Although teachers' first years in the profession are a widely studied field, the factors that would help to understand the difficulty or the ease with which individuals enter full time teaching and ...construct their professional identity are still little studied. This narrative study approaches the topic by comparing two newly qualified teachers' professional identity formation. The participants' stories display two different experience narratives: a painful and an easy beginning. The findings show the importance of the teachers' initial identities and the storytelling process to their professional identity formation. The study is part of a longitudinal research project in Finland.
► I studied two newly qualified teachers' identity development. ► The participants' initial identities affect how they experience the induction. ► The storytelling processes affect how the induction is experienced. ► Teachers' identity is central in understanding easy and painful beginnings.
This study is part of an ongoing action research project with preservice class teachers in Finland. The study aims to better understand the forms agency takes in preservice teachers' professional ...identity development. Through the dialogical analysis of student assignments, this study outlines how student teachers are active within their own development and the way in which experiences are drawn on as preservice teachers exert their identity-agency. The results of this study provide a relational picture of identity development highlighting the way in which identity-agency is contextualized, potentially nourished by the relationships between self and other and dependent on experience.
•The identity development of eight preservice teachers over a two year period.•An investigation into the different forms of agency in identity development.•Exploration of preservice teachers' activity within their own development.•Seeking understanding of experiences that support identity awareness.•Critical consideration of the mediating role of identity-agency as a theoretical concept.
Abstract
The present study focuses on experiences of relational tensions and management strategies in family relationships among 18 young adults with foster care backgrounds who participated in ...interviews. In the analysis drawing from relational dialectics, three main tensions were revealed in the participants' relationships with birth and foster family members or in their romantic relationships: the dialectics of emotional distance‐closeness, integration‐separation and sameness‐otherness. In addition, the tension of the childhood dialectic of responsibility was identified in this study. The tensions were managed utilizing eight strategies. The findings highlight the importance of giving a voice to young adults who have experienced the complex web of relationships in at least two families and of sensitizing both birth and foster parents and other adults working with foster children and youth to these tensions in relationships.
This qualitative study examines the professional agency of secondary English teachers in Midwestern South Korea. Specifically, it investigates how secondary English teachers in South Korea understand ...their professional agency and what mediates their professional agency. The ecological approach in this study recognises that agency encompasses both individual and environmental dimensions and is formed through the constant interplay between the individual and the environment. The dataset for this study comprises 15 semi-structured interviews with secondary English teachers in South Korea. The thematic analysis highlights a significant gap between Korean English teachers’ espoused agency and realisable agency, as well as three levels of legitimation that teachers have to negotiate. These levels are individual, collegial and sociocultural. The findings from this study suggest that the participating teachers censored their own pedagogical behaviours due to their own sense of inadequacy and in response to structural requirements as well as the external evaluation of parents and high-stakes test scores. This study concludes with implications for English teachers in South Korea, theorisation on teacher agency and future research.
This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is ...examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data analysis is based on dialogical and narrative approaches. Through the analysis two key story types were named: Bilingualism as striving and Bilingualism as a gift. In the striving stories English was held up as an ideal, as a way of engaging with the wider world but moreover as a way of finding a better 'me'. In the gift stories, English was experienced as a gateway to something other, whether a new community, sport, or music. The emotional intonation of these two story types varied considerably highlighting the importance of emotion within language education.
This qualitative study examines one migrant teacher's identity positions in the context of a peer mentoring group setting in Finland. Combining theories of legitimacy and teacher narratives, this ...study asked which positions were available and legitimate for a migrant teacher. The analysis of three of the stories the teacher ('Ji Yoo') shared was inspired by Barkhuizen's three-step framework for examining positioning in teacher narratives. Findings showed that Ji Yoo's most legitimate positions were being 'foreign', novice teacher, cultural broker, and expert teacher, the latter two being the least frequent and least explicit ones. The authors suggest that migrant teachers' struggles of having their expertise and experience recognised and shed their 'foreign' label persist even in contexts that are intended to support and empower practitioners.
Meaningful learning in teacher education Kostiainen, Emma; Ukskoski, Tuija; Ruohotie-Lyhty, Maria ...
Teaching and teacher education,
April 2018, 2018-04-00, Letnik:
71
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
•This study explores meaningful learning in the context of teacher education.•The study showed the importance of course design in generating meaningful learning.•Opportunities to gain strong ...experience are crucial to meaningful learning.•Meaningful learning provides space for both positive and uncomfortable emotions.
In this theme, we find articles that show the ways in which Brazilian teachers are dealing with the often-challenging teaching contexts and the difficult emotions linked to these conditions. These ...challenges include temporal events such as COVID-19 pandemic, but also trials that language teachers constantly deal with, such as tensions related to power relations, and to academic, pedagogical, and legislative discourse and racial injustice. The articles in this issue, however. also demonstrate the strong professional orientation of Brazilian teachers, their ability of expressing difficult emotions and understand them from a critical and societally aware perspective and effectively deal with them in collaboration with other teachers. They also illustrate well the ways in which language teacher professionalism is of an emotional nature and strongly anchored in teachers· sensitivity and wisdom related to emotional aspects of their work. Furthermore, the articles vividly illustrate the ways in which difficult emotions can be brought to the forefront and discussed in collaborative action and provide inspiration for other teachers dealing with similar issues in Brazil and, more broadly, in other countries. Within this theme we find some intersectional perspectives to teacher research with a focus on a more critical approach to emotions.
This paper explores the professional development of 11 newly qualified foreign language teachers. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study conducted at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland ...between 2002 and 2009. The paper concentrates on the personal side of teacher development by analysing participants' discourses concerning language teaching. The study shows important differences in teachers' ways of conceptualising their environment and constructing practical knowledge on teaching. Teachers' sense of agency is identified as a major factor contributing to their professional development.
This study explores the dialogical nature of agency when two immigrant pupils, who are learning Finnish as their new target language, are authoring their selves. Bakhtin's dialogism was the ...inspiration for this examination of the discourses that surround the L2 pupils' agency and how they respond to discourses through their agency. Ethnographically oriented data collection included classroom observations, the pupils' portfolios, and interviews with the pupils (as main participants) and meaningful adults. These data yielded a set of narratives from multiple voices. The results show that the pupils negotiate more subjective meanings of their selves, and re-color them with their internal goals and values, through the act of answerability, while the other sides of their selves react to others' voices. It is concluded that we, L2 education providers, need to recognise the high level of engagement of young language learners' agency and remember how our own voices might affect their navigation process of authoring their selves.
PDF
