Relationships Among Teacher Beliefs and Teacher Identity (Poster 1)

• In Event: A Global Perspective of the Landscape of Research on Teachers’ Beliefs

Abstract

Aim
Teacher identity development entails questioning and appraising perceived discrepancies and inconsistencies while transacting within social-cultural-historical contexts (Authors, 2024). When teachers engage in this identity work, they examine and negotiate their beliefs. This process involves teachers filtering through their beliefs and experiences, while responding to interpersonal transactions in schools. At the same time, beliefs frame problems and guide actions (Author, 2012). Given these connections between teacher identity and beliefs, we aim to explore how scholars have addressed relationships among teacher identity and teacher beliefs.

Mode of Inquiry
We searched ERIC, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, and Google Scholar, and targeted journals in education using the combined search terms of “teacher identity/professional identity/identi*” AND “teacher beliefs/teaching beliefs/belief*” from 2010 onward. This yielded 16 studies.

Findings
Three themes emerged from our analysis: pedagogy-related beliefs, self-efficacy, and attribution.

Pedagogy-related Beliefs
Teachers’ pedagogy-related beliefs reflect the kind of teacher they are and shape the kind of teacher they aspire to be, while their identities simultaneously influence their beliefs about teaching and learning in relation to various contextual demands (e.g., Conner & Marchant, 2022). In other words, teachers’ pedagogy-related beliefs comprise some of the content and is a notable contributor to teacher identity.

Self-efficacy
Scholars investigating self-efficacy and teacher identity have demonstrated diverse ways those two are related, such as (a) self-efficacy as part of teacher identity, (b) self-efficacy influencing identity development, (c) identity influencing self-efficacy, and (d) simple associations between self-efficacy and identity. Generally, these studies showed that high self-efficacy bodes well for a positive and robust teacher identity. Also, the goal-focused nature of self-efficacy highlights the importance of teacher agency in taking ownership of their goals, meaning-making, and negotiating teacher identity development (e.g., Narayanan & Ordynans, 2022).

Attribution
Scholars focusing on teacher attribution and identity showed how attributions play a role in teacher identity development, as teachers’ attributions influence the expectancies of future success and willingness to initiate specific actions. When teachers make attributional judgments about the perceived incongruences or congruences between their current classroom transactions and how they envision themselves as teachers, this consequently feeds into their identity work (e.g., Author, 2017).

Significance
What has been absent from these studies are conceptual clarity and cohesive definitions of teacher identity and various teacher beliefs. These missing components diminished the rigor of the research. Also, studies often focused on the micro-level contexts (e.g., classroom, school, or teacher education) without mindfully incorporating social norms, cultural values, and political climate. What is crucial in teacher identity and teacher beliefs are how they negotiate power dynamics and social norms within politicized realities of classrooms and school communities where societal values and privileged ideologies were entrenched (e.g., Whiteness, Heteronormativity, Neoliberalism; Authors, 2024). Thus, developing conceptual clarity of teachers’ beliefs and identity, and mindfully integrating social-cultural-historical contexts would contribute to strengthening explorations into the intricate relationships between teacher beliefs and identity, and their combined impact on teachers’ overall effectiveness and wellbeing.

Authors

• Ji Y. Hong, University of Arizona

• Soojeong Lee, University of Arizona

• Jing Zhao, Educational Psychology

• Dionne Cross Francis, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

• Paul A. Schutz, University of Arizona