Engaging Teacher Identities in Teacher Education: Attunement, Motivational Filters, and Pedagogical Judgment

• In Event: 68.019 - Research on Teacher Identity and Motivation: Mapping Challenges and Innovations

Abstract

It is widely accepted that who teachers are influences how they think about teaching (e.g., Achinstein & Aguirre, 2008; Battey & Franke, 2008; Lawrence-Lightfoot, 2003; Lortie, 1975; Olsen, 2011). Drawing on situative theory and Holland et al.’s (1998) notion of “history in persons,” we assume that both how PTs have been socially positioned throughout their lives and how they have made sense of these experiences influence how they operate in the world. This paper synthesizes two sets of interpretive case studies of pre-service teacher (PT) learning to theorize the relationship between PTs’ identity and their development of pedagogical judgment. By comparing the mechanisms that appear to be at work in these two studies, we propose that PTs’ identities shape their attunements and activate particular motivational filters through which they perceive and make sense of their learning experiences. This forms the basis for the pedagogical judgments PTs make about which practices to take up.

First, we are studying the use of clinical simulation cycles to support PTs’ learning around cultural and linguistic difference (Author, 2016; Self, 2016). In a simulation cycle, PTs encounter a trained actor playing the part of a standardized student, parent, or colleague in a common teaching interaction (Dotger, 2010). Then, with their instructors, they review and reflect on the videorecorded simulations, collaboratively analyzing their pedagogical choices. In this study, an analysis of video, observational notes, and other artifacts suggests that PTs’ positional and narrative identities attune them to particular signals and opportunities in the simulations and debriefs.

Previously, we identified motivational filters that shaped PTs’ judgments about what to incorporate into their teaching repertoire (Author, 2009). In this study, we observed PTs selecting or rejecting instructional practices promoted in their university coursework, field placements, and first-year of professional teaching. Through a grounded theory analysis of interviews and observation notes from this longitudinal study, we found that PTs weighed these practices through various motivational filters shaped by and shaping their current and imagined future identities: utility (is this practice feasible and valuable?), personal interest (does this match my own interests?), and conceptions of good teaching. In this way, motivational filters served as conscious, explicit tools for PTs’ agency over their emerging teacher identities.

In our teacher preparation programs, we seek to prepare equity-oriented teachers who (a) build on the cultural and linguistic strengths of students; and (b) examine and address inequity in teaching and institutional practices. As Stengel and Casey (2013) argue, however, teachers are likely to perpetuate dominant hierarchies of power unless they closely examine how their identities shape the way they interact with others. By offering a theoretical explanation for the relationship between PTs’ identities and their pedagogical judgment, these studies support teacher educators in prompting the elicitation and examination of PTs’ identity-shaped judgments. Through this reflective praxis, PTs can learn to take up equitable teaching practices.

Authors

• Grace A. Chen, Vanderbilt University

• Ilana S. Horn, Vanderbilt University

• Susan B. Nolen, University of Washington - Seattle