Addresses the various types of discourse within the process of professional identity development. This work emphasizes that the intersection of the personal and professional in teacher identity formation is more complex, and accents the need for teacher educators to take steps to facilitate such integration.
Over ten years after the original edition of Teacher Identity Discourses, Janet Alsup revisits her work with a new research study examining the characteristics of the millennial teachers now beginning to populate K-12 classrooms. Building off the first edition, this text is based on a qualitative, interview-based research study, and provides a contemporary look at how millennial teachers experience professional identity growth through language use. This innovative research investigates how formation of a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. Updated with new analyses of teacher identity discourses, the second edition covers themes that still resonate today and provides practical suggestions and sample assignments for teacher educators to use or adapt in methods courses.
In this book, Janet Alsup reports and theorizes a multi-layered study of teacher identity development. The study, which followed six pre-service English education students, was designed to investigate her hypothesis that forming (or failing to form) a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. This work addresses the intersection of various types of discourse within the process of professional identity development, emphasizes that the intersection of the personal and professional in teacher identity formation is more complex than is acknowledged in typical methods classes, and accents the need for teacher educators to take steps to facilitate such integration. Specific suggestions for methods courses are presented that teacher educators can use as is or adapt to their own contexts. Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces speaks eloquently to faculty, researchers, and graduate students across the field of teacher education.
Understanding teachers’ professional identities and their development is key to unpacking teachers’ professional lives, the quality of their instruction, their motivation and commitment to teach, and their career decision-making. This book features a number of scholars from around the world who represent a variety of disciplines, scientific paradigms, and inquiry methods in researching teacher identity. By bringing these chapters together, this volume initiates active scholarly conversations and extends the boundaries of teacher identity research and practice. This collection of chapters provides significant insight into teacher identity and will be essential reading for pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, professional developers, and policy makers at various levels.
Understanding Teacher Identity: The Complexities of Forming an Identity as Professional Teacher introduces the reader to a collection of research-based works by authors that represent current research concerning the complexities of teacher identity and the role of teacher preparation programs in shaping the identity of teachers. Important to teacher preparation, as a profession, is a realization that the psychological, philosophical, theoretical, and pedagogical underpinnings of teacher identity have critical importance in shaping who the teacher is, and will continue to become in his/her practice. Teacher identity is an instrumental factor in teachers’ and the students’ success. Chapter One opens the book with a focus on the development of teacher identity, providing an introduction to the book and an understanding of the growing importance of identity in becoming a teacher. Chapters Two–Nine present field-based research that examines the complexities of teacher identity in teacher preparation and the importance of teacher identity in the teaching and learning experiences of the classroom. Finally, Chapter Ten presents an epilogue focusing on teacher identity and the importance, as teacher educators and practitioners, of making sense of who we are and how identity plays a critical role in the preparation and practice of teachers.
The author examines who language teacher educators are in the field of language teaching and learning. This includes a description of the different types of language teacher educators working in a range of professional and institutional contexts, an analysis of the reflections of a group of experienced English teacher educators working in Colombia and enrolled in a doctoral program to continue their professional development, and an exposition of the work that language teacher educators do, particularly in the domains of pedagogy, research, and service and leadership (institutional and community). All of this is done with the aim of understanding the identities that language teacher educators negotiate and are ascribed in their working contexts. The author emphasizes the need for research to pay attention to the lives and work of language teacher educators, and offers forty research questions as an indication of possible future research directions.
This book presents the latest research on understanding language teacher identity and development for both novice and experienced researchers and educators, and introduces non-experts in language teacher education to key topics in teacher identity research. It covers a wide range of backgrounds, themes, and subjects pertaining to language teacher identity and development. Some of these include the effects of apprenticeship in doctoral training on novice teacher identity; the impacts of mid-career redundancy on the professional identities of teachers; challenges faced by teachers in the construction of their professional identities; the emerging professional identity of pre-service teachers; teacher identity development of beginning teachers; the role of emotions in the professional identities of non-native English speaking teachers; the negotiation of professional identities by female academics. Advances and Current Trends in Language Teacher Identity Research will appeal to academics in ELT/TESOL/applied linguistics. It will also be useful to those who are non-experts in language teacher education, yet still need to know about theories and recent advances in the area due to varying reasons including their affiliation to a teacher training institute; needs to participate in projects on language teacher education; and teaching a course for pre-service and in-service language teachers.
This book helps teachers, student-teachers, teacher trainers and others interested in the sociology and psychology of education to explore and make better sense of professional practice by examining that practice in the context of popular views.
This book explores the use of online and face-to-face interactions in language teacher education (LTE) by assessing the formation and practices of a community of practice (CoP), and evaluating the roles discussions between student teachers and a peer tutor can play in terms of identity formation, articulating narratives, reflective practices, and maintaining affective relationships. The specific context within which this is embedded is a Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) programme, often known as English Language Teaching (ELT), at a third-level Irish institution. The data drawn on come from student teachers on a master’s (MA) programme who interacted with a peer tutor (the researcher) via a number of modes (face-to-face and online). The approach to data analysis is a corpus-based discourse analytical one, which examines the linguistic features of student teacher and peer tutor talk; the features of CoP practices in the discourse; and how different modes of communication shape the nature of this discourse. Perceptive data from the student teachers is used to outline their reactions to the modes of communication and the activities they participated in.
This edited book examines modern foreign language teachers who research their own and others’ experiences of identity construction in the context of living and teaching in UK institutions, primarily in the Higher Education sector. The book offers an insight into a key element of the educational and socio-political debate surrounding MFL in the UK: the teachers’ voices and their sense of agency in constructing their professional identities. The contributors use a combination of empirical research and personal reflection to generate knowledge about MFL teachers’ identity that can enhance how they are perceived in the social and educational establishments and raise awareness of key issues affecting the profession. This book will be of particular interest to language teachers, teacher trainers, applied linguists and students and scholars of modern foreign languages.