Bridging “What Can Be” and “What Actually Is”: A Typology of Teacher Professional Identity Formation

• In Event: Constructing New Possibilities for Racialized Organizations Theory in Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives: A perennial question for the field of teacher education is the extent to which teacher education programs have the power to shift teacher practice or identity—especially teachers’ commitments to racial equity. However, existing theories of teacher professional identity have not fully considered: (1) the key organizational dimensions of teacher education programs which shape teacher professional identity formation across program types (Castro et al., 2022; Flores, 2020), or (2) the racialized dimensions of teacher professional identity formation. In this multiple case study of three teacher education programs, I ask: (1) What type(s) of professional identities do teacher candidates in each of the studied programs develop?, and (2) To what extent do the studied programs’ organizational conditions influence teacher candidates’ professional identity formation?
Theoretical Framework: This paper bridges two threads of theoretical scholarship: (1) theories of teacher professional identity formation (e.g., Beijaard et al., 2004), and (2) Ray’s (2019) theory of racialized organizations to examine the ways in which the racialized organizational contexts of teacher education programs may shape the professional identity formation of new teachers. Taken together, these frameworks extend scholarship on teacher professional identity formation by considering the ways in which the racialized organizational contexts of teacher education programs may shape teachers’ professional identity formation.
Data Sources and Methods: I employ on a multiple-case design (Yin, 2009) and draw on semi-structured interviews with teacher candidates (n=45), observations of program coursework (n=75 hours); and artifacts (e.g., course syllabi, student work; n=75) collected from three US-based teacher education programs (one private, university-based program; one public, university-based program; and one for-profit, online program). I conduct a three-stage analytic strategy—beginning with an initial coding, drawing on inductive codes from the literature, and then a second round of coding with emergent codes. Finally, I develop an analytic meta-matrix to characterize the dimensions and types of teacher professional identity within and across each program (Miles et al, 2018).
Results: My findings surface a typology of four teacher professional identity “types”: (1) teacher as idealist, (2), teacher as professional, (3) teacher as worker, and (4) teacher as subverter. These types each reflect differing underlying conceptions of teaching and the purposes of teacher education. I find that the “racialized organizational climates” (Owens, 2022) of each program shape the socialization of teacher candidates into particular identity types. Notably, two of the studied programs are structured around the preparation of what I term an “ideal identity type”, and structured opportunities to “learn about” racial inequity with white teacher candidates as the target audience. These programs diminished the expertise of teachers of color in their programs—in some cases, driving Black teachers to leave their programs.
Significance: These findings provide evidence for particular ways in which teacher education programs can be structured to support the professional identity development of teachers to enact visions of racial equity in practice. Further, these findings extend Ray’s theory of racialized organizations by drawing attention to the relationship between the meso- and micro-level processes of the social construction of race.

Author

• Maya Kaul, University of Pennsylvania