"This Is My Way . . . I Am an Ambassador": Identity Voices of Teachers With Learning Disabilities

• In Event: I Know I Can: Teacher Agency, Motivation, and Self-Efficacy

Abstract

This study aims to give stage and understand past experience of teachers with learning disabilities and its significance in the formation of their professional identity. The thematic analysis of twelve teachers suggests that varied social encounters with peers as well as with teachers have shaped their memory and have influenced their choice of teaching as a profession. Their experiences found to be meaningful in the formation of their professional identity and their practice. Their presence, as teachers in the classroom, brings the interviewees back to their personal experiences as students. By sounding their current voice as teachers, they aspire to promote a different discourse within the teachers’ community, one that leads to acceptance and inclusion of students with LD.

Authors

• Regina Benchetrit, Kaye Academic College of Education

• Idit Katz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev