Dialogical Approach to Teacher Identity Negotiation: A Case Study

• In Event: Authoring of Self: Preservice Teachers Negotiating Their Identity as Teachers

Abstract

This study leans on a Bakhtinian dialogical approach in examining a subject teacher student’s identity negotiation in the context of his yearlong pre-service pedagogical studies. The study explores how one teacher student, Matti, deals with the polyphony of voices and through this internal dialogue “appropriates” the voices of others in creating his own voice as a teacher. In analyzing Matti’s interview the concept of voice is combined with discourse analysis. While Matti is positioning himself with different Discourses there is a constant interplay between emergent and established “chronotopes” in his identity negotiation, where participatory pedagogy is challenging the traditional one. The dialogical approach offers conceptual and methodological tools for studying the role of preservice teacher education in constructing teacher identity.

Author

• Maarit Arvaja, University of Jyväskylä