Abstract
Research that focuses on teacher identity is gaining traction as researchers argue that teachers mediate more than mathematical knowledge and skills in the classroom. This research tends to be underpinned by a social constructionist orientation, which foregrounds epistemology over ontology. This orientation is limiting for research that wishes to understand the base conditions that enable or constrain the expression (i.e. both communication and action) of teacher identity in teaching primary mathematics. The paper suggests that this requires research that explores the interaction between structure, culture and agency in the expression of teacher identity in teaching mathematics in primary school. The study argues that a social realist orientation is of value to research on teacher identity. From this perspective, teacher identity is defined as the manner in which teachers express their roles as teachers. As the paper is primarily theoretical, the exemplification is limited to two primary school teachers’ expression of only one role namely effective communicator of mathematics. It demonstrates what social realism enables, that is, not illuminated in research underpinned by a social constructionist orientation. The argument made in this paper elucidates how social realism supports a deep analysis of the structural and agential conditions that enable and constrain teacher identities.
Highlights
Over the past 30 years, mathematics education research has attempted to look more closely at “who the teacher is”
It assumes that our knowledge of self and the world comes from our interactions with people and not some “objective” reality (Berger & Luckman, 1966). As such it conflates questions of how we know something with what is. It is this elision of epistemology and ontology that makes research which seeks to examine (i) the structural and cultural mechanisms that give rise to how teachers express their identities in teaching primary school mathematics and (ii) the interplay between structure and agency in the expression of teachers’ identities, practically impossible
Four perspectives emerging from socio-cultural research on teacher identity within the field of mathematics education in South Africa were identified
Summary
Over the past 30 years, mathematics education research has attempted to look more closely at “who the teacher is”. It is this elision of epistemology and ontology that makes research which seeks to examine (i) the structural and cultural mechanisms that give rise to how teachers express their identities in teaching primary school mathematics and (ii) the interplay between structure and agency in the expression of teachers’ identities, practically impossible It is for this reason that the study, on which this paper is based, draws on Archer’s (1995, 1996, 2000) social realist framework. This paper argues that social realism has much to offer research that seeks to examine the roles that structure, culture and agency play in the expression of teachers’ identities in the teaching of mathematics
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