Becoming a Teacher: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Education Program Design and Teacher Candidate Professional Identity Formation

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Nine
  In Roundtable Session: Toward the Teachers We Want to Become (Table 8)

Abstract

At the heart of all teaching and teacher education policies and practices are distinct, explicit and tacit, assumptions about the nature of teaching as work and teachers as practitioners. These conceptions can also, however, become institutionalized within the design and curriculum of teacher education programs, and come to shape teachers’ professional identity formation. This multiple case study examines teacher professional identity development across three teacher education programs in the US. The emergent findings suggest a typology for teachers’ identity types, and investigates the role of teacher education programs in fostering particular teacher identities. These findings extend theory on teachers’ professional identity formation by providing a framework to explain how identity formation is a racialized process for pre-service teachers of color.

Author

• Maya Kaul, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author