A person’s identity becomes the lens through which they see themselves and which informs their understanding of others. (Solomon et al., 2005, p. 163)
This study examined the understandings preservice teachers have of culturally responsive teaching and the impact of these understandings on their developing professional teacher identities. The purpose of this chapter is to address the second research question which asked:
2. How do elementary preservice teachers begin to author culturally responsive teacher identities in response to their teacher education program and their experiences in a culturally and linguistically diverse intern setting?
2a. How do elementary preservice teachers describe their process of becoming a teacher?
2b. How do preservice teachers negotiate the tensions between multiple authoritative and internally persuasive discourses of others presented to them in their courses, seminar, and intern setting?
Teacher Identity
For this study, teacher identity is seen to develop from preservice teachers’ interactions within various figured worlds of teaching and learning that are mediated by micro- and macro-social structures (Holland et al., 1998; Horn et al., 2008). These
figured worlds are shaped by both local context (e.g., the town of Clayburn, a strong ethic of care, value placed on culturally responsive teaching, etc.) and global discourses (e.g., historical notions of teaching, curriculum issues, No Child Left Behind, an era of accountability, etc.). The figured world of teacher education programs also works to shape preservice teachers’ understandings of teaching and learning and emerging teacher identities.
All of these figured worlds represent competing voices that preservice teachers encounter during teacher education. Their teacher identities are constructed through the negotiation of these authoritative and internally persuasive discourses or the struggle to find one’s voice amid the voices of others, what Bakhtin (1981) called the authoring process. This process involves both actions and narratives. Preservice teachers observe the actions of teachers, generate a variety of potential teacher identities, and engage in the actions of teachers all within the figured worlds of intern settings where certain teacher identities are promoted and others marginalized (Gee, 2001; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). Preservice teachers adopt, modify, negotiate, or reject practices and “possible selves” during this time (Ronfeldt & Grossman, 2008). They share narratives of
observing others in their professional role of teacher as well as of themselves enacting the role of teacher. These stories further construct the teaching selves they are, those they wish to become, and those they reject or are afraid of becoming.
This process is highly individual because of the social and cultural positions, lived biographies, and beliefs and understandings that preservice teachers bring to teacher education. It is further complicated by the wide array of authoritative and internally
persuasive discourses they encounter from those involved in the teacher education program like teacher educators, supervisors, cooperating teachers, peers, students, and families. The following is a reporting of four preservice teachers’ journey in constructing their professional teacher identities. It demonstrates both the power of teacher education to influence teacher identity development as well as the importance of recognizing and building on what preservice teachers bring with them to the program.
I have organized this chapter around the two major categories of narratives that emerged from the data. The first section, visions of teaching, includes stories about the participants’ reasons for going into teaching, the kind of teacher they envisioned themselves becoming, and the kind of teacher they were during their internship and student teaching. These stories contain both possible selves and enacted selves. Their possible selves are based on observations of other teachers (during their own schooling as well as during teacher education course work and internship), personal beliefs about teaching and learning, and a growing knowledge of what it means to teach. Their ability to enact these possible teaching selves was dependent upon many factors (e.g.,
personality, self-efficacy, content and pedagogical knowledge, the cooperating teacher and classroom, etc.) that both enabled and restricted certain kinds of teaching.
The second section includes narratives of negotiation. The participants encountered authoritative discourses of teaching throughout their teacher education program and internship at Clayburn Elementary. These were accompanied by internally persuasive discourses from the individuals they worked with. This section examines the ways in which the participants worked to reconcile such discourses with their own
internally persuasive discourses of teaching and learning. It is divided into three sub- sections. The first looking at two major authoritative discourses they encountered throughout the program, constructivism and culturally responsive teaching and their struggle to reconcile these discourses with their own discourse of teaching. The second, examining the negotiation of their place or role in the school during internship. In part, this sub-section is the story of negotiating their simultaneous role as both student and teacher. The last sub-section examines how the participants came to define themselves in relation to the teacher educators, cooperating teachers, students, and peers with whom they worked. It includes stories of admiration and opposition as the participants created possible teaching selves through the negotiation of observation, internally persuasive discourse, and envisioned teaching selves.
Visions of Teaching
All of the participants entered teacher education with certain ideas about teaching and learning developed through their many years in schools (Lortie, 1975; Pajares, 1992). They came from different backgrounds, with different experiences, and for different reasons that all mixed with their experiences in teacher education to influence the teacher identities with which they left. To understand this journey one might begin with their reasons for entry into the teaching profession.