Abstract
It is widely accepted that how teachers identify with the profession influences how they think about teaching. In this chapter, we synthesize two sets of interpretive case studies to theorize the relationship between teacher identity and teacher learning. First, we examine how pre-service and novice teachers’ conceptions of a “good teacher” activate particular motivational filters through which they weigh whether to learn instructional practices in constructing their emerging teacher identities. Second, we explore how interactions with actors playing a standardized parent in a simulation cycle influence pre-service teachers’ understanding of their social positioning in relation to other people. Foregrounding teachers’ positional identities in this way can lead teachers to revise the way they filter instructional practices and thus, what they choose to learn as they aspire to become “good teachers.”
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- 1.
We recognize that children’s primary caregivers are not always their parents. We use the term “parent-teacher relationships” for continuity with existing literature, and because the focal caregiver in our data is a parent.
- 2.
All teachers’ names in this chapter are pseudonyms; social identity markers are included as descriptors only if teachers self-reported during the simulation cycle that these identities influenced their perspectives (e.g. “as a White woman…” or “I went to public schools in a middle-class neighborhood…”). In contrast to Maryam, all but two of the PSTs in this study spoke English as their primary language and completed most or all of their K-12 schooling in the United States.
- 3.
Peggy, like other PSTs, drew contrasts between “American” parents and parents like Maryam, suggesting that such parents are not American. This contrast suggests that the predominantly White, predominantly U.S.-born PSTs in our study ascribe a narrative identity of “not American” to Maryam, most likely as a result of her limited English proficiency.
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Chen, G.A., Horn, I.S., Nolen, S.B. (2018). Engaging Teacher Identities in Teacher Education: Shifting Notions of the “Good Teacher” to Broaden Teachers’ Learning. In: Schutz, P., Hong, J., Cross Francis, D. (eds) Research on Teacher Identity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93836-3_8
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