Language Teacher Mindset and Teacher Identity

Abstract

Teacher identity refers to how teachers see themselves as teachers and how others see them as teachers. A teacher growth mindset refers to a teacher’s belief system that sees professional learning as a possibility, even in the face of challenges and disruptions. In this presentation, I outline what teacher identity means, and why it is important for teachers to know about their changing identities in the contexts in which they work. I also suggest narrative ways of exploring those identities – that is, to generate and understand teachers’ identity stories. I then briefly describe what mindsets are and share several stories told by teachers and teacher educators that reveal how their identities and their mindsets interconnect. I show how this interconnection does not always reveal a growth mindset or a belief in learning. To try to explain this situation, I present a professional development framework consisting of a number of interrelated mindset continua that aims to achieve, through teacher narrative inquiry, some sort of equilibrium or stability in the lives of hard-working teachers.