Professional role expectations and related feelings when solving pedagogical dilemmas: a comparison of pre- and in-service teachers

Abstract

This study investigated teachers’ professional identity development. Using Dialogical Self Theory and a socio-cultural semiotic mediational perspective, we focused on pre- and in-service teachers’ communication of professional role expectations and related feelings when solving pedagogical dilemmas to reveal aspects of their professional identity construction. Data were collected from 102 pre- and 90 in-service teachers by asking them to solve seven pedagogical dilemmas. We report: (1) how pre- and in-service teachers solved pedagogical dilemmas in terms of communicating professional role expectations and related feelings; (2) how pre- and in-service teachers differed in the feelings they reported and the solutions they gave when solving pedagogical dilemmas; and (3) how the communication of professional role expectations and feelings was related to pre- and in-service teachers’ work experience. Finally, we discuss the implications of our study for initial and continuing teacher education programmes.