities? This study approaches teacher identity from a dialogical viewpoint where identity is constructed through various positions. The empirical part of this study analysed the practical theories of 71 first-year student teachers in order to determine what kinds of positions are involved in their teacher identity at the beginning of their teacher education and what positions are emphasised. The results showed that when student teachers begin their teacher education, the majority of positions concern didactical issues, that is, how to promote pupils’ studying and learning processes. In addition, student teachers’ teacher identities as teachers strongly emphasise the moral nature of teaching. Contextual issues about school and society and matters related to content, such as the curriculum, had little representation in first-year student teacher identities. On the basis of the results, the role of teacher education is considered in the process of promoting development of student teachers’ teacher identity during their studies.     

Becoming a teacher: Coordinating past,present, and future selves with perspectival understandings about teaching

A longitudinal study is presented of how students preparing to become teachers conceptualized teaching and developed their identities as teachers. Findings were that contextualized momentary switchings between student and teacher perspectives accompanied participants' understandings about teaching and their negotiation of the process of becoming a teacher. Dynamic processes involved in constructing conceptions of teaching and self-as-a-teacher unfolded across three semesters, culminating in a more professional identity at program's end. The study contributes to teacher preparation research by making connections among aspects of professional development and suggesting a model of learning to teach, grounded in participants' situated perspectives on teaching.     

Engagement with a teaching career – how a group of Finnish university teachers experience teacher identity and professional growth

The aim of this qualitative study was to identify teachers’ ways of experiencing their identity and development challenges as teachers in the social and professional context of university. Identity and development as a teacher were examined based on interviews and drawings of career paths collected from a group of university teachers representing diverse scientific fields at one research-intensive university in Finland. Based on the findings, a typology of teacher identities and classification of development themes were constructed, illustrating the experiences and drawing on the themes found in the data and comparing them to Huberman’s teachers’ career cycle as well as Åkerlind’s views on university teachers’ changes. The findings showed that those who have reached a goal-reflective and stabilised teacher identity recognise development challenges, especially in the areas of self-development and facilitation of student learning, while those who have a constructive-conflicting or unsolved teacher identity struggle with the many pressures of teaching practice and reaching teacher comfort. The learning trajectories of the studied university teachers were varied and lasted considerably longer than suggested by teachers’ career cycle views.     

Professional development in person: identity and the construction of teaching within a high school science department

This is a narrative inquiry into the role of professional development in the construction of teaching practice by an exemplary urban high school science teacher. I collected data during 3 years of ethnographic participant observation in Marie Gonzalez’s classroom. Marie told stories about her experiences in ten years of professional development focused on inquiry science teaching. I use a social practice theory lens to analyze my own stories as well as Marie’s. I make the case that science teaching is best understood as mediated by socially-constructed identities rather than as the end-product of knowledge and beliefs. The cognitive paradigm for understanding teachers’ professional learning fails to consistently produce transformations of teaching practice. In order to design professional development with science teachers that is generative of new knowledge, and is self-sustaining, we must understand how to build knowledge of how to problematize identities and consciously use social practice theory.     

Beyond ‘what works’: understanding teacher identity as a practical and political tool

Drawing on previous research that focused upon the formation and mediation of teacher professional identity, this paper develops a model for conceptualising teacher professional identity. Increasingly, technical-rational understandings of teachers’ work and ‘role’ are privileged in policy and public discourse over more nuanced and holistic approaches that seek to understand teacher professional identity – what it is to ‘be’ a teacher. This article seeks to offer an alternative view, presenting the idea that an understanding of the processes by which teacher professional identity is formed and mediated is central to understanding the professional learning and development needs of teachers and advancing a richer, more transformative vision for education. I argue that instrumentalist notions of teachers’ work embedded in neo-liberal educational agendas such as those currently being advanced in many western countries offer an impoverished view of the teaching profession and education more broadly, and suggest that the concept of teacher professional identity holds the potential to work as a practical tool for the teaching profession and those who work to support them in the development of a more generative educational agenda.     

Teacher Educators: hidden professionals?

The pace of change in today's society means that there is an ongoing need for teachers to learn, have new knowledge and use new pedagogical approaches to meet the needs of their pupils. For many teachers, this requires redefining their identity as teachers and what ‘teaching’ means in 21st century learning environments. These changes also require teachers to be supported in learning to ‘teach’ in different ways that are relevant to their own individual needs and to the contexts in which they work throughout their career. In this article, it is argued that a more integrated and collaborative approach to teacher education is needed with better understanding of those who take up the roles of teacher educator across a teacher's career. With a particular emphasis on ‘teacher educators’ working in school to support teachers' career-long professional learning it is argued that currently many do not recognise themselves as teacher educators nor are they recognised by those they work with as teacher educators. Drawing on an empirical study carried out with mentors in schools in Scotland, it is suggested that these teacher educators may be ‘unrecognised’ and remain ‘hidden professionals’ because of the identities they construct for themselves, the values and priorities that they or others attach to their roles or because of the institutional structures and cultures in which they work. It is concluded that it will be difficult to recognise and value these ‘hidden teacher educators’ and the distinctive contribution they can make to teachers' career-long professional learning without further clarification by them and others of the roles and responsibilities they hold.     

‘I’m teaching,but I’m not really a teacher’. Teaching assistants and the construction of professional identities in Hong Kong schools

Background: In the past decade, educational settings worldwide have experienced a significant increase in the number of school-based teaching assistants (TAs). The deployment of these TAs has been accompanied by reports of confusion and uncertainty about their roles and responsibilities within schools. While the need to reframe the role and purpose of TAs is recognised, it remains unclear how this can be best achieved.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore the ways in which one group of TAs deployed in Hong Kong schools construct their professional identities, to understand the constraints and enablements to these processes, and to consider how different stakeholders might be able to best support this identity work.

Sample: The primary participants in this study are nine English language teacher assistants employed at different schools across Hong Kong. Other participants include full-time English language teachers who have experience of working with one of these TAs, as well as students who attend English language classes in which these TAs participate.

Design and methods: A qualitative multiple case study approach is adopted. In-depth interviews with TAs, teachers and students are used to gain a contextualised interpretation of the primary participants’ experiences of constructing professional identities within schools. A multilevel, multidimensional theoretical framework, which considers identity construction as both a discursive and experiential accomplishment, is then used to understand the constraints and enablements TAs experience in constructing these identities.

Findings: Results indicate that TAs face challenges in constructing their professional identities at institutional, interpersonal and intrapersonal levels within Hong Kong schools. In addition, the TAs believe that exercising agency to contest their positionings within schools is often insufficient to place them on a trajectory towards become a teacher. The results also suggest that the identity conflicts TAs experience can lead some to question their decision to pursue a teaching career.

Conclusions: These results imply that in order to attract and retain TAs, educational authorities need to, first, problematise identity positions such as ‘TA’ and ‘teacher’ and then reconceptualise these identities in ways that allow for a multiplication of the identity positions potentially available to all stakeholders involved in teaching within Hong Kong schools.     

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.     

A narrative examination of early childhood teachers’ shared identities in teamwork

This study examines the two kindergarten teachers’ shared professional identities in teamwork in an effort to clarify what constitutes their shared identities and how these identities affect the teachers’ professional practices and beliefs. The relational nature of identity maintains that individuals are not the only constructors of their identity, and the literature on teacher education emphasizes the importance of identity in teacher development. The in-depth analysis of the two kindergarten teachers’ narrative interviews revealed how the educators constructed their professional identities by intertwining the features of their context, feedback, and teaching. The findings indicate that the shared professional identities of the two early childhood teachers are developed and negotiated through four shared features: commitment, feedback, educational tasks, and professional agency. Together these four shared features shape the teachers’ professional roles and pedagogical practices—either by giving support to professional growth and empowerment or by having a decreasing effect on the teachers’ professional identity and agency in early childhood contexts.     

Relations between students’ perceptions of the teaching-learning environment and teachers’ approaches to teaching: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

In recent decades, a constructivist view of learning has triggered a change in teaching-learning environments (TLEs). Teacher-centred TLEs have been replaced by student-centred ones where the teachers’ approaches to teaching are more learning- than content-focused. Previous research exploring the relationship between student-centred TLEs and the quality of learning has shown contradictory results. Previous studies also indicate that various elements of TLEs may influence students’ learning. This study explored course-level types of elements, enhancing or hindering, related to TLEs, which the course students described. The TLEs of the courses varied because the teachers adopted different types of approaches to teaching. The data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students (N = 33) from three compulsory courses. The interviews were designed so that students could describe their perceptions of the course as well as their learning experiences and processes. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results revealed that when the teacher employed a consonant learning-focused approach to teaching, the students perceived almost all elements of the TLE as enhancing. When the teacher’s approach to teaching was identified as dissonant, the students perceived several elements of the TLE as hindering. This study revealed that inclusion of student-activating teaching-learning activities is important when designing TLEs, but that it is also crucial to design elements which guide and structure students’ learning.

Abbreviation: TLE: teaching-learning environment     

Learning‐to‐learn and learning‐to‐teach: the impact of disciplinary subject study on student‐teachers’ professional identity

A coherent view of student‐teachers’ preparation and the learning experiences to which they are exposed are key to sustaining the relevance of university‐based teacher‐education programmes. Arguably, such coherence is lacking and the research base to an understanding of the student‐teacher experience is still a relatively limited one. This paper takes the view that student‐teachers’ epistemological growth is a key component of their professional development, their sense of identity as intending teachers, and their successful entry into a teaching career. In adopting a phenomenographic approach it explores a chain of evidence which demonstrates that immersion in the processes of learning and knowing, within a specific disciplinary context, had a significant impact on students’ emerging professional identities and on their values as teachers which extends beyond the subject matter itself. Arguably, the findings of this case‐study hold important implications for a teacher‐education programme and for effective pedagogic practice.     

Teacher learning as boundary crossing: a case study of Master Teacher Studios in China

ABSTRACT

Teacher professional learning is shaped by multiple contexts in a complex way. Previous studies mainly focused on teacher learning in school-based contexts, and rarely explored how teachers learn across schools and in other situations. Adopting the framework of boundary crossing learning, this study examined the processes of teachers’ professional learning when they participated in Master Teacher Studios in mainland China. Through the qualitative case study approach, this study summarised four learning mechanisms: seeking common ground and reserving differences, growing through formal and informal coordination, exposing the gap and reflecting one’s limits, and transforming practices that incorporate one’s teaching ‘soul’. Further, intrapersonal, interpersonal and institutional factors that contribute to teacher learning as boundary crossing are discussed.     

教师教学行为的现状分析与变革路径——以研究性学习指导教师为例

教师的教学行为对课程实施效果和课堂教学质量起着至为关键的作用。调查表明,研究性学习指导教师的教学行为呈现出多元和复杂的特征。多数教师认同新课程倡导的教学方式和学习方式,但在实践中要践行这种理念会遭遇很多困境,教师教学行为与课程改革的要求有一定的差距。变革教师教学行为的有效路径和策略包括引导教师从学生发展的角度认识教育的价值,提升教师变革动力;建构具有共同的价值观和教育理想的学校文化;重建合作开放的教师专业文化;构建基于人格和谐发展的课程评价体系;建立动态互惠的院校合作伙伴关系;以教师专业发展理论为指导改进教师培训模式,提升教师的课程实施能力等。     

TEACHING ‘OUT-OF-FIELD’ AS A BOUNDARY-CROSSING EVENT: FACTORS SHAPING TEACHER IDENTITY

Teaching ‘out-of-field’ occurs when teachers teach a subject for which they are not qualified. The issues around this increasingly common practice are not widely researched and are under-theorised. A qualitative pilot study using teacher interviews in 3 rural schools examined meanings, support mechanisms and teacher identities associated with out-of-field teaching. A thematic analysis isolated factors influencing whether teachers self-assessed their practice and identities as out-of-field. The ‘boundary between fields’ model was developed to emphasise support mechanisms, contextual factors and personal resources that influenced the nature of teachers’ negotiation of subject boundaries and its impact on professional identity. These findings provide insight for policy makers, school leaders and teacher educators into the conditions required for such teaching to be considered learning opportunities.     

Foucault’s ethical self-formation and David’s articulation of a creative self

Abstract

Much has been written about creativity in education policy and about how the concept is mediated in institutions like schools and universities. Although constructs like ‘creative teachers’ and ‘teachers that foster creativity’ are highly prevalent in the literature, there are few situated and contextualised accounts of what such constructs mean to the protagonist. The extent to which teachers co-opt or align themselves with discourses of creativity can be recast as a question of identity: What beliefs on creativity and associated practices are constitutive of one’s ‘teacher identity?’ This article draws on previous work that translates Foucault’s writings on ethical self-formation into an ‘identity grid’, and foregrounds the experiences of one teaching deputy-principal, to offer an account of how one teacher pursues particular practices congruent with his visions of a creative teacher. To identify rationales for actions undertaken, and to engage with situational factors of this teacher’s work, performativity and its problematic steering influences also informs this analysis. The article highlights the productive capacity of engagement with ethical self-formation, through identifying the potential it offers to access an individual-centric perspective in understanding how central concepts like creativity are negotiated and incorporated into accounts of the ‘teaching self’.     

Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers’ perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan

This empirical study investigates secondary science teachers’ perspectives on science education reform in Taiwan and reflects how these teachers have been negotiating constructivist and learner-centered pedagogical approaches in contemporary science education. It also explores the challenges that teachers encounter while shifting their pedagogical focus from traditional approaches to teaching science to an active engagement in students’ learning. Multiple sources of qualitative data were obtained, including individual interviews with science teachers and teachers’ reflective journals about Confucianism in relation to their educational philosophies. Thematic analysis and constant comparative method were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed that Confucian traditions play a significant role in shaping educational practices in Taiwan and profoundly influence teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their actual classroom practice. Indeed, science teachers’ perspectives on Confucian learning traditions played a key role in supporting or obstructing their pedagogical commitments to inquiry-based and learner-centered approaches. This study draws on the literature concerning teachers’ professional struggles and identity construction during educational reform. Specifically, we explore the ways in which teachers respond to educational changes and negotiate their professional identities. We employed various theories of identity construction to understand teachers’ struggles and challenges while wrestling with competing traditional and reform-based pedagogical approaches. Attending to these struggles and the ways in which they inform the development of a teacher’s professional identity is vital for sustaining current and future educational reform in Taiwan as well as in other Eastern cultures. These findings have important implications for teachers’ professional development programs in East Asian cultures.     

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.