Beginning Student Teachers’ Professional Identity

Gregor STEINBEIß

doi:10.24193/adn.14.1.12

Abstract

Abstract: This article investigates teachers’ professional identity of beginning first-year students through their beliefs about being a teacher. The presented study focuses on Austrian teacher students’ (N=18) conceptions of becoming a professional; what convictions student teachers reflect on, which professional identity emerges and what synthesis of a professional teacher identity position can be portrayed at the beginning of teacher education. Through inductively driven content analysis all statements (N=401) have been combined, and a unified synthesis of a beginning student teachers’ professional identity was formed. Three main categories were found: the “ideal” teacher, “good” teaching, and the “optimal” working environment. The results showed a highly idealistic view of being a teacher. The majority of statements referred to teaching from a pupil-centered perspective by strongly emphasising personality traits, student-teacher relationships, and teachers’ professional knowledge. Based on the results, the role of professional identity in Austrian’s teacher education is discussed, and further implementations in research are recommended.

Highlights

Research on teachers’ professional identity has gained considerable attention during the past two decades, and has established itself as an independent approach
This study focuses on the dependency of two layers of the onion model while acknowledging a holistic perspective of becoming a teacher: Teachers’ professional identity and teachers’ beliefs
While there are multiple approaches to understanding teachers’ professional identity, this paper focuses on three main aspects linked to Korthagen’s (2016) onion model

Summary

Introduction

Research on teachers’ professional identity has gained considerable attention during the past two decades, and has established itself as an independent approach. Multiple scholars highlight the importance of professional identity development in pre- and in-service teachers (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Beijaard & Meijer, 2017; Hong, Cross, & Schutz, 2018, Nickel & Zimmer, 2018, Zembylas & Chubbuck, 2018). Both groups undergo individual developmental processes throughout a teacher’s career; and especially teacher education plays a pivotal role in the early development of a teacher. This growing interest in professional identity development aligns with the increasing emphasis on the role of beliefs, emotions, passion, commitment, motivation, and agency. It is considered to be an important factor in understanding the conceptions about a teacher’s role, the choice of teaching methods, and the actions teachers choose in their professional life (Hong et al, 2018)

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