Teacher Identity Research Articles

Teacher identity and inclusion: a qualitative systematic review on the production of knowledge in Brazil in the last decade

This study aimed to analyze the Brazilian production of knowledge, teacher identity, and inclusion from 2012 to 2022. Through a qualitative systematic review methodology, databases from the Periodicals Portal and the Theses and Dissertations Database BDTD of Capes MEC were consulted. A total of 110 studies were found, eligible and analyzed in this review (including two doctoral theses, nine master's dissertations, and three scientific articles). The results and conclusions of this study indicate that the elements comprising the construction process of teacher identity from an inclusive perspective encompass social aspects, education, knowledge, life stories, professional and personal experiences.

Effect of identity as a mediator: The relationship between mathematics teacher cooperation and readiness in facing the era of industrial revolution

Background: The Industrial Revolution has significantly impacted education, making mathematics instructors crucial in preparing students for the demands of the industrial era.
 Purpose: This research seeks to explore the correlation between mathematics teacher cooperation and readiness to face the era of the Industrial Revolution, with a specific focus on the mediating effect of identity.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: This research utilized a quantitative research design and collected data through surveys administered to school math instructors. The surveys assess the level of cooperation among mathematics teachers, their readiness to adapt to the challenges of the Industrial Revolution era, and their individual identities as teachers. Statistical analyses, including correlation and mediation analyses, are employed to examine the relationships among the variables.
 Findings: Preliminary findings indicate a positive correlation between mathematics teacher cooperation and readiness to face the Industrial Revolution era. Moreover, the mediating effect of identity suggests that a strong sense of professional identity among mathematics teachers enhances their cooperation and subsequently contributes to their readiness to adapt to the changing educational landscape.
 Conclusion: This research highlights the importance of fostering a strong professional identity among mathematics teachers to foster cooperation and preparedness. It provides insights for policymakers, school administrators, and educators to develop strategies to promote collaboration and professional development in the Industrial Revolution era.
 Contribution to Literature: This study enhances understanding of the relationship between mathematics teacher cooperation, identity, and readiness during the Industrial Revolution era, highlighting the importance of teacher identity formation.

Strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable training and professional development of graduate teaching assistants, teaching assistants, and tutors: a scoping review

PurposeThe aim of this scoping review was to identify key characteristics related to strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable training and professional development (PD) of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), teaching assistants (TAs), and tutors. While the continuous, coherent and responsive programmes for such training and PD may address needs that are congruent with the needs of other sessional teachers, the literature has not focussed on GTA training and PD that support the longer-term retention of GTAs as sessional teachers.Design/methodology/approachIn this scoping review, we devised a search strategy to identify literature relating to the key characteristics of strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and professional development in higher education settings. We were guided by the frameworks for such reviews developed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), Levac et al. (2010) and Westphaln et al. (2021). We used PRISMA guidelines to guide our reporting processes, and used thematic analysis practice (Braun and Clarke, 2022) as our analytical approach in order to identify and discuss the key themes.FindingsWe identified that strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD frame GTAs as future academics and leaders in teaching; provide institutional support and investment in teaching; deliver departmental training; facilitate peer support; provide pedagogical training; implement training strategies; and support the teacher identity of GTAs.Originality/valueThese findings add to the body of research that explores how strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD address and meet the needs common to all sessional teachers constrained by the precarity of the part-time faculty/academia. While our findings indicate such training and PD enhance the quality of teaching available to university students, this effect is dependent on institutional support and facilitation of peer and faculty networks.

Reconceptualizing teacher identity development

In this article, we focus on developing a clearer conceptualization of teacher identity. We provide an inclusive definition that integrates three key dimensions of the construct that have been previously underexamined: (1) Teacher identity as part of ongoing, goal-focused, agentic regulating processes, (2) Teacher identity as part of multiple intersecting identities within social-cultural-historical contexts, and (3) Teacher identity negotiated within professional experiences including professional community standards. By foregrounding and integrating these three dimensions that have been underexamined in existing approaches of teacher identity, we aim to provide conceptual clarity, which will allow educational psychologists to better explain the role teacher identity plays in the work and lives of teachers.

An ecosystem of knowledge: relationality as a framework for teachers to infuse Indigenous perspectives in curriculum

ABSTARCT New data is presented from two studies involving thirteen practising secondary teachers and twelve pre-service early childhood, primary and secondary teachers in Australia. The first study explored how non-Indigenous practising teacher identities, shaped by external and policy discourse, create obstacles to teachers’ willingness and confidence in infusing Indigenous perspectives in curriculum. With this knowledge in hand, the researchers utilised a Design-Based Research methodology to conduct a second study with pre-service (ITE) teachers, exploring the power of relationality as a framework to re-shape non-Indigenous pre-service teachers’ conceptualisation of racial and place-based identity. By enabling non-Indigenous pre-service teachers to construct an authentic connection to Indigenous ways of thinking and being, relatedness pedagogy increased pre-service teacher willingness and confidence to infuse Indigenous perspectives into their future teaching.

From parent-teacher relations to professional identity in Danish and Swedish schools

ABSTRACT Denmark and Sweden have witnessed a historically significant amplification of parental influence in compulsory schools during the past two decades. The emphasis on parental involvement in these two countries reflects international trends of neoliberal governing of educational processes. We know very little about the interplay between beginning teachers’ encounters with parents and how that influences the teachers’ identity formation. This article investigates beginning teachers’ experiences with parents in Sweden and Denmark and how these experiences reflect the teachers’ professional identity development. Through a comparative case study approach, interviews were carried out with 10 teachers in pre-service and in-service phases of their profession to capture their interpretations of their experiences with parents. A framework involving the concepts of parent-teacher relations, professional teacher identity, and emerging and thickening trajectories was used to develop the interview questions and analyse data. The results show that beginning teachers experience challenges in their relations with parents and these challenges put a strain on their self-definition as professionals. These results provide implications for addressing the constraints on teachers’ professional autonomy brought by a culture of clientelism which has the potential to change the role of teachers and therefore affect their professional identity development.

Teacher identities and teacher identity change in pre-service mathematics teachers’ metaphors

ABSTRACT Pre-service middle school mathematics teachers’ descriptions for the metaphors they produced for how they considered themselves as mathematics teachers (actual teacher identities) and how they wanted to be in the future (designated identities) at the end of the third and fourth years of the teacher education programme were analysed via a teacher identity framework focusing on areas of teacher expertise. Participants described their actual teacher identities mostly with the self-referential metaphors in both year levels and expressed the need to improve themselves as mathematics teachers. A hybrid of different expertise areas appeared more in the descriptions of designated teacher identities. There was a decrease in the didactics expert and self-referential metaphors, and an increase in the pedagogical expert and hybrid metaphors from the third year to the fourth year. The increase in the hybrid metaphors revealed that their aim was to become an expert in multiple domains in the future.

Discovering and developing the vocational teacher identity

PurposeThis study explores the role of previous occupational identity in the formation of the (new) teacher identity of vocational teachers. The focus is on how vocational teachers discover their teaching identity, how they describe the connection between their previous occupation and teacher identity and how they describe a competent member of the teaching community.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical approach is inspired by Communities of Practice (CoP) theory. More specifically, the realignment between socially demanded competence in the profession and personal experience as well as identification with the teaching community are discussed. The research material comes from 14 interviews with vocational teachers in different disciplines.FindingsFindings indicate first that the process of professional identity (trans)formation was initiated by finding one's teaching self when the individuals became aware of their interest in teaching by discovering that they had already achieved some sort of teaching-related competence. Second, individuals had been connecting their professional identities – finding common competence between their previous occupation and the teaching role. Third, vocational teachers experienced legitimising their competence and their new identity with reference to what their new CoP instructed as important competence (regime of competence).Originality/valueWhile teachers' vocational competence is not scrutinised, their teaching competence needs to be constantly proved. This imbalance often leads to teachers returning to an aspect of their identity that is well established – their vocational competence. Looking back to their occupational competences constitutes a realignment backwards, when teachers attempt to serve their new professional goal by drawing on old competence.

Teacher students’ conceptions of geography and their sources

Teachers’ conceptions of geography play a key role in teacher identity. They also impact students’ learning. This paper aims to describe teacher students’ conceptions of geography and their sources. Our data comes from two online questionnaires. Participants came from Switzerland (nQ1 = 20, nQ3 = 98). In contrast to previous research, participants in our studies could not be assigned to only one conception. Eight of 11 statements about what geography is and five of eight statements about the main purpose of geography education were endorsed by 90% or more of participants in both studies. This includes those about understanding sustainability and the system earth. Some items showed significant differences by migration background and by the grade level the students want to teach. While the results are mostly positive, teacher educators need to find ways to reach those students who do not yet have a current view of geography, e.g. regarding the role of sustainability. Participants saw diverse sources as shaping their conceptions. Most participants saw specialist literature as an influential and often-used source. Yet, many knew few empirical studies about teaching/learning the subject. Teacher educators and researchers thus need to find ways to make research literature more memorable for teacher students.

Realization of Language Teacher’s Ideal Identity as Peacebuilder

Language teaching has the potential not only to teach language skills but also to create a peaceful learning environment where students feel relaxed, safe and valued. To achieve this goal, teachers need to develop an ideal identity that reflects their commitment to promoting peace in their classrooms. In the interest of developing peacebuilder language teachers, this study investigated the ideal identity of English language teachers as peacebuilders, the strategies they employ to achieve their peacebuilder identities, and the manifestation of peace language: hope, help, and harmony (Oxford & Curtis, 2020). The narratives of three Iranian language teachers were thematically analyzed to understand their hopeful, helpful, and harmonious experiences. Our findings indicate that teachers’ ideal peacebuilder selves are becoming ‘an encouraging teacher’, ‘a more hopeful and caring teacher’, and ‘a patient teacher’. To achieve their peacebuilder identity, they proposed strategies such as encouraging students to communicate internationally, caring about students’ success, pursuing academic studies, and improving emotion-regulation skills. The findings of this study contribute to incorporating peace in language education and developing peacebuilder language.

Examining interpersonal aspects of a mathematics teacher education lecture

In this paper we present findings from an initial phase of a more extensive study focussed on ways in which prospective mathematics teachers negotiate meaning from mathematics teacher education situations. The focus of this paper is on the language of one mathematics teacher educator and specifically the interpersonal aspects from one mathematics teacher education lecture in Sweden for prospective upper-primary school teachers. We draw on the enactivist view of cognition as a theoretical basis for a methodology we develop that utilises Systemic Functional Linguistics as an analytical tool for studying language-in-use. We exemplify our interpretations through a series of extracts from the mathematics education lecture. This initial phase of our study has exposed several important questions about how participating in an initial teacher education situation may contribute to the development of teacher identities, questions we raise throughout our analyses to provoke further investigation as part of our future research.

Exploration of science teacher identity construction through various lived experiences

Identity is the construction of interpretations of life experiences in certain contexts, resulting in self-understanding. This research, with a single case study design, aims to explore the identity of science teachers in various contexts of Figured Worlds. The research participant is a science teacher named Yuni (pseudonym), who has a background in Physics Education. Data were collected through two semi-structured interviews. The results revealed how Yuni interpreted science-related life experiences in Figured Worlds to construct her identity. The researchers concluded that although, throughout Yuni's experience, she was not interested in becoming a teacher, she was able to become an outstanding teacher through her scientific papers.

Модель психолого-педагогического сопровождения становления профессиональной идентичности у будущих педагогов профессионального образования

Realization of professional activity at a high level of efficiency requires from future teachers the formed qualita-tive filling of the position of a specialist, vision of themselves in the role of a teacher, correlation of actual train-ing and real requirements of professional-pedagogical activity and community, otherwise professional identity, as a means of formation of which is a psychological and pedagogical support. The aim of the study is to pre-sent a model of psycho-pedagogical support for the formation of professional identity in future teachers of vo-cational education. The work uses methods of qualitative theoretical analysis, comparison, classification, mod-eling. The model of psychological and pedagogical support based on systemic, activity, personality-oriented and reflexive approaches is presented. The stages of psycho-pedagogical support of students’ professional identity include the formation of: professional and pedagogical orientation of personality, creative readiness for professional activity, professional identity as a result of vocational training.

The Effects of Performance Appraisal on Secondary School Teachers' Work Engagement in China-Based on the Mediating Effect of Teacher Identity

The level of teachers' work engagement plays a crucial role in determining the quality of education. Secondary schools, being a vital component of China's basic education system, exert a significant influence on the overall educational quality in the country. This research delves into the connection between performance appraisal and the work engagement of secondary school teachers, while also exploring the mediating role of teacher identity. Employing a correlational research design, the study distributed 4848 questionnaires across 202 middle schools (comprising both middle and high schools) in eight cities within Henan Province, China. The returned 4290 valid questionnaires resulted in a commendable validity rate of 88.5%. The research methodology integrates descriptive statistical analysis, difference testing, and structural equation modeling to analyze survey responses and questionnaire retrieval outcomes. The study's findings reveal that while secondary school teachers exhibit a high level of identity, there is room for improvement in the fairness of performance appraisal and work engagement. Moreover, a fairer performance appraisal demonstrates a significant and positive correlation with work engagement and teacher identity. Additionally, teacher identity serves as a substantial predictor of teachers' work engagement and partially mediates the impact of performance appraisal on teachers' work engagement. These outcomes offer a foundational understanding for further enhancing the equity of performance appraisal for secondary school teachers in China. The study also recommends strategies to bolster teachers' self-identity by promoting fairness in performance appraisal, thereby fostering improvements in teachers' work engagement and, consequently, elevating the overall quality of education.

Exploring Vietnamese primary school EFL teachers’ identities from a micropolitical perspective

Teacher identity is an important concept that serves as a gateway to various aspects of teacher professionalism. A growing body of research in language education delves into the complexities of teacher identity. However, when viewed through a micropolitical lens, this crucial topic has received surprisingly little attention. This limitation hinders a deeper understanding of teachers' contextual satisfaction, well-being, and functioning. This paper reports on a qualitative study that explored how Vietnamese primary school English as a foreign language teachers construct their identities within the framework of educational micropolitics. Nine primary school English teachers took part in the study, and semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection tool. Their organizational power was investigated in relation to principals, colleagues in main subjects, students, and parents. The results reveal that in order to function as organizational individuals, the participants had to strategically perform either a main, subordinate, or extra role identity in power-related interactions with different agents.

Language teacher identities and identity tensions of early career English teachers

AbstractIn this article, we explore the tensions early career English teachers experience in their language teacher identities (LTIs). To this effect, we conducted semi‐structured interviews with three early career English teachers at Turkish public schools. The findings showed that the teachers experienced tensions with their roles as teachers, language competency, and structural and relational aspects in their contexts. Devising and employing coping strategies in navigating challenges, the teachers developed their own ways to deal with various identity tensions. The findings of this study conclude that (i) maintaining LTIs is emotionally complex, (ii) LTIs happen in social practice, and (iii) meso and macro contexts supersede ideals causing dilemmas, conflicts, and tensions in LTIs. Drawing on the findings, we argue that teachers' emotional needs and identity tensions should be provided for through institutional and interrelational support systems so that teachers can manage tensions and emotionality as potential in their identities.

From identity unbecoming to becoming: Duoethnography of multilingual and multicultural English language teacher identities

Language teacher identity (LTI) has become essential in educational research. The discourse is progressively moving away from the deficit-based label of non-native-English-speaking teachers towards the asset-based appreciation of their multilingualism and multiculturalism. This paper explores two multilingual and multicultural English teachers’ (MMETs) LTI shift from unbecoming (experiencing negative moments in identity formation) to becoming (experiencing moments that validate the self) over life stages and national contexts, impacting their teaching pedagogies. Applying duoethnography as the methodology, data were collected through tandem writing and dialogic conversations. Findings indicate that (1) MMETs' ongoing LTI construction is enmeshed with their primary discourse, educational, professional, and cross-cultural experiences, and discourses and ideologies embedded in social contexts; (2) LTI construction entails perpetual unbecoming and becoming moments; embracing and valuing themselves multilingualism and multiculturalism is beneficial to guide MMETs toward LTI becoming; (3) MMETs' perceptions of their own and students' multilingualism impact teaching practices when instructing students. Research demonstrates that duoethnography involves four layers of identity work: storying, reflecting, dialoguing, and writing. Through duoethnography, language teachers can explore their LTI experiences, reframing their identities from the asset-based perspective and offering inspiring stories for other teachers, thus making it the potential to support professional development in teacher education.

A critical analysis of course syllabi in teacher preparation: a systems-based approach

ABSTRACT This theoretical paper utilises qualitative research methods to investigate the communication of anti-racist pedagogy in required teacher preparation coursework. Using the two-pronged theoretical framework of Critical Race Theory and White Teacher Identity Studies, the researcher analyses enactments of race-visible pedagogy on course syllabi. The findings report two courses that most clearly communicate anti-racist pedagogical enactments centred on critical thinking about race and power. The discussion evaluates the consistency with which courses across the focus department engage anti-racist instruction, as communicated on curricular materials. The researcher analyses these documents in relation to the focus college’s diversity and inclusion statement and university’s anti-racism statement, exploring critically how anti-racist institutional goals are transformed into substantive action and communicated on course curricula. The researcher argues for a systems-based approach to anti-racist curriculum and offers a critique of course documents as vehicles for reproducing, rather than disrupting, Whiteness in teacher preparation.

Conceptualising the role of practice level in language teacher identity construction: An identities‐in‐practice study

AbstractLanguage teachers deal with different groups of learners as a natural aspect of their professional careers. However, little is known about how teachers construct their identities in response to various learner groups. This study relies on the concept of identities‐in‐practice and explores how six English‐L2 teachers construct their identities across beginner and advanced levels of teaching. Data were collected from semi‐structured interviews, stimulated recalls, and classroom observations to examine teacher identities across the two practice levels. Data analyses revealed similarities and differences in teacher identities across the two levels, which involved three components: agentic variations, discursive realisations, and extended identities. These findings provide novel implications for understanding language teacher identity construction across different learner groups. The study also provides implications for teachers and teacher educators to pay focal attention to the role identity plays in teachers’ work across different practice levels.

‘Why am I involved in environmental education?’ Using narrative inquiry to explore the identity and practice of teachers committed to environmental education

Based on self-reflective narratives, our study focuses on the lived experience of four Greek primary school teachers who are acknowledged for their personal commitment to environmental education. Their experience was narratively explored through recurrent conversations with them to bring out aspects of their identity and practice. The study was based on Connelly & Clandinin’s ontological and epistemological tenets of Narrative Inquiry, which we adopted as our approach and methodology to look into the teachers’ reflections on ‘why they became involved in environmental education’. We discuss how engaging teachers in generative reflective processes contributes to gaining insights to environmental education ‘from within’ and ‘bottom up’, while allowing us to re-think and re-imagine research in the field. We argue that research can thus act as a means of supporting learning for sustainability in terms of the personal and professional development and empowerment of teachers.