Teacher Professional Identity and Career Motivation: A Life Span Perspective

• In Event: Challenges and Opportunities: Exploring the Social, Political, and Cultural Influences on Teacher Identity Development

Abstract

This paper takes a lifespan perspective on teacher professional identity development and career motivation to go beyond assumptions of stages models. In contemporary society much of our life is taken up by the work we do, which is related to our self-constructions and who we perceive ourselves to be at different points in time, in different contexts. These self-perceptions are intimately interwoven with the pursuit of occupational goals and meaning. It is in specific school cultures and workplace environments governed by local and global social and political forces, that teachers realise their career motivations and goals and configure their professional identities. Following Eccles (2009), we suggest that teacher identity can be conceptualised as a motivational construct comprised of ability self-concepts (related to skills, characteristics, and competencies) and subjective task value (personal values and goals) which work together in particular contexts to activate behavioural choices. An observation made some time ago that “teachers are workers, teaching is work, and the school is a workplace” (Connell, 1985, p. 69), has important ramifications for understanding teachers’ motivations and the formation and development of their professional identities. We contend that teacher identity involves personal and social identities and can be defined as the degree to which a person identifies being a teacher as integral to who s/he is as a person, how s/he enacts the role of teacher, extent of social ties to the profession, and commitment to the career into the future.

A strength, but also a challenge to the study of the formation and development of teacher professional identity, is its multidimensional contextualised character, reflected in the diversity of constructs through which researchers have examined identity-related processes. Key constructs have included self-efficacy, expectancies, values, goals, attitudes, beliefs and professional commitment. These have derived from major motivational theoretical frameworks that emphasise the interplay among person, task and context: expectancy-value theory, achievement goal theory, self-determination theory, and self-efficacy theory each of which has been adapted to the exploration of teacher motivation (EVT: see Richardson & Watt, 2006; Watt & Richardson, 2007; AGT: see Butler, 2014; SDT: see Roth, 2014; self-efficacy: see Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk Hoy, 2001). We draw on key motivational theories to highlight aspects of identity development across the lifespan of a teaching career. Such a developmental perspective on teacher identity and motivation leads us to expect processes of adaption and dynamism that are responsive to context. Drawing from the canvass of lifespan developmental psychology, we propose the SOC (Selection, Optimisation and Compensation) model of successful ageing as an overarching theoretical lens to provide new insights and a potentially integrative framework, within which diverse theoretical perspectives on teacher motivation and identity development could be coherently further explored.

Authors

• Paul W. Richardson, Monash University

• Helen M.G. Watt, The University of Sydney