Taking an Inductive Approach to Explore Teacher Identity Development

• In Event: Beyond Thematic Coding: Applications of Qualitative Methods to Advance Motivation Studies

Abstract

The field of motivation has evolved to provide a relatively clear definition of a range of motivational constructs and quantitative instruments (e.g., self-efficacy, goal orientation). While this clarity has led to proliferation of research on those constructs, it also left blind spots with respect to other constructs that are more complex and multifaceted. One example of those constructs is teacher identity. Although teacher identity has been acknowledged as one of the key factors influencing teachers’ professional lives, quality of teaching, motivation to teach, and career decision making (Author, 2010; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Buchanan, 2015; Day, Kington, Stobart, & Sammons, 2006; Van den Berg, 2002), a clear definition along with specifics about the nature of this influence have not been fully developed yet. In alignment with what Peshkin (1993) identifies as “generative potential”, an inductive qualitative approach can provide useful ways to unpack multilayered and ill-defined constructs like teacher identity by “getting to the bottom of things, that dwells on complexity, and that brings us very close to the phenomena we seek to illuminate” (p. 28). In this proposal, we aim to achieve two goals; i) to showcase the power and usefulness of an inductive qualitative approach to understanding teacher identity development, in contrast to a hypothesis-testing deductive approach, and ii) to illustrate a specific approach to inductive data analysis techniques that may benefit other qualitative researchers.
We will use two separate studies that focused on teacher identity development. In the first study, we conducted individual interviews with five teachers, over three years, in order to explore how teachers’ identity develops over time. This study shows how an inductive approach can capture various social, cultural, and contextual factors and the delicate nuances that influence teachers’ identity formation, while also highlighting the change of teacher identity as it unfolds around various psychological and contextual dynamics. The second study that focused on elementary math teachers’ identity development shows the distinct nature of discipline-specific teacher identity development and the tensions that teachers experience on their path to becoming an elementary teacher of mathematics. It captures the uniqueness and nuanced nature of teacher identity development and the ways in which the discipline, and micro and macro environmental factors influence the trajectory. We highlight the ways in which the use of qualitative approaches has made both the trajectory and the psychological and environmental influences on teacher identity development visible.
In relation to the second goal of this proposal, we will illustrate how researchers can simultaneously keep track of their specific questions and big picture without being lost in the midst of the exhaustive line-by-line coding processes. We will show the matrix forms that organize participants’ responses per interview question. This technique provides the necessary structure to support comparison across participations by protocol item, while inductively unpacking the meaning of specific aspects of the construct needed for deeper analysis both within and across participants.

Authors

• Ji Yeon Hong, University of Oklahoma

• Dionne Indera Cross Francis, Indiana University