Week 5 – Identity and self as an education

professional

TOPIC GOALS

 Explore different theories related to the development of identity

and self for education professionals.

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1. Introduction
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
(Aristotle, 384–322 BC)

2. Identity and Self

Constructing our identity and self in a world that shifts and changes so
rapidly is a challenging task. For educators this is even more difficult as the
persona they need to portray to their students will have an impact in their
behaviour and status.

‘Identity is the way that people understand their own individual experience
and how they act and identify with various groups. For Hall (1996:17)
“identities are constructed within, not outside discourse, our need to
understand them as produced in specific historical and institutional sites within
specific discursive formations and practices”(…) In the development of
professional identity, teachers draw on their own experiences as a student and
as a teacher, their personal and professional histories inside and outside of
schools, as well as the images of teachers presented in the popular media,
films, fiction and so on.’
(Kompf & Denicolo, 2005)

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 Professional identity on the other hand for educators consists of the
different traits and qualities one retains in their teaching profession and the values
that construct their identity as professionals. The experience a teacher gains from
school to school will shape their beliefs and values and also the type of teacher
they like to be.

(Kompf & Denicolo, 2005)

For Canrinus (2011) the concept of teacher professional identity addresses:

1) the complex nature of the teaching profession by taking both its personal and
professional sides into account, 2) our understanding of teacher professional
learning by acknowledging that learning is directed both externally and internally,
and that 3) professional development or learning is to a large extent influenced
by who one is as a person (Beijaard, 2009; Beijaard, Meijer, Morine- Dershimer
& Tillema, 2005). Professional identity is often interpreted in terms of
individuals’ perceptions of themselves as a teacher and as the teacher they wish
to become.
Professional or otherwise organizational identity can be seen in three
different spectrums. First, we can see corporate identity which mostly deals with
the organization and how it is presented, the second is substantive identity which
is the unity of the organization and thirdly the reflective identity, which answers
the question as how the organization reflects itself on unity and uniqueness.

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 ‘The concept of corporate identity shows some similarity with the (more
academic) theory of impression management. As in the case of corporate identity,
research on impression management analyses the organisation’s attempts at
influencing the environment’s perceptions of it (…) The literature on substantive
identity is concerned with two basic questions. The first question is, what is the
unity of the organisation, or better: what keeps the different parts of an
organisation together as a unity? In particular, how are the various actions of an
organisation related to each other? The integration and coordination mechanisms,
which are found in shared rules, world views or values is what the literature on
substantive identity focuses on. The second question, which is often more
implicit, is: what distinguishes one organisation from another? (…) For the
concept of identity it is irrelevant whether the believed characteristics ‘really
exist’ in the organisation; it is the belief that is important. Different individuals
may even have different beliefs about the organisation’ (Seidl, 2016)

Contemporary conceptions of identity share four basic assumptions:

(1) that identity is dependent upon and formed within multiple contexts which
bring social, cultural, political, and historical forces to bear upon that formation;

(2) that identity is formed in relationship with others and involves emotions;

(3) that identity is shifting, unstable, and multiple; and,

(4) that identity involves the construction and reconstruction of meaning through
stories over time.
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External Aspects of Identity
Contexts and Relationships
Formation

Internal Meaning-Making Stories and Emotions

Aspects

‘Awareness and voice represent the “contested” place where the normative
demands of the external encounter the internal meaning making and desires of
the teacher’ (Rodgers and Scott, 2008).

Influences affecting the educator’s professional identity:

 Context factors influencing professional identity. Professional
development opportunities and level of autonomy are aspects of the context in
which a teacher works.

 Personal factors influencing professional identity. Although

teachers share a common profession, they will differ in their more personal
attributes, possibly affecting the indicators of a sense of professional
identity.

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 Professional identity and teaching behaviour.
When studied separately, the indicators of teacher professional identity
(occupational commitment, self-efficacy, job satisfaction and motivation) are
shown to correlate with effective teaching behaviour and teacher effectiveness
(e.g., Muijs & Reynolds, 2002; Ololube, 2006; 12 Opdenakker & Van
Damme, 2006; Ross, 2002).
(Canrinus, 2011)

As Rodgers and Scott (2008) argue in their paper The development of the
personal self and professional identity in learning to teach ‘Contemporary
conceptions of identity share four basic assumptions: (1) that identity is
dependent upon and formed within multiple contexts which bring social, cultural,
political, and historical forces to bear upon that formation; (2) that identity is
formed in relationship with others and involves emotions; (3) that identity is
shifting, unstable, and multiple; and, (4) that identity involves the construction
and reconstruction of meaning through stories over time.’
Some research developed in the field of teacher identity focused mostly in
the development of personal beliefs and their effect they have on how an educator
understands him/herself and on the role expectations and how these affect the
educator’s professional identity. However, research on how this identity is
formed in each educator and the fact that it is mostly a learning process through
reflection and experience was never a major issue for researchers. ‘An exception
is the work of Ten Dam and Blom (2006); they argue that a fundamental problem
of teacher education is the development of a professional identity, since it
involves making sense of and giving meaning to learning, and seeing oneself as
a central participant in activities and processes’ (White & Ding, 2009).

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 ‘… the complex relationships between teacher, students, colleagues,
mentor, school, community and state would provoke emotion is no surprise. (…)
“Feelings,” Britzman asserts, “are made in social relationships.” In particular, she
cites the friction created between institutional structures and expectations of how
teachers should behave and feel and the actual “structure of feelings” that teachers
already hold because of who they are, and “the lives they live” (p. 252)’. (Rodgers
and Scott, 2008).
‘How a teacher makes sense of her teacher identity evolves out of the
developmental capacities of the self. That is, lying underneath the four basic
assumptions about teacher identity is the question: how? How does the teacher
make sense of social, cultural, political, and historical forces? How does she make
sense of her relationships with others? How does she construct and reconstruct
meaning through stories? It is in the answer to this question, how, that we are able
to identify qualitatively different ways that teachers make sense of their
experiences; these differences reflect the differing developmental capacities of
teachers’ selves, and therefore, color and shape how they make sense of their
identities.

The different ways in which teachers might answer these questions are
reflected in Table 40.1 below’ (Rodgers et al., 2008).

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Table 40.1
How does she construct
and reconstruct meaning
How does the
How does she make through stories? What
teacher make
sense of her meaning does she make of
sense of social,
relationship with story telling? What are
political, and
others? the developmental
historical forces?
limitations of the stories
she tells?
Stage 2: The instrumental She views them as Concrete conception External, concrete rendering of
knower concrete states of teacher role. experiences
outside of herself. Interactions with Views experiences in
others are rule black and white; self-
bound. reflection eludes her.
No perspective on
oneself in
relationship to
others.
“Golden Rule: I’ll
do to you what you
do to me” (Popp &
Portnow, 1998).
Stage 3: The socializing The self is identified Self is defined through Able to report on feelings and
knower with relationships—the emotions that
these forces; opinions and surround teaching.
readily conforms expectations of Stories bound by
to them—is others. relationships—impact
defined by them. Feels empathy for that she has on students/
Not yet able to others; feels teachers/institution and
take a perspective responsible for vice versa.
on them— others’ feelings and Because self-made up of
threatened by holds others these relationships, not
values associated responsible for her yet able to reflect on or
with social/ feelings. story ways in which her
political/historical Because she seeks to own thinking or teaching
forces that are stay in the good is colored by her
not one’s own. graces of others, she relationships to her
struggles with students, her history, and
conflicting agendas vice versa.
or needs. Stories likely to be shaped
Criticism by what she thinks people
experienced as an want to hear.
assault to the self.
“Golden Rule: I
should do for you
what I hope and need
and expect you should

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 do for me” (Popp &
Portnow,
1998).
Stage 4: The self- authoring Has a perspective on Clear sense of self; Author of one’s experiences;
knower these forces, and the takes responsibility for best able to engage in self-
ways in which they own feelings as reflection.
shape the self. separate and distinct Tells stories according to her
Holds a perspective from others. own internal standards.
on how she knows the Integrates others’ Because she holds a
world, and how she is perspectives, including perspective on herself, she is
known in the world. criticism according to better able to see the ways in
Able to define for one’s own internally which her relationships impact
oneself where she generated standards upon her teaching.
stands in relationship and values.
to these forces, rather Can hold
than being defined by contradictory feelings
them. simultaneously.
“Golden Rule:
Doing for each other
supports each of us in
meeting our defined
values,
ideals, goals, and helps
us preserve the social
order.” (Popp
& Portnow, 1998)

(Rodgers and Scott, 2008)

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Notions of Professional identity
• There are many more occupations defined today as Professions than the
original ‘classical three’ of divinity, medicine and law
• Derived from the Latin professio, the Old French profiteri ‘to declare
publicly an occupation one professes to be skilled in’ (OED, 2019) may
offer a literal explanation, but what is actually meant and understood by
profession is contested!
• Important acknowledgment that contemporary organisational contexts are
not particularly stable, consistent or reassuring environments for identity
security (Evetts, 2016; Nyberg & Sveningsson, 2014)

Identity work & Struggle

 In their theories of self and identity, Sveningsson & Alvesson see identity
formation as ‘work’ and ‘struggle’ - arguing we will always strive for
comfort, meaning and integration and some correspondence between a
self-definition and work situation
 Discourses, roles, structures and narrative self-identity are all involved –
they fuel and constrain identity work

“As self-reflexive beings we are always in a process of ‘becoming’, rather

than ever being fully ‘finished’” (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003, p.1188)

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Something to think about…
At polar ends of a broad continuum, there are two distinct perspectives seen in
identities literature …

A: Identity is enduring and central to each of us. A robust, anchored self

(Albert, Ashforth & Dutton, 2000; Sims, 2013)
B: Identity is temporary, malleable and context-sensitive. It is precarious
and in constant flux (Elliott & du Gay, 2009; Gergen, 2017)

Your professional identity

Theories of identity, are directly relevant to one of the prevailing debates of social
theory: the agency-structure question.
How much personal ‘agency’ do we have, and how much do/should we account
for influences of structure and social forces on identity formation?

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Further reading from the Weekly EBooks:

Book: Kompf, M, & Denicolo, P (2005), Connecting Policy and Practice:

Challenges for Teaching and Learning in Schools and Universities, Chapter
1: Teacher Education and the Development of Professional Identity: Learning to
be a Teacher by Judyth Sachs, pages 5 - 21

Additional Reading:
Rodgers & Scott (2008), The development of the personal self and professional
identity in learning to teach

Additional Material:
Video: Self Identity: Theory & Definition

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References:

Academic Success (2010). Reflective Observation | ASC Experiential Learning. [online]

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Andresen, L., Boud, D. and Cohen, R. (1995). EXPERIENCE-BASED LEARNING.

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Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective.
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Association for Experiential Education (2019). What is Experiential Learning? | Queen’s

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Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D. (1985). Reflection, turning experience into learning.
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Canrinus, E. (2011). Teachers’ sense of their professional identity. [online] Norway:

Printpartners Ipskamp B.V., Enschede, pp.3–145. Available at:
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Farrugia, D., 2013. The reflexive subject: Towards a theory of reflexivity as practical
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