Developing Teacher Self-Understanding: Navigating and Negotiating Social, Institutional, and Organizational Contexts

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

Abstract

In line with his narrative-biographical work on teachers’ professional development throughout their career, the author prefers the concept of professional self-understanding over teacher identity (Author, 2009, 2016). He argues that identity (or its plural: identities) inevitably has an essentialist and static connotation, which downplays the experience that one’s understanding of oneself is dynamic, develops over time and is constructed through meaningful interactions with others and contexts. In Dutch, “zelfverstaan” (self-understanding) is both a verb and a noun. This way, its linguistic form as such reflects the fundamental claim that one’s understanding of oneself can be represented, shared, constructed at a particular moment in time as a more or less coherent result of an ongoing biography, while at the same time it continues to change and develop over the life time. In other words, the linguistic form echoes the idea that self-understanding is inevitably always a (temporary) product, while at the same time an ongoing process.

While reaffirming the strong emphasis on agency in this stance, in this paper the author elaborates on the meaningful interactions with the context as essential for the ongoing (re)construction of one’s self-understanding. He seeks to acknowledge and unpack the influences, pressures as well as limitations on this construction process from the social and institutional characteristics of the context (however, without giving up the agency perspective). Drawing on the findings in several recent studies (Author, 2017; Author, 2015; Author, 2016; Author, 2013) on student teachers and teacher induction (socialization), combining different theoretical frameworks in their analysis of the data (positioning theory, micropolitical perspective, social-network analysis, post-structural theory and neo-institutional theory), he argues that the interactive construction of the self-understanding can be captured in terms of as either navigating or negotiating. Navigating implies knowing how to read the institutional, organizational and social pressures as the contours and conditions for one’s educational practice as well as maneuvering in order to live up to one’s personal educational goals and normative beliefs (as part of one’s self-understanding) while enacting one’s professional practice. Negotiating refers to more active political interventions and strategies, seeking to change, redefine and (re)construct one’s working conditions in order to establish, restore or safe-guard a self-understanding that reflects one’s normative stances in the job. In other words, the normative nature of teaching and being a teacher inevitably requires “politics of identity” which aim at making it possible for the teacher to enact a self-understanding that reflects one’s deeply held normative beliefs about good teaching and being a good teacher. A central concern in the navigating and negotiating is obtaining social recognition as a proper teacher (legitimacy) from (significant) others, as will be demonstrated with empirical evidence from the studies. Finally, understanding this strive for social recognition and legitimacy has far-reaching consequences for the design and content of curricula in teacher education as well as the support structures (mentoring) during teacher induction, which will be discussed in the final section.

Author

• Geert Kelchtermans, University of Leuven