Identificación del servicio.

Understanding the concept of ‘identity’ is equally fundamental to conceptualising ‘teacher professional identity’, yet there appears to be no agreement in the research literature about a single conceptualisation of it. The concept has taken on a variety of meanings as many different issues surface in any attempt to reach a single definition (Gee, 2000-2001). A possible explanation to the difficulty in arriving at a single definition could be due to the way the concept has been used in multiple disciplines over time. For instance, in the 20th century, the concept was used by psychoanalysts to mean

Page 50

the personalised self-image an individual possessed. For them, identity formation was about uncovering and developing one’s own potential, which Heshmat (2014) terms as ‘authentic self’. By this, identity was seen as self-directed (Olsen, 2008). Concerned by this prominence on the individual by the psychoanalysts, social scientists proposed their term ‘cultural identity’ to imply the way any individual identifies with, or is influenced by, various cultural groups. Seen in this manner, identity was treated to mean cultural and social pointers such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, race and language. They, however, conceded that defining identity is one of the difficult tasks to do. Considering these varying perspectives regarding the concept, this study deems it rather appropriate to focus on examining the nature of the concept in the literature rather than seeking to find a single definition of it.

The argument is often about whether ‘identity’ is dynamic, stable, fixed or changeable. One standpoint is that identity is fixed and stable and rarely depends on any external influences (Nias, 1989). If this is understood to mean one’s behaviour, attitude or way of reacting to situations will not change irrespective of the circumstances, it raises the fundamental concern regarding the influence of one’s social environment. In view of the likelihood of change due to a myriad of external factors, it makes sense to rather think of identity as being dynamic, complex and diverse (Barrett, 2008; Hong, 2010; Williams, 2013); and that, it is formed through interaction within a particular context (Flores and Day, 2006; Sachs, 2001). A study by Teixiera and Gomes (2000) involving a group of 10 women college students of diverse racial, ethnic and academic backgrounds at the East Coast University demonstrated that the salience of identity of all students who participated in the study depended upon the contexts where they were experienced.

Cultural norms, influences of family, the background and experiences of participants all influenced how they perceived their identities and these identities changed over time due to a combination of these factors. These findings seem to be supported by Gee (2000- 2001) who indicates that one’s identity cannot be decontextualised and that the way one identifies himself or herself may differ from context to context. Therefore, identity is the kind of person that one is ‘being recognised in a given context’. He makes us understand further that people can accept or contest their identities. Hence, identity is also subject to

Page 51

negotiation and renegotiation with other people. This has important implications for teacher professional identity. As Melucci (1996) argues, negotiation for one’s identity will require the ability to act and speak for what one stands for. Yet, this could be difficult for teachers to achieve since authorities may not always consider it to be in their interest to give a voice to teachers in the service. Sachs (2005) notes, when teachers strive to safeguard their interests, authorities do not sanction it but instead chastise them. Meanwhile, the development of ‘a strong professional identity is what distinguishes the expertise of teachers’ from other professionals (ibid, p.19).

Some scholars also argue that because identity is influenced by context, people can project multiple identities (Gee, 2000-2001; Day, et al., 2006a). That is, although people may have a core identity which they will try to retain, this may not exist independently of other identities (Burke and Stets, 2009). An example is a teacher who can identify himself or herself not only as a teacher in his or her subject area but also as a teacher in a particular school, country and even with all teachers in the world. However, Pennington and Richards (2016) caution that there is risk in projecting multiple identities and suggest that multiple identities must be kept in balance to avoid identity crisis where a person is not sure about his or her identity or may question who he or she is in a particular situation. As Lemke (2008, pp. 31) argues, there are often ‘struggles over the kinds of identities’ that people are permitted to claim for themselves, struggles over the kinds of identities they can conceive for themselves and struggles over which identities in any social institution people strive to establish in themselves. Illustrating his argument, Lemke points out that institutions often seek to make their employees ‘good employees’, who show concern about the interests of the institution and who see themselves through role identities such as the good worker. Thus, schools may seek to make teachers accept the image of the ‘competent teacher’. However, under such situations, the extent of agreement among the different views of a particular identity is the dominance of some interests over other interests, although Somekh and Thaler (1997) seem to contrast this claim. While they acknowledge that identities can be challenged by social institutions, they believe that individuals also have the capacity to both accept demands emanating from their social interactions and at the same time reject them. Hence, they are able to represent themselves in their own way in any social situation.

Page 52

Besides this broad characterisation of identity, the concept can also be understood through specific categories. Burke and Stets (2009) in their book ‘identity theory’, suggest three categories; personal identity, role identity and social identity.

The personal identity relates to the set of attributes defining a person such as one’s name, sexuality and gender. These attributes of the person remain unique and consistent over time and across contexts, thereby accounting for the person’s distinctiveness or individuality (Hogg, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2009). What informs actions is the person’s own goals rather than the demands of others (Burke and Stets, 2009). Therefore, a person will reveal what he or she chooses to reveal of his or her personal identity depending on who the audience is (Smit and Fritz, 2008; Vryan, Adler and Adler, 2003). Drawing from earlier arguments in this section, these claims about the personal identity may not be entirely true. Gender identity, for example, is not simply about someone being a male or a female. As Lemke (2008) argues, it could also be used widely to mean a variety of identities that do not necessarily match these conventional views of male and female. Thus, personal identities are not entirely matters of internal states or unique personalised discourses but also are ‘contested public terrain’ as they may mean different things to different people (ibid, p.32).

The role identity, according to Burke and Stets (2009), is the meanings of a role that individuals associate themselves with. Stryker (2007) claims that the different meanings people associate with their roles are connected to their expectations of the roles; which are further associated with their social positions (Burke and Stets, 2009). Because the meanings of the role people associate with serve as reference points to them, they hold implications for their attitudes and behaviours. That means, people will behave in line with the meanings they associate themselves with to conform to those meanings. Moreover, because the meanings of the roles are partly derived from interactions with others, different individuals may have different meanings for the same role identity. According to Burke and Stets (2009), when this happens people tend to negotiate the meanings with others who may have a different understanding of that role identity. This may lead to individuals settling on a compromise as to the role identity meaning they can claim and the actions that correspond to that meaning. This view appears to be supported

Page 53

by Ibarra (1999), who argues that other people’s reactions shape identity by endorsing or failing to endorse new behaviours.

The social identity is based on a person’s identification with a socially formed group. As a result, the person sees things from the group’s perspective. This is based on the assumption that individuals as group members think alike and act alike. From this, they develop a sense of ‘we’ or ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Burke and Stets, 2009, p. 119). Thus, members of the in-group are most likely to define themselves in a positive way, which in turn implies that people outside the group may be identified in a negative manner (Chonody and Teater, 2016).

Burke and Stets’ (2009) categorisation of identity is useful for this study, as they point out that although the personal, role and social dimensions of one’s identity may differ, they are likely to exist simultaneously depending on the situation that people find themselves. An example in teaching could be a teacher who is part of a specific school, functions as a teacher within that school and fulfils this role in his or her own way. In view of this, this study situates ‘teacher professional identity’ in the middle of the personal, role and social identities in order to draw perspectives from all three. As this study is first of its kind with teachers in this part of the country, it is expected that this will provide an opportunity for a broader exploration of teachers’ sense of professional identity.

Wenger (1998) also argues that identity construction, as an experience, encompasses three kinds of belonging: engagement, imagination and alignment. Through engagement, people establish and maintain joint enterprises and negotiate meanings. Engagement, thus, allows people to invest in what they do and in their relations with other people, gaining ‘a lived sense of who we are’ (ibid, p. 192). Imagination refers to ‘transcending our time and space and creating new images of the world and ourselves’ (ibid, p. 176), while alignment coordinates people’s activities within broader structures, allowing the identity of a larger group to become part of the identity of the individual participants. Thus, alignment shapes identity construction by connecting ‘local efforts to broader styles and discourses’ in ways that allow people to invest their energy in them (ibid, p. 186).

In effect, what can be deduced from the discussion in this section is that identity is always in the making, rather than fixed. It shifts according to people’s experiences and contextual

Page 54

factors, which include interactions with others. This explains why identity may be multiple, dynamic and varied in nature. This leads to exploration of the concept of teacher professional identity, which is the focus of this study, in the next section.