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Language-Teacher Professional Identity: Focus on Discontinuities from the Perspective of Teacher Affiliation, Attachment and Autonomy

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New Directions in Language Learning Psychology

Part of the book series: Second Language Learning and Teaching ((SLLT))

Abstract

This chapter describes the investigation of language teachers’ professional-identity trajectories through an analysis of discontinuities (interruptions), as inspired by Herbart and Dewey, such as encounters with difference, unfamiliarity or disagreement. The paper discusses a four-year qualitative study that investigates the experiences of four pre-service teachers from Poland throughout their training course and the year following the course. Drawing on the proposed Three-A Teacher Identity Framework (3ATIF) comprising teachers’ willingness to teach English (Affiliation), their beliefs related to their teaching (Attachment), and agentive-reflective powers (Autonomy), the study traces the participants’ identity formation from their experiences as students to the time after the completion of their training. It focuses on what happened to various participants: the one who wanted to become a teacher and managed to do so, the one who did not want to but took up the job anyway, the one who wanted to become a teacher but dropped out and the one who never really wanted to be a teacher and did not become one. The procedure of working with the material is an “analysis of narratives” followed by a “narrative analysis” (Polkinghorne, 1995). The study reveals how complex the formation of teacher identity can be, questions the existence of clear dichotomies in professional trajectories and argues for the investigation of discontinuities that may initiate a new direction in language learning psychology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    J. F. Herbart (1776–1841) was a German professor of philosophy at Königsberg University whose aim was to investigate educational dilemmas. He referred to I. Kant, G.W. Leibnitz, W. von Humboldt in the field of philosophy but his key inspiration in education was J. H. Pestalozzi. He was one of the foundational thinkers in modern pedagogy (Murzyn, 2004).

  2. 2.

    J. Dewey (1859–1952) was a leading American proponent of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology. His most cited work translated into many languages is Democracy and Education (1916).

  3. 3.

    More details about the whole research design in Werbińska (forthcoming).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pomeranian University in Słupsk, Słupsk, Poland

    Dorota Werbińska

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  1. Dorota Werbińska
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Correspondence to Dorota Werbińska .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom

    Christina Gkonou

  2. Luftfahrt / Aviation, FH JOANNEUM University of Applied Sciences, Graz, Austria

    Dietmar Tatzl

  3. Institut für Anglistik, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Sarah Mercer

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Werbińska, D. (2016). Language-Teacher Professional Identity: Focus on Discontinuities from the Perspective of Teacher Affiliation, Attachment and Autonomy. In: Gkonou, C., Tatzl, D., Mercer, S. (eds) New Directions in Language Learning Psychology. Second Language Learning and Teaching. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23491-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23491-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23490-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23491-5

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