Teacher identity in teacher education: validation of interview script

Public debates about the role of teachers and teacher performance place teachers at the center of a range of national and local discourses. The notion of teacher professional identity, therefore, framed in a variety of ways, engages people across social contexts, whether as educators, parents, students, taxpayers, voters or consumers of news and popular media. These highly contested discourses about teachers' roles and responsibilities constitute an important context for research on teachers and teaching, as researchers and educators ask how changes to the teaching profession affect teacher professional identity. This article investigates the identity talk of three mid‐career teachers in an urban, public school in the USA, to better understand how the teachers used language to accomplish complex professional identities. Research approaches to teacher identity often focus on teacher narrative as a key tool in identity formation. The analysis presented here extends our understanding of language as a resource in teacher identity construction by using discourse analysis to investigate how speakers use implicit meaning to accomplish the role identity of teacher. The analytical lens draws on an interdisciplinary framework that combines a sociological approach to teacher as a role identity with an investigation of language as a cultural practice, grounded in the ethnography of communication. The analysis focuses on how teachers use specific discourse strategies – reported speech, mimicked speech, pronoun shifts, oppositional portraits, and juxtaposition of explicit claims – to construct implicit identity claims that, while they are not stated directly, are central to accomplishing teacher as a role identity. The analysis presented here focuses on the particular implicit role claim of teacher as collaborator. Findings show that, in their identity talk, the teachers strategically positioned themselves in relation to others and to institutional practices, actively negotiating competing discourses about teacher identity by engaging in a counter discourse emphasizing teachers' professional role as knowledge producers rather than information deliverers, collaborative, rather than isolated, and as agents of change engaged in critical analysis to plan action. Awareness of how these counter discourses operate in the teachers' conversation helps us better understand the cultural significance of identity talk as a site for the negotiation of the significances for the role identity of teacher. In addition, the notions of role identity and implicit identity claims offer an accessible way to talk about the complexity of teacher identity, which can be helpful for increasing awareness of the importance of teacher identity in teacher education and professional development, and in bringing teachers' voices more prominently into the debates over education.

L'auteur tente d'expliquer les differences d'impacts de la mondialisation au niveau local sur les systemes educatifs par les variations de l'identite des enseignants. L'enseignant, considere en tant qu'acteur social, politique et historique d'un pays donne, peut malgre tout aider a apporter des solutions aux politiques reformatrices developpees. En effet, si les pays en voie de developpement ont des besoins similaires qui repondent a des logiques, des priorites et des attentes bien definies, les consequences des reformes engagees different selon les pays.

Globalization Viewed from the Periphery: The Dynamics of Teacher Identity in the Republic of Benin

This study investigates the development of teacher identity in a transnational context through an analysis of the voices of sixteen preservice teachers from Hong Kong who engage in interaction with primary students in an Australian classroom. The context for this research is the school-based experience undertaken by these preservice English as a second language teachers as part of their short language immersion (SLIM) program in Brisbane, Australia. Such SLIM programs are a genre of study abroad programs which have been gaining in popularity within teacher education in Australia, attended by preservice and inservice teachers from China, Hong Kong, Korea, and other Asian countries. This research is conducted at a time when the imperative to globalise higher education provision is a strategic factor in the educational policies of both Australia and Hong Kong. In Australia, international educational services now constitute the country’s third largest export with more than 400,000 students coming to Australia to study annually. In order to maintain Australia’s current global position as the third most popular Englishspeaking study destination, the government is now focusing on sustainability and the quality of the study experience being offered to international students (Bradley Review, 2008). In Hong Kong, the government sponsors both preservice and inservice English as a second language (ESL) teachers to undertake SLIM programs in Australia and other English-speaking countries, as part of their policy of promoting high levels of English proficiency in Hong Kong classrooms. Transnational teacher education is an important issue to which this study contributes insights into the affordances and constraints of a school-based experience in the transnational context. Second language teacher education has been defined as interventions designed to develop participants’ professional knowledge. In this study, it is argued that participation in a different community of practice helps to foreground tacit theories of second language pedagogy, making them visible and open to review. Questions of pedagogy are also seen as questions of teacher identity, constituting the way that one is in the classroom. I take up a sociocultural and poststructural framework, drawing on the work of James Gee and Mikhail Bakhtin, to theorise the construction of teacher identity as emerging through dialogic relations and socially situated discursive practices. From this perspective, this study investigates whether these teachers engage with different ways of representing themselves through appropriating, adapting or rejecting Discourses prevailing in the Australian classroom. Research suggests that reflecting on dilemmas encountered as lived experiences can extend professional understandings. In this study, the participants engage in a process of dialogic reflection on their intercultural classroom interactions, examining with their peers and their lecturer/researcher selected moments of dissonance that they have faced in the unfamiliar context of an Australian primary classroom. It is argued that the recursive and multivoiced nature of this process of reflection on practice allows participants opportunities to negotiate new understandings of second language teacher identity. Dialogic learning, based on the theories of Bakhtin and Vygotsky, provides the theoretic framing not only for the process of reflection instantiated in this study, but also features in the analysis of the participants’ second language classroom practices. The research design uses a combined discourse analytic and ethnographic approach as a logic-of-inquiry to explore the dialogic relationships which these second language teachers negotiate with their students and their peers in the transnational context. In this way, through discourse analysis of their classroom talk and reflective dialogues, assisted by the analytic tools of speech genres and discourse formats, I explore the participants’ ways of doing and being second language teachers. Thus, this analysis traces the process of ideological becoming of these beginner teachers as shifts in their understandings of teacher and student identities. This study also demonstrates the potential for a nontraditional stimulated recall interview to provide dialogic scaffolding for beginner teachers to reflect productively on their practice.

Investigating scientific identity in teacher education is essential, as teachers play a pivotal role in advancing education and facilitating the learning process. Their impact is critical to student success, particularly within structured school environments. This bibliometric study aims to analyze the scientific identity in teacher education over the past two decades. Utilizing VOSviewer, the authors mapped 541 relevant articles (7,880 citations) indexed in Scopus, published between 2004 and 2024. Qualitative analysis methods revealed an overall increase in publications, though a decline was observed from 2020 to 2024. This study highlights the significance of scientific identity in teacher education, emphasizing its role in shaping attitudes, enhancing science literacy, and facilitating effective learning. The findings suggest that future research should integrate scientific identity into curricula to address global sustainability challenges. The paradigm shift in science education during the 2010s, which emphasized broader scientific knowledge and skills, necessitates that teachers develop a clear and stable scientific identity in teaching science.

Guest Author: In every edition of Research in Teacher Education we publish a contribution from a guest writer who has links with the Cass School of Education and Communities. In this month’s edition of RiTE we are fortunate to have not one but three! Clare Kosnik is Director of the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (OISE/UT). Her area of research is teacher education which she has systematically studied. She is now conducting a large-scale study of 28 literacy/English teacher educators in four countries. Lydia Menna is an Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy in the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta. Her research interests are in the areas of teacher education, multiliteracies, critical literacy, and teacher identity construction. She completed her doctorate in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Pooja Dharamshi is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests are in the areas of critical literacy and teacher education. She recently completed her doctoral studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto in the department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning. Her study explored the practices and pedagogies of literacy teacher educators with a critical stance.

This chapter reports on a qualitative case study of one native English-speaking teacher's (NEST) professional identity construction and teaching expertise development across national contexts (i.e., China and the United States). This study draws on two bodies of literature as theoretical lenses: Teacher identity and teaching expertise. It also relies on interview data to unpack the complexity of the teacher's transnational teaching experiences as well as his professional identity and expertise development across different contexts. The results reveal that (1) the participant's teacher identity construction and his teaching to (international) Chinese students across contexts were facilitated by his increased knowledge of Chinese students, their learning styles, and local Chinese culture, and (2) his adaptive expertise was developed through his engagement in critical reflection and enactment of agency on instructional practices. The results further indicate that teacher identity and expertise development is nonlinear, mediated by context, and constructed through constant negotiation. The study also questions the native and non-native speaker dichotomy which often highlights the privileges that NESTs have. However, this dichotomy overlooks the challenges NESTs might encounter in the globalized TESOL industry. An important implication for future research is to conduct multiple case studies to consider different variations among transnational teachers.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Setting the Stage for Student Teacher Identities in Initial Teacher Education provides the reader with a microcosm of the book. It starts off with Mifsud’s personal narrative of experience, explaining the role of ITE along her career trajectory. This chapter explores the concept of teacher identity, outlining its contribution to ITE and subsequent professionalism. It then zooms in on ITE provision in Scotland, followed by the rationale for the book and target audience. The author then presents a combination of four diverse theoretical frameworks, namely Bourdieu, Foucault, Goffman, and Actor-Network Theory, utilized for data interpretation in this monograph. An outline of the book at the end of this introductory chapter engages the reader’s interest to pursue till the back cover.

Pre-service teacher identity research has directed limited attention to the construction and development of professional teacher identity through narrative interaction. An analysis of narrative interactions among pre-service teachers in the present study explored the ways in which they negotiated emotional flux in the process of training to become a teacher. Overall, findings show that emotional flux and identity change are connected, and hidden ‘emotional rules’ are embedded in the teaching practicum. The pre-service teachers’ negative emotions gradually escalated due to contextual constraints, hierarchical structures, and lack of support from their mentors. This escalation diminished the development of their teacher identity. However, increasing recognition and progress by their students can stimulate pre-service teachers to perceive their assumed roles and reconstruct professional identity. Within the context of exploring this interconnection between teacher emotions and teacher identity, the present study argues that narrative interaction can complement existing knowledge on the subject.

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we focus on the situatedness of teacher identity and agency within sociopolitical contexts dominated by neo‐nationalist discourses and rely on data from online conversations among preservice and in‐service teachers of English in Türkiye and the United States (US). We report on data constructed in a telecollaboration (a.k.a., virtual intercultural exchange) that we, four TESOL teacher educators, designed for teachers to discuss issues of social justice (particularly for minoritized immigrant students) and to have a discursive and experiential space in which to negotiate their language teacher identities (LTI). Gathering 117 teachers from five universities (three in Türkiye, two in the US) and underserved school districts in both contexts, this telecollaboration is our pedagogical, agentive response to dominant neo‐nationalist discourses in the two countries. To make quantities of data more manageable, we analyze interactions from one‐third of those 117 participants (five of 15 small groups) to address this research question: How do preservice and in‐service teachers from Türkiye construct their teacher identities in response to neo‐nationalist discourses in their sociopolitical context? In particular, how do they engage in this identity work through asynchronous small‐group discussions in a social justice‐focused telecollaboration with teachers from the US? Findings indicate that participants from Türkiye discussed teacher agency, conservatism and cultural difference in the society, and discrimination/xenophobia against refugees as important factors that shape their work with minoritized English language learners. They experienced tensions in their identity construction between their desire to advocate for their students and the external forces coming from meso‐ and macro‐level policies that impact their instruction and assessment procedures. We discuss our findings in relation to previous research on language teacher identity and social justice in sociopolitical contexts shaped by neo‐nationalist discourses. We also share the implications of our study for pedagogizing identity in teacher education.

In This Issue

Stage 1: Survival During Stage 1, which may last throughout the first full year of teaching, the teacher's main concern is whether she can survive. This preoccupation with survival may be expressed in questions the teacher asks: "Can I get through the day in one piece? Without losing a child? Can I make it until the end of the week? Until the next vacation? Can I really do this kind of work day after day? Will I be accepted by my colleagues?" Such questions are well expressed in Ryan's enlightening collection of accounts of first-year teaching experiences (3).

In recent years, as evidenced in the transnational proliferation of codified competence frameworks for teacher education purposes, we have seen the increased politicisation and regulation of the task of teaching and what it means to be a teacher. Making the case for an ethico‐political conceptualisation of teacher identity and, using a Foucauldian‐based framework of ethico‐political identity, we apply a discourse analysis approach to unravel a ‘preferred’ teacher identity construction using Ireland's national teacher competence framework, the Initial Teacher Education Criteria and Guidelines for Programme Providers as an illustrative case. Findings illuminate this identity as: (i) telos vis‐à‐vis embodying national objectives via critical engagement underpinned by knowledge surfaces and a temporal appreciation of policy; (ii) ethical substance vis‐à‐vis seven modes of engagement animated in two interdependent phases with unique practice dynamics and policy emphases; (iii) discursive authority sources that utilise three major modes of sense‐making; and (iv) self‐practices as confessional dialogue and self‐writing. Considering codified teacher competence frameworks as politics of truth in teacher education, we make the case for macro ethico‐political identity work as a valuable analytical tool for policy analysis in teaching and teacher education.

Recently, issues of space and spatiality have been taken up in education, though less so in teacher education. This article examines the significance of space for pedagogy and identity in teacher education. Drawing on topological approaches to the study of pedagogy, it explores the potential of a problem‐based approach to teacher education to link the professional knowledge produced through teacher education programmes in the academy to professional practice in schools. It promotes a theoretical and empirical imperative to look keenly to the pedagogic spaces created by students (here, student teachers) to challenge established hierarchies of theory and practice. Essentially interrogatory, these spaces open up the possibility of the negotiation of professional identity across differences of school and academy. Overall, the argument concerns the co‐constitutive character of pedagogy, spatiality and identity. Pedagogy emerges as a threshold practice that involves a constant weaving to and fro between spaces and selves.

Strengthening the identities of teacher educators is critical to quality teacher education and implementing change in the education sector. This study examines the professional identities of Eritrean teacher educators and how these identities can be strengthened through collaborative professional practice in a challenging context currently under reform. The focus is on the professional capacity building activities at the College of Education in Eritrea, which were implemented in collaboration with Finnish education partners. The paper reports on findings from an action-research informed study of a semester-long series of professional development seminars and an interview study with individual teacher educators. The qualitative content analyses of seminar participants’ drawings, evaluations and interview data focus on: 1) identifying critical issues that support the formation of teacher educator identities, and 2) understanding how collaborative practice at the institutional level can support the strengthening of professional identities. The findings point to potential ways of creating critical colleagueship and more purposeful, contextually relevant approaches for professional development in teacher education. The need for strengthening the identities of teacher educators’ through bottom-up processes and in collaboration with international partners is highlighted.