Forming a teacher educator identity: uncertain standards, practice and relationships

Abstract

Drawing on his own experience as an illustrative case, the author examines the interplay of external influences and internal sense-making to explore aspects of teacher educator identity. Framed by attention to institutional, discursive and affinity perspectives on identity development, he argues that research and practice contexts in research-intensive schools and colleges of education in the USA contribute to uncertain conditions for the development of professional identity in the field of teacher education. Given an environment that sends mixed messages about the standards that most matter to knowing and acting in teacher education, teacher educators are encouraged to recognise their agency in claiming a sense of professional self, work with colleagues and students to cultivate deliberative inquiry spaces to shed light on the mystery of university-based teacher education, and explore the relationships embedded in the practice of teacher education that prompt recognition of what it means to be a teacher educator.

Professional Identity in Analysis: A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…The analysis of the studies revealed a strong positioning of authors in symbolic interactionism [1,2,13,26,28,31,32,35,37,38,[40][41][42] and in post-modernity [26,30,31,35,38] associated with post-structuralism [34,39,43]. In fact, how the identity is interpreted has undergone profound changes as a result of the phenomenon of globalization, in which the uncertainty and instability are evident.…”

“…The research fields [24] did not differ significantly: in five studies the authors were focused in psychology [27,33,41,43,44], other five, in social psychology [13,35,36,40,42], eight, in sociology [26,28,29,31,32,34,37,39] and four, in a "mixed" of research fields (philosophy, anthropology, psychology and sociology, psychosociology). The last four studies did not positioned in a particular field.…”

“…From the analysis of occupational areas of application, it was evident that the studies relapsed mostly in teachers (n=8) [1,2,13,[26][27][28][29][30] and nurses (n=7) [31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Of the remaining seven studies, six [38][39][40][41][42][43] are not reported to any specific professional area.…”

Exploring whether (and how) self-reflection can improve practice as a teacher educator

“…Gee (2000) models identity under four perspectives: …Four interrelated ways of thinking about what and who we are: nature (identity by nature), institutional (identity by the positions we hold), discursive (identity by what we have done and in dialogue with others) and affinity (identity by allegiance to practices and perspectives of group affiliation) (Dinkelman 2011). So, the issues of self and reflection are crucial here, influenced by different states of agency, emotion, narrative, and discourse alongside extrinsic factors (Beauchamp and Thomas 2009;Lamote and Engels 2010).…”

Professional development of teacher-educators towards transformative learning

“…Although the general view is that beliefs and behaviour characterise the identity and that personal growth should focus on both, there is still much uncertainty about the exact nature of the relationship between beliefs and behaviour (Taylor, 2007;van der Schaaf, Stokking, & Verloop, 2008). Identity is a complex concept with a complicated structure, which does not simply change under the influence of professionalisation (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004;Dinkelman, 2011). Development psychology has demonstrated that identity consists of a part that is stable and insensitive to change and a part that is sensitive to change (e.g.…”