An Affinity for Learning: Teacher Identity and Powerful Professional Development

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with a diverse sample of teachers, this study uses the frame of professional identity to interpret the heterogeneity among teachers’ perceptions of professional development. Specifically, it examines how teachers’ “anchoring beliefs” might be reflected in or refracted by their accounts of powerful professional learning. An analysis of three case studies of teacher identity and teacher learning reveals three distinct “learning affinities”: for the what (content), the who (facilitation), and the with whom (community). This learning affinity framework may better model teachers’ experiences of professional development and thus could point the way toward improved research and design.

A Critical Period in Becoming a Teacher: How Novice Teachers Develop Their Professional Identity

“…Although personal identity and professional identity work in conjunction with one another, they are still developed through separate experiences and later used to inform decisions and actions. In 18 of 23 cases in his study, James Noonan (2018) found that there was an "alignment between participants'…”

“…A teacher's PI is constantly evolving, contingent upon a variety of factors, including experiences, the environment, interactions with people, and the context of a given scenario (Noonan, 2018). Through different contexts, teachers develop their PI (Ruohotie-Lyhty & Moate, 2016), which can have an impact on different aspects of their career, such as instruction, interactions with students, and teaching philosophy.…”

“…Through his grounded study of four EL teachers, Reeves (2018) found that "teacher identity work is not merely a bounded psychological phenomenon; it is the negotiated expression of teachers' values, their investments, and their beliefs enacted within layers of context that work to validate, reshape, stunt, or nullify those values, investments and beliefs" (p. 101). By developing a better understanding of how PI is developed among veteran, novice, and preservice teachers, one can then examine how PI influences a teacher's philosophies, instruction, and views on education (Hsieh, 2016;Noonan, 2018). Janet Alsup (2006) found that education students who were better able to discuss their different identities, or subidentities, began to combine their personal and professional identities in order to make more informed teaching decisions.…”

Coping Strategies of University Teaching Staff With Difficulties in Managing Remote Learning Under Lockdown Related Stress

“…It is also necessary to bear in mind the stress-triggering nature of the lockdown, during which the teaching staff had to cope with arising difficulties and to adapt to the new reality very quickly. Besides, the teachers found themselves excluded from the professional community that had previously facilitated their professional self-fulfilment (Noonan, 2018;Prenger et al, 2018). The competencies of working with a particular online tool is formed relatively quickly; however, the difficulties related to the low level of the psychological and teaching readiness of the staff are harder to cope with, and they often become a serious barrier for remote learning of high quality.…”

The Role Of Organizational Commitment Of Teachers In Professional Culture

“…Foreign colleagues discussing the professional development, professional identification, emphasize the importance of the professional community (Blackmore, Howard & Kington 2018;Noonan,. 2018;Prenger, Poortman, & Handelzalts, 2018;Cherng & Davis 2017).…”