Theoretical Perspectives

Abstract

This chapter explores the theories of identity that underpin this research. In three sub-sections, I consider gender and sexual identity, teacher identity and representations of identity through the lens of autoethnography. I reject essentialist paradigms of identity that posit a fixed and abiding self that is predetermined and rooted in ‘biology’ (construed narrowly), and argue instead in favour of a poststructural perspective that positions identity as perpetually under transformative processes.