Second-Career Teachers: Professional Identities Within the Landscape of Teaching

• In Event: 75.035 - Context Matters: Understanding the Multiple Dimensions of Teachers' Lives

Abstract

This study examined the professional identities of second career teachers (SCT) as an embodied and institutionalized component of SCTs’ professional cultural capital. A survey administered to 236 teachers gathered perspectives of professionalism and was compared to interview data for 16 SCTs and their supervisors from the survey sample. While SCTs’ perspectives of professionalism aligned with survey results, interviews demonstrated that SCTs reconverted prior professional perspectives into teaching and had less attachment to their identities as teachers. In addition, SCTs were positively received within schools, often gaining leadership roles at the school level. This study suggests that SCTs’ professional cultural capital enhanced their opportunities to lead and operate within schools, leveraging alternative perspectives of professionalism to engage teachers and students.

Author

• Ann Walker Nielsen, Arizona State University