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The notion of professional identity, emerging from research on “identity”, is used in diferent ways in the area of teaching and teacher education. During the last decade,researchers have increasingly acknowledged that “identity” could be used as an analytical tool to understanding teachers’ professional development (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2011;Varghese et al., 2005). The notion of teachers’ identity gradually became central to the teaching profession and a popular topic in teaching and teacher education in recent years(Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Lee, 2013; Rodgers & Scott, 2008; Trent, 2010; Tsui,2007). Akkerman and Meijer (2011) summarize three recurring characterizations of teachers’ identity: the multiplicity, discontinuity and social nature. Multiplicity refers that the teachers’ identity is not a fixed and stable entity but contains various facets, or “sub-identities” (Beijaard et al., 2000). The discontinuity feature of teachers’ identity describes“identity” as fluid and shifting from moment to moment and context to context. Social nature of “identity” is explained as acknowledging the social environment that exerts influence on the formation of teachers’ identity. Akkerman and Meijer’s (2011) idea of three characterizations lays a foundation for the present study to analyze the literature from two lines: the identity per se, and the nature of teachers’ identity.
A review of literature shows that researchers have studied the professional identity from multiple perspectives and defined it in various ways, and no unanimous agreement has been achieved about what teachers’ identity means. Although defining teachers’identity is one of the main challenges for understanding of the concept (Beauchamp &Thomas, 2009), many researchers try to propose their understanding of this complex notion and some major definitions are summarized in a sequence of time in Table 3.1:
Table 3.1 Overview of major definitions of teachers’ identity
continued
As shown in Table 3.1, previous researches have studied the concept of teachers’identity per se from various angles, focusing on different aspects and defining it in different ways. The discussion about what teachers’ identity means began to appear in Dworet’s (1996) earlier review of teachers’ identity research. The author regards teachers’ identity as diferent views that teachers have about themselves and how that view changes over time and in different contexts. Cooper and Olson (1996) argue that teachers’ identity is continually being informed, formed, and reformed. Teachers’identity can be understood and shaped by various experiences, events, environments,or influences as individuals develop over time and through interaction with others.Samuel and Stephens (2000) define teachers’ identity as a “perlocated understanding”and acceptance of a series of competing and sometimes contradictory values, behaviors,and attitudes grounded in the life experience of the self in formation (p.476). Inspired by Bromme’s (1991) work about diferent types of knowledge and professional self-concept,Beijaard et al. (2000) argue that teachers derive their professional identity from (mostly combinations of) the ways they see themselves and describe teachers’ identity as subject matter experts, pedagogical experts, and didactical experts (p.751). In the authors’later work, Beijaard et al. (2004) conclude generally from their literature review that a teacher’s professional identity consists of sub-identities relating to teachers’ different contexts and relationships. Other research also makes a contribution in the attempts to define the concept of teachers’ identity, for example Sutherland et al. (2010) distinguish professional identity as one component of multiple perspectives of a person’s identity and Day et al. (2007) identify three “dimensions of identity” (p.106): professional identity, situated identity, and personal identity.
Review of existing literature indicates that though it appears that there is no clear definition of teachers’ identity (Beijaard et al., 2004), there is a general agreement on its significance in teacher education and professional development. Literature suggests that teachers’ identity is not stable or predetermined (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Beijaard et al., 2004; Maclean & White, 2007), but dynamic, and it is created and recreated during an active process of learning to teach (Trent, 2010). The concept of teachers’ identity is often considered elusive, probably because of the much-debated nature of identity itself.As Beijaard et al (2004) summarize that professional identity is “ an ongoing process ” of interpreting experience that connects “ person and context ”, consists of “ sub-identities ”and needs the exercise of “ agency ” (p.122). These features are consolidated in Sachs’s(2005) often-cited conceptualization of teachers’ identity, which is worth quoting again here:
It [teachers’ professional identity] provides a framework for teachers to construct their own ideas of “how to be”, “how to act” and “how to understand” their work and their place in society. Importantly, teacher ( s’ ) identity is not something that is fixed nor is it imposed; rather it is negotiated through experience and the sense that is made of that experience.
(p.15)
Different definitions provided by the literature are informative in understanding the complex notion of teachers’ identity. In addition to various definitions, a literature review of research on teachers’ identity also shows postmodernist features which will be elaborated in the next section.
Besides the definition of teachers’ identity, how teachers develop professional identity and what factors influence their professional identity construction are other two fundamental issues in the research of teachers’ identity. Review of previous studies suggests that previous studies have largely focused on two areas of teachers’ identity:characteristics of teachers’ identity and factors contributing to teachers’ identity development.
Varghese et al. (2005) maintain that teachers’ identity is a profoundly individual and psychological matter as it relates to the self-image and other-image of particular teachers;at the same time, “It is a social matter because the formation, negotiation, and growth of teachers’ identity is a fundamentally social process taking place in institutional settings such as teacher education programs and schools” (p.39). In terms of characteristics of teachers’ identity, scholars in the field of teacher research basically agree that teachers’identity is fluid and shifting from moment to moment and context to context (Akkerman& Meijer, 2011, p.310). From biographical perspective, Kelchtermans (1994) clarifies professional self as a complex, multidimensional and dynamic system of representations and meanings which develops over time as the result of interactions between the person and an environment. Volkmann and Anderson (1998) believe professional identity as a dynamic and complex equilibrium between personal self-image and teachers’ roles one has to play. Coldron and Smith (1999) state that professional identity is not a stable entity that people have, but a way to make sense of themselves in relation to other people and contexts, and thus it cannot be interpreted as fixed or unitary. Beijaard et al.(2004) argue that identity is an ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences, and identity can be seen as an answer to the recurrent question “Who am I at this moment?” (p.108). In a similar vein, Rodgers and Scott (2008) add that identity is constructed in a social context and that rather than being stable and fixed, it is shifting and dynamic (p.736).
Regarding the factors that exert an impact on the development of teachers’ identity,review of literature suggests that previous studies have examined individual and social dimensions as two lines of inquiry. Many studies address the individual dimension of teachers’ identity and argue that teachers’ personal biography, significant others, earlier learning experiences, pre-service teacher education and in-service teacher education programs (Bullough, 1997; Flores & Day, 2006; Jackson, 2006; Kagan et al., 1993;Kelchtermans, 1994; Knowles, 1992; Kwo & Intrator, 2004; Lamote & Engels, 2010;Samuel & Stephens, 2000; Sugrue, 1997; Tsui, 2007; Varghese, 2006) have a great influence on the construction of teachers’ identity. Knowles’s (1992) comprehensive study discovers that teachers’ past experiences including childhood experiences, early teacher role models, previous teaching experiences, and significant people impact their beliefs about teaching and teacher images, and subsequently their classroom practices.Varghese (2006) and Jackson (2006) discuss how di ficult, even traumatic, experiences in the participants’ own schooling shape their teacher identities. Jackson (2006) examines how the personal history relates to the development of teachers’ identity. Samuel and Stephen (2000) reveal that teachers’ early role models may also shape teachers’ positive and negative responses to what it means to be a teacher. Holt-Reynolds (1992) and Tsui(2007) report that teachers’ past experiences af ect their teaching beliefs in the classroom and consequently shape teachers’ professional identity. Previous research also attach importance to the impact of diferent levels of pre-service teacher education, in-service teacher training courses to the development of teachers’ identity (Flores & Day, 2006;Kagan et al., 1993; Knowles, 1992).
In addition to the individual facets of teachers’ identity, previous research also discusses the social dimension of teachers’ professional identity. Social dimension of teachers’ identity refers to the influence of contextual factors to the teachers’ identity development. The foregoing studies have found that social culture, school culture,relationship with colleagues, students have either positive or negative impact on teachers’ professional identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Day, Christopher &Kington, 2008; Day et al., 2007; Lee et al., 2013; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). Zeichner and Gore (1990) have observed that the influence of students is important in the process of teachers’ socialization and the influence ranges from the general teaching approach,patterns of language used by teachers to the type and frequency of specific teaching methods used by teachers. Jackson (2006) examines how sociocultural influences and social interactions construct the participants’ teacher identity. Day et al. (2006) find that school culture enables or constrains the achievement of satisfaction, commitment,and motivation. Tsui (2007) claims the complex relationships between membership,competence and legitimacy of access to practice constitute the formation of teachers’identity and highlights the central role of participation in certain communities and practice in teachers’ identity construction and reconstruction. Day and Kington (2008) discover that the school-level factors such as teamwork, pupil behavior, support from leadership, parental support, and in-school communication are closely related to teachers’professional identitiy. Three key factors, namely, school/departmental leadership,supportive colleagues, and family, positively contribute to a positive sense of agency,resilience, and commitment in many teachers. Miller (2009) summarizes that:
The negotiation of teachers’ professional identities is…powerfully influenced by contextual factors outside of the teachers themselves and their preservice education… [T]he identity resources of the teachers may be tested against conditions that challenge and conflict with their backgrounds, skills, social memberships, use of language, beliefs, values, knowledge, attitudes, and so on.Negotiating those challenges forms part of the dynamic ofprofessional identity development.
(p.175)
To sum up, teachers’ identity can be outlined as being unitary and multiple,continuous and discontinuous, personal and social. The construction of teachers’ identity is an ongoing process, and the development of teachers’ identity is influenced by a range of personal and contextual factors. Conceptualization of teachers’ identity in general teacher education paves the way for understanding language teachers’ identity research.
Teachers’ knowledge, or teachers’ cognition, has been highly valued and considered as an important component of a teacher’s makeup. In teachers’ identity research,however, scholars process some conflicting views on the relationship between knowledge and identity. Some researchers view knowledge holistically without setting clear boundaries between knowledge and identity, e.g., Olsen (2003) claims that “each is part of the other” (p.4). The in-depth research on teachers’ knowledge and beliefs has been an essential precursor of research on teachers’ identity since they are inextricably connected with who we are as teachers. Other researchers view knowledge as “external to the individual and fixed” (Smith, 2007, p.379). The interaction between the development of teachers’ knowledge and professional identity has been investigated particularly with pre-service teachers. Smith (2007) concludes that pre-service teachers’ professional identity formation is complementary and connected to the development of teachers’knowledge in teacher education programs. According to Kincheloe (2003), “Mainstream teacher education provides little insight into the forces that shape identity and consciousness. Becoming educated, becoming a critical teacher-as-researcher/teacher-as-scholar necessitates personal transformation based on an understanding and critique of these forces…” (p.47). Smith (2007) also argues along the same lines claiming that teacher education programs should focus both on pre-service teachers’ identity work and knowledge growth. Alsup (2006) claims that pre-service teachers would more likely leave the profession if the discrepancy between the personal and the professional aspects of their identitiy is too big. Johnston et al. (2005) portray teachers’ knowledge linked to teachers’ identity and professional development. In their words, “teacher (s’) knowledge is seen in relation to teachers’ lives and the contexts in which they work” (Johnston et al.,2005, p.54). While Richards and Farrell (2011) identify “disciplinary knowledge” and “pedagogical content knowledge” as two broad types of content knowledge relevant to language teachers. Such dichotomy of teachers’ knowledge will be denoted in the coming section of 3.3.2.
Pajares (1992) argues that teachers’ teaching behavior such as making lesson plans and instructional decisions and classroom practice is strongly associated with teachers’beliefs. As professional identity manifests teachers’ language learning and teaching beliefs, it is worth examining how teachers’ different beliefs work in the formation process of teachers’ professional identity.
Richards (1998) summarizes “information, attitudes, values, expectations, theories and assumptions about teaching and learning (which) teachers build up over time and bring with to the classroom” (p.66) as the content of the belief system. Borg (2001) posits that the main features of teachers’ beliefs based on view of literature are context-specific, personally-accepted, teaching-related, guiding teachers’ thinking and actions as well as re-constructible due to personal interpretations and reinterpretations of learning and teaching experiences. In this sense, teachers’ beliefs are mainly associated with teachers’ teaching and learning process, and may be categorized according to multiple aspects in this process. Richards and Lockhart (1994) categorize teachers’ beliefs into five categories—beliefs about English, about teaching, about learning, about the program and the curriculum, and about language teaching as a profession.
Richards and Lockhart (1994) point out that it is important to explore EFL teachers’beliefs about English because English might be endowed with different meanings by diferent people. They further explain that English could be thought of as representing English literature for some people whereas for others, it might be the carrier of cultures of English-speaking countries. As English education is traditionally valued for its instrumental purpose in China, teachers’ beliefs about English might directly influence their teaching approach of English in the classroom, which reflects their beliefs about teaching and learning.
Johnson (1992) states that ESL teachers conduct teaching in accordance with their beliefs, resulting in dif erences in the nature of instruction. Through investigating thirty ESL teachers’ beliefs about teaching, Johnson (1992) discovers three approaches they hold towards teaching: a skills-based approach (focusing on discrete skills of listening,speaking, reading and writing), a rule-based approach (highlighting grammatical rules and understanding of the form of language), and a function-based approach (emphasizing the interactive communication and cooperative learning, as well as the language use in authentic social situations). Similarly, Richardson et al. (1991) find that English teachers’beliefs about their roles in teaching are to facilitate students in finding out ef ective learning approaches, to transmit language knowledge and skills to students as well as to adapt their teaching approaches to meet students’ needs. In addition, Glasersfeld (1995) claims that teachers view teaching as a two-fold activity. The primary level is about teachers’transmission of what they expect students to know through speaking and acting, and the second level is to convey their beliefs about teaching and learning in speech and act.
As teaching and learning are closely connected in the classroom, teachers’ beliefs about learning also contribute to teachers’ belief system as a major element. Teachers’beliefs about learning might be based on their training experience, teaching experience as well as their own learning experience as language learners (Freeman, 1992). Studies on teachers’ beliefs about learning exemplify a great variety of teachers’ understanding of learning.
Marton et al. (1993) propose a continuum ranging from a surface approach to learning which interprets learning as a process of memorizing and reproducing learned materials to a deeper approach viewing learning as a constructive process of meaning making. The continuum shows teachers’ diversified views of learning. Furthermore,Glasersfeld (1995) classifies teachers’ beliefs about learning into four categories and terms them more theoretically by referring to psychology—behaviorist orientation,cognitive orientation, social constructivism and radical constructivism. The four categories are in accordance with those of Marton’s et al. (1993) continuum, ranging from a surface approach (behaviorist orientation viewing that learning brings immediate changes to learners’ behaviors) to a deeper approach (social constructivism viewing learning as co-construction of meaning in social events and relating learning to time and place; radical constructivism emphasizing the importance of context in the learning process and the goal-oriented nature of learning).
Teachers might hold various beliefs about those whom they teach, reflecting individual teacher’s view of learners. These views have a profound impact on their classroom teaching practices with Meighan and Meighan (1990) suggesting that learners could be interpreted metaphorically as resisters, receptacles, raw materials, clients,partners, individual explorers and democratic explorers. These metaphors indicate the role of teacher and student as well as their relationship in the process of learning.
Viewing students as resisters, teachers might emphasize the weight of punishment or force in the process of learning since this is the most appropriate way in dealing with students’ resistance to learning. The metaphors of receptacles and raw materials indicate teachers’ leading roles in the process of teaching and learning since knowledge delivery and teachers’ constructive work are underlined respectively.
These metaphors imply an unbalanced teacher-student relationship in which teachers hold the dominating position. In contrast, the relationship between teachers and students is to be altered by viewing learners as clients because it highlights learners’educational needs and teachers’ actions to meet these needs. Teachers begin to take learners’ needs into consideration instead of dominating everything in the process of teaching and learning. The conception of viewing learners as partners stresses the cooperative relationship between teachers and students, proposing negotiation as the major mode of teacher-student interaction. The notions of learners as individual explorers as well as democratic explorers both see the teacher’s role entirely as a facilitator of learners’ learning.
A teacher’s professional identity consists of multiple sub-identities and involves personal and social or contextual dimensions in the formation process, thus a teacher’s active role, or teachers’ agency becomes an important issue (Beijaard, et al., 2004). Day et al. (2006) explain that in relation to each form of identity, agency is to fulfil these identities and their reconstruction where necessary, and to manage critical incidents and trends which may threaten the identities or which need to be managed. That is, teachers need to perform their multiple identities, and at the same time they need to respond to and manage any critical incidents in their identity formation in order to construct and reconstruct their identities. Moreover, agency also indicates to what extent people can live with contradictions and tensions within various identities (Day et al., 2006). In this way, teachers’ agency means that teachers are active in the process of professional identity construction (Coldron & Smith, 1999), and teachers strive to make sense and act as agents in their world (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). Researchers agree that teachers’ agency is important in professional identity formation (Beauchamp & Thomas,2009; Beijaard et al., 2004; Parkison, 2008; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Zembylas, 2003).Since teachers are active agents in their professional identity construction, and at the same time their professional identity is to a certain extent subject to their professional contexts, the relationship between agency and structure emerges as an important variable in teachers’ professional identity formation (Coldron & Smith, 1999; Day, et al., 2006;Tsui, 2007). Coldron and Smith (1999) use structure to “denote relatively intractable social constructs, including cognitive frameworks and affective templates as well as institutional practices” (p.715). There are diferent views about the relationship: some researchers hold that teachers can exert their agency over structure (Coldron & Smith,1999; Samuel & Stephens, 2000), while others argue that teachers’ active location in their professional contexts can be undermined by policies or institutions (Moore et al.,2002), which is illustrated below.
Coldron and Smith (1999) emphasize the importance of agency over social structure. They contend that from the beginning and in their teaching career teachers are actually engaged in creating themselves as teachers in the landscape in which they are located and the choices which teachers make constitute their professional identity. They believe that teachers’ identity is partly given and partly achieved by teachers’ active location in social space which involves an array of possible relationships that one person can have to others. Teachers locate themselves by expressions of both a firmation and rejection, and form their practices in unique ways. Teachers’ active location displays that“teachers are to some extent empowered” in their teaching practices (Ibid., p.717).