An Exploration of Teachers’ Efforts to Understand Identity Work and its Relevance to Science Instruction

Analysis of Science and Technology Pre-service Teachers’ Beliefs on the Construction of the Teachers’ Professional Identity during the Initial Training Process

“…In this respect, the results also reflect the importance of acquiring certain professional skills that are basic for those who wish to teach in secondary education centres (transforming scientific training into didactic knowledge of the content, motivating the pupils to learn Science and Technology, using and dominating educational communication techniques, effectively integrating ICTs into teaching, learning to resolve conflicts and appropriately managing educative processes in the classroom, etc.). Previous works have also shown that these aspects are important elements as regards teaching in an appropriate manner and improving the quality of education (Avraamidou, 2014;Beijaard et al, 2004;Izadinia, 2016;Smith & Darfler, 2012), and have stressed the importance of the professional being able to maintain the pupils motivated and interested during the teaching-learning process and of developing the specific abilities that are required to be able to teach efficiently.…”

“…competent teachers who will identify more with and be more committed to their profession (Manso Ayuso & Martín Ortega, 2014;Shatunova, Merzon, Shaimardanova, & Shabalin, 2018;Zhang, Liu, Yang, Tripp, & Shao, 2018). The research concerning Science and Technology teachers' beliefs, which has been developed to a fairly considerable extent in the last two decades (Luft, Roehrig, & Patterson, 2003;Gullberg, Kellner, & Attorps, 2008;Subramaniam, 2013), has highlighted the important role played by trainee teachers' initial conceptions and beliefs regarding various aspects of the activity of teaching professionally (Buldur, 2017;Pontes Pedrajas, Serrano Rodríguez & Poyato, 2013;Pool, Reitsma, & Mentz, 2013;Sutton, 2011) and its relationship with the development of the TPI (Cameron & Grant, 2017;Smith & Darfler, 2012), a relatively new term in the field of scientific-technical education that has opened up interesting work perspectives (Izadinia, 2016). In this sense, current research in this topic highlights diverse variables and constructs that directly affect the construction and development of TPI such as the way future teachers understand the profession, the ability to teach and to integrate ICT in the classrooms, their attitude (sensible and self-critic) as well as their interest in engaging students in the teaching-learning process (Izadinia, 2015;Taylor & Booth, 2015).…”

“…The majority of the aforementioned studies concern the sphere in general, and very few tackle the development of the Teacher's Professional Identity (TPI) in the context of the training of Science and Technology teachers, although several works dealing with this subject have been published recently (Avraamidou, 2014;Cameron & Grant, 2017;Green, 2015;Izadinia, 2016;Smith & Darfler, 2012;Trevallion, 2018) and it is, therefore, appropriate to analyse them in some detail.…”

“…Finally, there are also studies which state that there may be other issues than these factors themselves that affect the TPI. On the one hand, Smith and Darfler (2012) state that, in order to become an efficient Secondary Education Science teacher, in addition to forging one's own TPI, it is necessary to know the identity and evolution of one's pupils, along with having an interest in the teaching-learning process. On the other hand, there are independent factors, such as sex or age, that may influence the way in which teachers construct their TPI (Chang & Lo, 2016).…”

“…Several studies have stated that aspiring Secondary Education teachers begin their initial teacher training studies with different views and conceptions of the teaching professionalism and they show different attitudes regarding the process to be followed in order to achieve adequate pedagogical training to face the challenges and address the demands for improvement in this educational stage (Buldur, 2017;Esteve, 2009;Hong, 2010;Smith & Darfler, 2012). For this reason, we have been working on a research project for a long time related to the following problem: What Science and Technology Secondary Education pre-service teachers think about the teaching profession and to what extent the initial training process contribute to improve these thoughts while promoting the development of teachers' professional identity (TPI)?…”