The Formation of Professional Identity and the Socialization of Teacher Educators in England: Evidence from the field (original) (raw)
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2021
This thesis explores the views of trainee teachers on two different training routes to a PGCE Primary qualification (School Direct and Core) on the formation of a professional identity. This thesis is set within the context of continuously developing policy concerning the training of teachers and the subsequent impact on the development of a professional identity. The introduction of new training routes aimed to develop opportunities for applicants to become a teacher and this thesis explored whether there were differences in the experiences of trainees on these routes and the impact on their professional identity formation. This thesis offers an original and substantial contribution to the current body of work in professional identity formation. This thesis offers a unique contribution to this knowledge due to the participant sample (trainees across two routes to teaching) and the method of data collection (interviews at four points throughout training period). This thesis suggests a number of recommendations for teacher training providers in relation to supporting trainees form their professional identity regardless of the route they have selected to teaching as well as recommendations for future research. This thesis concludes that the route trainees chose was not central to professional identity formation. Findings show that secure professional relationships; effective mentoring and feeling valued in their role had the most impact on the formation of a trainee's professional identity.
Becoming a secondary school teacher: Keys to a meaningful professional identity
Teaching and teacher education, 2024
This study explores the construction of teachers' identities during their pre-service training and their initial period of professional induction. Thirteen life stories of novice teachers of differing characteristics attending the Master's Degree in Secondary Education Teaching at the University of Barcelona (Spain) are analysed. Findings identify four dimensions in identity construction (attribution, projection, development and transformation) and analyze their key components. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the dialectic between the professionalizing models in the training programme and the professional communities and teachers' specific personal processes of professional self-determination.
Constructing new professional identities through self‐study: from teacher to teacher educator
Professional Development in Education, 2010
In this paper, two beginning teacher educators discuss their experiences of professional learning and identity construction during the first years of their work as academics. The authors entered teacher education after working as classroom teachers but, as has been found by others in the literature, were provided with little formal preparation for this career transition. It appears from the literature, and from the authors’ experiences, that there is little research into the professional development processes and needs of teacher educators, and that there is an assumption that competent, experienced school teachers will automatically become proficient teacher educators. In this paper, using a self‐study methodology, the authors explore their experiences of constructing new professional identities as teacher educators. They use the analytical framework of ‘communities of practice’ as articulated by Lave and Wenger. The tensions and dilemmas inherent in being ‘expert’ teachers and ‘novice’ teacher educators are discussed, with particular focus on the complexity of developing professional connections with colleagues in the academic context, and on building new relationships with student‐teachers.
Nordisk tidsskrift for utdanning og praksis, 2019
This article investigates teacher educators’ self-understanding by asking how they explain their professional identities as teacher educators, based on socialisation and further professional development. Teacher educators facilitate learning from the initial teacher education phase to in-service teachers’ further professional development. The data consists of thirteen qualitative semi-structured interviews and two focus-group interviews with teacher educators from two universities in Norway. Using Bryman’s four-stage approach of analysis, 15 categories were re-organised into three main categories: (1) Recruitment and socialisation, (2) Professional identity, and (3) Professional development. The findings illustrate that teacher educators have different understandings of being a professional. For some, their identity is rooted in the discipline in which they were educated. However, others have built identities as teacher educators supplementary to their primary careers. This knowledg...
Becoming a teacher educator: evidence from the field
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2005
This article makes a contribution to understanding the challenges new teacher educators face in establishing their professional identities in Higher Education. The data collected for the study allowed the researchers to analyse the tensions and conflicts arising for 28 teacher educators in their first 3 years of working on Initial Teacher Education (ITE) courses in England. The findings of the study show that, despite having previous successful careers in school teaching, the majority of the interviewees took between 2 and 3 years to establish their new professional identities. They faced challenges in two key areas—developing a pedagogy for HE-based ITE work and becoming research active. Meeting both of these challenges required significant adaptations to their previous identities as schoolteachers.
EXPLORING STUDENT TEACHERS' PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES IN INITIAL TEACHER EDUCATION
2023
Initial teacher education has been considered one of the main preparatory devices for shaping teachers' professional identities and for supporting their professional development. Practicums organized by pedagogy departments constitute the learning, institutional and educational context in which the theory-practice connection can be put in motion by neophyte teachers. In addition, by exploring how they connect theoretical knowledge with practical requirements in the classroom, one can detect their motives to follow a teaching career, their future identities and how the practicum has empowered their readiness for dealing with these requirements. In this paper, we present the quantitative part from an explanatory sequential mixed-method research design in which we explore how student teachers' motives to become teachers and their identification with the teaching profession shape their sense of preparedness, and self-efficacy in classroom teaching.
2017
As a New Teacher Educator (NTE) within Further Education (FE), professional identity was brought abruptly into my consciousness as I scrutinised and even criticised my practice. The weight of responsibility for supporting a diverse group of trainees through their Initial Teacher Training (ITT) programme was not without anxiety and self-doubt. A number of challenges presented that required careful management on my part. This paper charts the complexity of the development of new professional identities within one ITT classroom and how collaborative enquiry was used effectively to build a supportive environment that nurtured both my transition from teacher to Teacher Educator and the trainees’ transitions from teachers in training to qualified teachers.
Shaping and Reshaping of New Teachers’ Identities
2020
Research in mainstream and language teacher education has underlined the importance of understanding teacher identity.This paper presents the main findings of a long-term study on the professional identity of teachers in the early years of teaching. It analyzes the main influences in such a way that the identity of new teachers are shaped and reshaped over time. Through their own perceptions, analyzes of the school culture in which they work and the student's point of view, it shows the interaction between contextual, cultural and biographical factors that influence their teaching practice.Teachers’ personal, professional histories and pre-service training in addition to cultural issues and school leadership, emerge as more powerful mediating effects (compared to previous literature) in determining the types and relative stability and instability of the professional identity that teachers develop in the early years of teaching and thus the types of teachers they become and their...
Changing experiences of being, becoming, and belonging: teachers’ professional identity revisited
ZDM
Teacher identity has become important in mathematics education research, but mainly in relation to programmes for teacher education (TE) and professional development (PD). Less attention has been paid to understanding the role and development of identities in the majority of cases in which teachers are not involved in long-term TE or PD. This paper presents a study that seeks to develop such understandings. The study defines teacher identities as their shifting experiences of being, becoming and belonging related to the profession. It is a longitudinal case study of a novice teacher, Anna, and it asks how Anna's identities change over the first 4 years of her career at her school, Northgate. To address the question I use a framework called Patterns of Participation (PoP) in combination with a range of methods, including interviews with Anna, her closest colleagues and the leadership at her school, and observations of Anna's classrooms and of team meetings. I argue that this combination invites new understandings of identity development, because it does not prioritise teacher engagement in one particular practice (e.g., as promoted by PD), but allows interpretations of how Anna's engagement with a multitude of different practices play a role for her professional experiences. The results suggest that in general terms, Anna's identity changes from being 'a mathematics teacher at Northgate' to becoming 'a mathematics teacher at Northgate'.