Teacher Identity Formation

In this article, we argue that the pedagogical practices of teachers who have translinguistic histories, and indeed of all teachers, should be reconceptualized as solidly embedded within the context of their linguistic and social identities, and we explore the implications of such embeddedness for teacher educators. Pushing beyond the potentially over-simplistic dichotomy between native and non-native speaking English teachers (NEST/NNEST) (Higgins, 2003; Moussu and Llurda, 2008), we draw on identity as
pedagogy (Morgan, 2004) in the context of multilingualism and global situatedness. We call for TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher educators to explicitly and deliberately support teacher candidates’ understandings of the ways in which their lives interact with their teaching. In acknowledging that our teaching practices are informed by our life histories and that our identities impact our pedagogies, we as educators can strategically position ourselves to tap into identities as a pedagogical resource. In the following piece, we draw from the traditions of narrative inquiry and practitioner inquiry to share our collaborative reflections on our own pedagogical practice in order to create a space of support for multilingual, transnational teachers and teacher educators developing their pedagogical practice. We offer three narrativized examples from our own lives in classrooms to illustrate how the embodied identities that teachers perform, in these cases multilingual and globally situated identities, can be read and deployed in different ways.

This paper offers ideas for teachers to engage with mathematics through the historical ‘journeys’ and relationship with art and cultural and intellectual history. Its premise is that, whilst teachers’ main reason for choosing the career path of a mathematics teacher is usually their enjoyment of the subject, their later insistence on utilitarian view of mathematics leads to disengagement both in their students and their own disillusionment. The paper also treats the question of how teachers who come to the profession from non-mathematical backgrounds find their own ‘mathematical’ voice through series of historical investigations and what impact that may have on their teaching and pupils’ progress.

O objetivo desse ensaio é elucidar aspectos inerente à formação inicial de professores de Educação Física, tendo a disciplina Estágio Curricular Supervisionado como momento idiossincrático no processo formativo para o exercício profissional do magistério na Educação Básica. A discussão foi organizada em dois momentos: no primeiro uma breve explanação acerca da legislação vigente para o estágio supervisionado nos cursos de formação inicial de professores de Educação Física no Brasil e no segundo aprofundando a discussão sobre o estágio supervisionado como um momento idiossincrático no processo de formação de professores de Educação Física. Em síntese, compreendemos que o sucesso da formação de professores de Educação Física para o efetivo exercício do magistério na Educação Básica depende da abreviação da lacuna existente entre as instituições de ensino superior e de ensino básico, quanto da disposição e capacidade de professores e escolas básica se envolverem na concepção e desenvolvimento de projetos colaborativos de formação que respondam às necessidades formativas dos professores, proporcionando experiências supervisionadas que lhes permitam articular os conhecimentos acadêmicos com a demandas da escola, e encontrar respostas para os problemas com que se deparam no cotidiano escolar.

The objective of this essay is to elucidate aspects inherent to the initial formation of Physical Education teachers, with the discipline Supervised Curricular Stage as an idiosyncratic moment in the formative process for the professional exercise of teaching in Basic Education. The discussion was organized in two moments: in the first a brief explanation about the current legislation for the supervised internship in the initial training courses of Physical Education teachers in Brazil and in the second, deepening the discussion about the supervised internship as an idiosyncratic moment in the process of training of Physical Education teachers. In summary, we understand that the success of the training of Physical Education teachers for the effective exercise of teaching in Basic Education depends on the shortcoming of the gap between higher education and basic education institutions, and the disposition and capacity of teachers and basic schools to be involved in the design and development of collaborative training projects that respond to the training needs of teachers, providing supervised experiences that allow them to articulate academic knowledge with the demands of the school, and to find answers to the problems they face in school everyday.

In this study, we direct our focus to identity construction in an English language teaching (ELT) teacher education program. We explore the teacher roles in which student teachers are struggling to position themselves comfortably and the teacher expertise domains (subject matter, didactics, and pedagogy) that they are dedicating themselves to improving. To address our research focus, we have collected reflections and survey responses from 18 student teachers in an ELT education department. Our findings indicate that ELT student teachers find it difficult to position themselves as experts in and about the English language and that they feel a need to be equipped with expertise first and foremost in the subject matter, and then in didactics, followed by pedagogy. These results imply that in ELT teacher education, certain language ideologies are still prevalent and need to be dealt with by teacher educators for transformative outcomes in education.

"This study investigates how relevant indicators of teachers’ sense of their professional identity (job satisfaction, occupational commitment, self-efficacy and change in level of motivation) are related. A model is proposed, tested with structural equation modeling (SEM) and refined using data from 1,214 Dutch teachers working in secondary education. Classroom self-efficacy and relationship satisfaction play a key influencing role in the relationships between the indicators. Using multiple-group SEM, the parameters of the overall model are similar for the novice, experienced and senior teachers in a constrained model. This aspect of similarity across experience groups is in line with findings of previous research on teachers’ professional identity. The present study contributes to the further development of a solid theory on teachers’ professional identity, which has been lacking.

Keywords: Professional identity. Teaching . Identification . Teaching experience"