Teacher Identity in the Current Teacher Education Policy Climate

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

Abstract

In this paper, the authors use teacher identity to examine effects of the contemporary policy landscape in education on pre-service teacher identity development. More specifically, they adopt a sociocultural and critical teacher identity framework in order to investigate the holistic process of professional learning within today’s university teacher education climate. Their view of teacher identity holds that individuals draw from personal and professional pasts to interpret themselves within present contexts as they develop future professional selves that appear to them consistent and viable (Holland et al, 1998; Olsen, 2008, 2014). Given the current contradictions within educational policy writ large—and their effects on university teacher preparation, more specifically—this professional identity development process of teachers has become increasingly complex. This paper examines professional learning by contextualizing and analyzing the identity development of two teacher candidates in California, USA, as they navigate the student-teaching practicum of their year-long preparation program. Because the teaching practicum lies at the intersection of university teacher education and PK-12 school practice, it is a good location for studying the conflicts inherent in the contemporary landscape of teacher learning, teachers’ work, and university teacher preparation. Pre-service teachers must navigate and negotiate the effects of these perennially competing views as they learn to enact their own professional visions and practices in tandem with what they are learning in their teacher education program.

Both teachers profiled in this paper were part of a social-justice oriented pre-service program. Each teacher’s developing identity as a social justice educator was linked to his or her prior personal and professional experiences and underwent significant conflict and refinement along the way. Yaotl, a woman of color from a low-income background, had previously learned about systemic inequity during her undergraduate education and that experience helped her make sense of her own childhood experiences as an immigrant to the U.S. and drove her interest in becoming a teacher. Scott, a white middle-class male, was first introduced to social justice and inequity during his teacher education coursework, and he found the readings and discussions surprising and illuminating. Because of conflicting goals, practices, and policies that influenced the university coursework and the PK-12 schools where Yaotl and Scott completed their practica, neither of them had decent opportunities to practice pedagogies aligned with their developing identities as social justice educators. This frustrated them both, albeit for different reasons. Upon graduation, Yaotl maintained her commitments to social justice and equity but could not employ the kind of transformative pedagogy that she had wanted to develop upon entering her teacher education program, while Scott—whose previous experience with ideas about social justice had been limited—quickly jettisoned the socially just, multicultural commitments in the face of the external demands and emotional challenges of his work. In their paper, the authors use these two year-long case studies to illuminate deeper aspects of teacher identity and demonstrate how pre-service teacher identity is both a process of complex learning and the dynamic product that results. The authors also discuss implications for research, practice, and policy.

Authors

• Rebecca Buchanan, University of Maine

• Brad Olsen, University of California - Santa Cruz