Professional Identity of Science Faculty Serving as Mentors in Teacher Professional Development: An Interview Study

• In Event: Teacher Identity and Motivation: Concepts, Research Designs, and Empirical Examples

Abstract

Objective
Whereas college faculty members are content experts they often lack training in teaching. This lack of instructional expertise is of particular concern in community colleges where faculty members face a diverse student body that may be underprepared for college-level learning. Faculty construct their professional identity (PI) through various experiences, including increasing formal professional development (PD) opportunities, yet the amount of research on faculty PD is small and suggests limited effectiveness of traditional workshops (Kucsera and Svinicki, 2010). The objective of the current study was to investigate the change in professional identity (PI) and motivation for practice of community college science faculty as a result of their participation as staff in a PD program for high-school science teachers.

Theoretical Framework
The study employed the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) described in the introductory presentation to this session to conceptualize and investigate the faculty members’ PI and its change following participation as staff in the PD program.

Methods and Data Sources
Participants were four community college science faculty (3 males, 1 female) from four different domains—geology, physics, chemistry, and biology—who served as mentors to teams of high school science teachers participating in an eight-day, hands-on, inquiry-based PD summer institute. Data included pre- and post-institute narrative interviews with each faculty member. Each interview was coded according to the components and assumptions of the DSMRI and foregrounded two roles of each participant: PD-mentor and college faculty. The analysis focused on the level of integration between the two roles, and on change in each participant’s role-identities and intentions to change practice in the college classroom following the PD-institute. Finally, cross-case comparisons sought to identify themes and highlight similarities and differences among the four participants.

Findings
The analysis highlighted the various ways by which the faculty members’ mentoring role-identity was related to their teaching role-identity, and how level of integration was associated with different effect of the PD-mentoring experience on the teaching role-identity and intentions for practice. One faculty member, for example, construed the two roles and their components (e.g., beliefs, goals) as distinct, and was reluctant to consider PD experiences as relevant to college teaching and reconsider teaching action possibilities. In contrast, another faculty member readily related mentoring role-identity components to teaching role-identity, integrated PD mentoring experiences to his teaching role, and considered changes to teaching practice. The two other faculty members demonstrated partial integration between the PD mentoring and college teaching roles. Personal and contextual (e.g., subject domain) characteristics framed the integration.

Scholarly Significance
The findings of the current study indicate that serving as staff in K-12 teaching PD was a PD experience itself for community college faculty. The DSMRI proved useful in pointing to underlying processes moderating the faculty member’s integration of the PD-mentor and the teaching role-identities. The findings highlight the importance of explicit integration of PD-participant and teacher role-identities and have significant implications for the design and evaluation of teaching PD programs among community college faculty and overall.

Authors

• Melissa St. Pierre, Community College of Philadelphia

• Monica D'Antonio, Montgomery County Community College