Abstract
ABSTRACT Personal experiences and histories shape teacher identities to a great extent. In the domain of personal experience, however, little is known about how experiences of failure shape the process of becoming a teacher. Gaining this insight, however, is important as failure may define teachers and their work, which can further undermine their resilience. This study examines how 45 pre-service subject teachers make sense of failure with regards to their identity as teachers. The findings reveal various understandings of failure, from both learner and teacher perspective and pre-service teachers’ understanding that the relation between learner and teacher failure is inextricable. Failure is seen as a non-dismissible aspect in their future work as teachers. These findings suggest that experiences and resulting understandings of failure need to be acknowledged as a vital component of teacher education pedagogies in order to assist pre-service teachers in the development of their teacher identity.
Highlights
Teacher identity has been under scrutiny for a good couple of decades and for a good reason: ‘What teachers do cannot be distinguished from who they are’ (Banner and Cannon 1997, 43)
We first present pre-service teachers’ understandings of failure from the learners’ and teacher’s perspectives and we move onto addressing how pre-service teachers understand the relation between learner and teacher failure
We identified five categories of pre-service teachers’ understandings of failure, three that take the learners’ perspective and two that focus on the teachers’ perspective (Table 2)
Summary
Teacher identity has been under scrutiny for a good couple of decades and for a good reason: ‘What teachers do cannot be distinguished from who they are’ (Banner and Cannon 1997, 43). The process of developing a teacher identity has been greatly explored in initial teacher education of both class and subject teachers (Flores 2020; McKay 2019; Lee and Schallert 2014; Timoštšuk and Ugaste 2010). While much is known about teacher identity development, Lee and Schallert (2016) observed that ‘it is not clear which aspects are relevant and to what extent these aspects are integrated in such identity develop ment’ (77). Flores (2020) recently highlighted the need to explore further the variety of influences on teacher identity during initial teacher education in order to better support the process of becoming a teacher. Several literature reviews on identity have emphasised personal experiences and histories as major influences on teacher identities (Izadinia 2013; Beauchamp and Thomas 2009; Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop 2004).
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