Teacher Educator Identity Research Articles

Four ‘academic sub-tribes’, but one territory? Teacher educators and teacher education in Scotland

This paper takes a sociocultural approach to questions around the professional identity of teacher educators in Scotland. Through an analysis of the historical trajectory of Scottish teacher education and its institutions, it is suggested that there are four distinctive groups of staff currently working in the university departments that provide all of the initial teacher education. The professional backgrounds and experiences of these four groups are illustrated by data drawn from a series of interviews with Scottish teacher educators. The members of each of the four groups tend to have different relationships both with the academy and with the teaching profession. As they develop their careers as teacher educators, the continuously changing institutional environment may create different pressures on them, some of these emerging as identity conflicts, even though they are all working within the same ‘territory’ of teacher education.

Examining Teacher Educator Practice and Identity through Core Reflection

This article reports a self-study that used a model of core reflection to examine the identity and practices of two teacher educators. Core reflection is a process by which teachers reflect on their practice, incorporating an examination of personal beliefs, mission and identity. During three sessions of core reflection we examined the experiences of one of the participants in relation to her teaching ideals, perceived difficulties or obstacles to achieving these ideals, and sense of self as a teacher educator. We concluded that the use of core reflection was valuable in supporting collegial and reflective conversions in a trusting environment. The process also helped us to identify the importance of qualities such as confidence and authenticity and to recognise how acknowledgement of such qualities can help teacher educators to understand their practice and identities more deeply.

‘I can only learn in dialogue!’ Exploring professional identities in teacher education

This article discusses how professional identity, conceptualised as ‘stories professionals tell about themselves at a specific moment in a specific context’, can be portrayed to address its complexity as a dynamic, constructed, cognitive‐emotional, multi‐voiced, and dialogical concept. In order to construct a narrative–biographical method, eight teacher educators reflected on their professional development, using the self‐confrontation method, resulting in self‐narratives. The findings of the study indicate teacher educators’ meaningful experiences can be portrayed in a systematic way using identity components such as job motivation, task perception, task‐feeling, self‐image and self‐feeling. This method can reveal a personal or professional theme to further educators’ development, focusing both on a content level as well as an emotional level. These results were illustrated by one teacher educator’s story. Finally, suitability of this method was discussed for reflection purposes in teacher education and research goals.

Teacher educators: their identities, sub‐identities and implications for professional development

In this article we address the question: ‘What sub‐identities of teacher educators emerge from the research literature about teacher educators and what are the implications of the sub‐identities for the professional development of teacher educators?’ Like other professional identities, the identity of teacher educators is a construction of various aspects or facets, which we prefer to call sub‐identities. We are interested to learn what sub‐identities might constitute the main identity of what we generically refer to as ‘teacher educators’ and, to achieve this, we set out to analyse the research literature relating to teacher educators to search for ways in which such sub‐identities might be explicitly or implicitly described. Based on the research literature we found four sub‐identities that are available for teacher educators: schoolteacher, teacher in Higher Education, teacher of teachers (or second order teacher) and researcher. We also found a view on teacher educators as teachers in a more generic way. There seems to be a broad understanding that teacher educators have to transform their identity as teachers to become ‘teachers of teachers in Higher Education’ and (increasingly) to become researchers of teaching and teacher education. The development of these sub‐identities depends on the context of teacher education in various national and institutional contexts and the development of teacher educators over time.

The scholarship of research in teacher education in a higher education institution in transition: Issues of identity

This paper examines perceptions of professional and organizational identity of teacher educators in a ‘new’ University of Technology in South Africa, resulting from several recent mergers of colleges of education and colleges of technology mainly serving formerly disadvantaged students and schools. The findings show that most staff consider teaching and research as dichotomous. Research activities are seen to satisfy the institutional requirements for securing research funding and producing publications. Professional identities could be strengthened by a faculty-wide debate on the specific profile of teacher education in a University of Technology, resulting also in an agreed research ethos. Peer support in collaborative research groups with a focus on own practice is seen as an opportunity to strengthen research expertise.

Grounded: Practicing What We Preach

In this article we explore the challenges faced by teacher educators who struggle with the emotional and intellectual distance between their work in the university setting and the K-12 classroom. We consider the benefits of having teacher educators find ways to teach children and youth in K-12 contexts as part of their role as teacher educators--how living and working across both contexts can help revitalize a teacher educator's identity as well as improve the quality of his or her practice with preservice teachers. Finally, we suggest several models that provide teacher educators with the opportunity to work in both contexts.

Attending to changing landscapes: Shaping the interwoven identities of teachers and teacher educators†

Teachers, in Canada and elsewhere, live and work on school landscapes being shifted by globalization, immigration, demographics, economic disparities and environmental changes. Within those landscapes teachers find themselves struggling to compose lives that allow them to live with respect and dignity in relation with children, youth and families. In places in Canada, increasing numbers of teachers are leaving after only a few years of teaching. In this paper we take up questions about the stories teachers tell of their leaving and about what we can learn about our work as teacher educators from listening to, and inquiring into, their stories. Considering the inter-relatedness of our lives as teacher educators with teachers, we also inquire into our shifting landscapes as teacher educators. We discuss possible spaces we might collaboratively shape with teachers as they, and we, attempt to sustain our stories to live by on these shifting landscapes.

Legitimacy and identity in teacher education: a micro‐political struggle constrained by macro‐political pressures†1

To gain a clear sense of teacher educators at work, we need to look closely at the context in which they practice. Any attempt to address the questions of what works and the nature of evidence must be situated in the macro‐political context that constrains the work of teacher educators struggling for legitimacy and identity within both the university and the professional field of teaching. We characterize the macro‐political context as a set of neo‐liberalist forces that works to undermine the central role universities have played in the development of the nation state. As the university's role has become focused on supporting economic development and global competitiveness, this context is at odds with longstanding agendas of professional responsibility and self‐governance in teacher education. In this policy context, we argue that teacher educators need to engage in rigorous practice‐based inquiry that addresses issues of policy and governance, particularly those that tend toward direct government intervention or professional governance.

‘That's not treating you as a professional’: teachers constructing complex professional identities through talk

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.

Who is a Teacher Educator? Enactment of Teacher Educator Identity through Electronic Portfolio Development

This study examines how participants in the Teacher Educator Standards Cohort enacted their identities through the creation of standards-based portfolios. Fourteen teacher educators participated in the cohort for 1 year. Data sources included the electronic portfolios, focus group interviews, and individual reflections. Findings point to five facets of teacher educator identity: Teacher, scholar in teaching, collaborator, learner, and leader. Participants primarily constructed their identities as teachers, but individual responsibilities and levels of experience may have affected how they enacted other facets of identity. The findings also highlight the discussion about who a teacher educator is and about the move to define a multifaceted profession that is shaped by the discourses in which teacher educators' practice is nested.

Teacher educators in post‐compulsory education: gender, discourse and power

Recent research on post‐compulsory teacher educators in England suggests that there is a high degree of feminisation of this workforce, particularly where further and higher education partnerships are concerned. This process of feminisation has taken place against a background in which English post‐compulsory education has increasingly been brought under state control and direction, with profound consequences for those engaged in the professional development of teachers in the sector. Although teacher education is also highly feminised in other sectors and in many countries, the recent history of post‐compulsory education in England has a number of characteristics that have strongly influenced the gender distribution of its teacher educators. This article examines the locus of power driving the gendered division of labour in post‐compulsory teacher education and attempts to account for it by means of the intersection of structuralist and poststructuralist perspectives. It is argued that the trends taking place in the teacher educator workforce can only be understood through situating the subjective identities of teacher educators within the discourse of government policies on further education from the 1980s onwards.

Becoming a community of practice–the blurred identity of clinical faculty teacher educators

The study discusses the professional identity and aspects of professional development of Clinical Faculty Teacher Educators (CFTEs) teaching methods courses in a College of Education during a time of change. The above aspects were revealed while analyzing data collected to evaluate an in‐service professional development course for CFTEs. Data concerning the participants’ satisfaction were obtained from questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews with course participants and course organizers. The findings indicate a high level of satisfaction with the course. However, more importantly, they delineate the unique characteristics of the course participants, namely CFTEs teaching various methods courses and mentoring student teachers entering the profession. These participants form a special professional group within the teacher education institution, and their professional identity seems to be closely linked to their previous or current teaching in schools. They are expected to verbalize and teach implicit knowledge and practical aspects of teaching, in the form of clear, explicit principles, to teachers‐to‐be. The CFTEs who teach methods courses have much in common, even though they are related to different disciplines. The current study re‐emphasizes the lack of clear standards and feedback tools when defining and assessing the work of CFTEs, and the need for developing a community of learners for on‐going discussion, sharing and forging a professional identity.

Small Differences Matter: Interrupting Certainty About Identity in Teacher Education

ABSTRACT This article offers a theory of identity that explicates how biological, experiential, and contextual influences contribute to the ongoing development of the human sense of self–what I describe as an ecological understanding of identity. My primary goal in developing this argument is not so much to create certainty about what it means to occupy a sexuality subject position but, instead, to interrupt certainty. Hopefully, my arguments about what constitutes human identities are unsettling, making readers less sure what is meant by words like gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, heterosexual, man, and/or woman. I conclude with a discussion of what these insights might suggest for teacher education and for public schooling.

Writing Race: Making Meaning of White Racial Identity in Initial Teacher Education

Race has become one of the key defining features of contemporary society, and a considerable body of work has recently emerged in the area of white dominant racial identity and identification. This paper reports on images, experiences and understandings of white racial identity elicited from initial teacher education students by use of a process of critical autoethnographic interrogations of Self. Emphasis is placed upon the description and analysis of a particular form of critical self-reflection and (re)presentations of utoethnographically-derived understandings of racialised identities. These representations provide an insight into nascent processes of conscientisation engaged in by initial teacher education students. The paper explores possible implications for the development of racially aware teachers, and broader connections with transformative pedagogical practices. The data comprising the basis of this project were derived from a combination of learning conversations and narrative inquiry, both of which are discussed in this paper.

The salience of space for pedagogy and identity in teacher education: problem‐based learning as a case in point

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.

“Rich White Girls”: Developing Critical Identities in Teacher Education and Novice Teaching Settings

“Rich White Girls”: Developing Critical Identities in Teacher Education and Novice Teaching Settings

Who teaches the teachers? Identity, discourse and policy in teacher education

In this article we argue that understanding the identities that teacher educators construct for themselves is central to effecting innovation within a changing policy environment. The article begins with a theoretical perspective on the nexus of change and identity. It then discusses the central features of identity amongst a group of teacher college educators who have been incorporated into a higher education institution in South Africa. The discussion focuses in particular on their new roles as researchers. We argue that the promotion of research needs to be based on what teacher educators already perceive to be their particular strengths and roles. The paper ends with some examples of strategies for research promotion in this particular setting.

Being and becoming a mentor: school-based teacher educators and teacher educator identity

Drawing on Gee's (Social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses, RoutledgeFalmer, New York, 1996) categories of “ways” to view identity, a case study is constructed of a secondary school teacher's struggle to move beyond her identity as a teacher to assume a mentor's identity in her year-long work with two English-teaching interns. Data of various kinds were gathered: from the interns, weekly e-mails and a paired peer interview, and from the teacher, interview, a peer interview, a mentoring log, and transcripts of a mentoring seminar. Based on these data, the author argues for the importance of attending to identity in teacher education and mentoring and describes conditions that would facilitate mentor identity formation.

Transcending Tradition: Situated Activity, Discourse, and Identity in Language Teacher Education

This article explores the concept of tradition within language teacher education (LTE) and extends our understanding of the elements involved in the formation of identity in preservice, second language teachers. After reviewing various perspectives of identity formation, a discursive model is offered as an approach to individual development within LTE. The concept of teacher knowledge is situated among the discourses of the language classroom, the profession, the curriculum, and the community in order to offer suggestions of how to best approach emergent language teachers as they reflect on the impact of tradition within LTE. Furthermore, strategies for reshaping and transcending language teacher education programs and second language classroom practices are offered in light of a dynamic view of identity formation.

Seeking Quality in Teacher Education Design: A Four-Dimensional Approach

The quality of existing teacher education programs is currently being debated in many countries and at many educational levels. This article examines the nature of teaching and challenges the common mechanistic approach to teacher education design. If teaching is a complex profession, then a more integrated and dynamic approach to designing teacher education programs is needed. This article proposes a four-dimensional approach for thinking about a conceptual framework to guide teacher education design. The four dimensions include: (a) links across the university-based curriculum; (b) links between schools and university experiences; (c) socio-cultural links between participants; and (d) personal links that shape the identity of teacher educators. It is argued that a conceptual framework based upon the consideration of these four dimensions is likely to ensure quality in a teacher education program.