Performance, structure and ideal identity: Reconceptualising teachers' engagement in online social spaces

Abstract

In recent years, teachers have turned to online social spaces for peer-to-peer interaction in increasing numbers. This online engagement has been highlighted by both practitioners and academics as having important implications for teachers' professional learning and development. However, there is a need to move beyond instrumental discourses that simply discuss engagement and technology in terms of costs and benefits, and analyse the complex social contexts in which engagement takes place. Therefore, presenting data from a digital ethnography of three online social spaces used by teachers, this paper uses professional identity as an analytical framework in order to understand teachers' online engagement in holistic terms in a way that acknowledges the messy social realities in which teachers work. It then presents a new theoretical framework for conceptualising teachers' professional identity that develops the concept of embedded ideal identity and takes into account context, social complexity, structure and agency.

Academic identity, confidence and belonging: The role of contextualised admissions and foundation years in higher education

“…The CA students were constructing and performing academic identities that were rooted in this sense of isolation and manifest in an often misplaced sense of belligerence against peers. Without adequate bridging capital and social support, several participants appeared to feel tension between their educational experiences and their perceptions of ideal student identity (Robson, ). They appeared to view ideal student identity as rooted in affluence, privilege and attainment.…”

How and why are educators using Instagram?

“…Generally, social media hosts a multitude of self-directed educator professional activities. Educators can challenge constraints on their professional identities via social media’s new spaces for expression and identity development (e.g., Robson, 2018 ). Rather than being restricted to the interactions, opportunities, and colleagues at their schools, educators can take initiative to gain access to a larger professional sphere via social media.…”

“…Educator professional identity is complex and continuously constructed in relation to institutions, policies, professional communities, and cultural scripts ( Danielewicz, 2001 ; Zembylas, 2018 ). Social media creates opportunities for identity expression and construction, but these are affected by the hegemony of existing ideals ( Lundin, Lantz-Andersson, & Hillman, 2017 ; Robson, 2018 ). Pittard (2017) noted ways in which social media can contribute to teachers’ internalizing unrealistic expectations regarding adequate performance of their roles.…”

Developing teachers’ digital identity: towards the pedagogic design principles of digital environments to enhance students’ learning in the 21st century

“…Taking account of identity as a uniting theme, discourse shifts towards the teachers' perspective, in which the teacher as an agent becomes the main starting point in understanding and stimulating teacher identity. In this view, teacher digital identity, is seen as a dynamic and ongoing process that involves making sense and reinterpret the beliefs, values and educational experiences in light of new contexts and frames of relationships in contemporary digital society (Gorospe et al 2015;Robson 2018).…”

“…We should not, therefore, underestimate the demands imposed on teachers to educate digitally informed and agentic lifelong learners. However, to achieve this, teachers need to enhance their professionalism, develop their professional digital competence (PDC) (Instefjord 2014;Instefjord and Munthe 2016) and, in a broader sense, nurture their digital identity (Gorospe et al 2015;Ertmer 2005;Robson 2018).…”