A Study On Preservice English Teachers’ Identity Construction-from The Perspective Of Mentor Teacher-Preservice Teacher Interaction

Teacher identity has gradually became the hot topic in the field of teacher education with the attention paid to teachers’ inner world.Teachers’ identity influences their career choice and career devotion,and the development of teacher identity begins from preservice teacher education,but existing researches focus much on the teacher identity of inservice teachers and novice teachers and limited attention is paid to preservice teachers’ identity.In preservice teacher education,teaching practicum is the key period for preservice teachers to experience teacher’s work and change their role from becoming a teacher to being a teacher.Their interaction with significant others,especially mentor teachers,inadvertently has impact on the perceptions of their teacher identity.Therefore,this research aims to explore preservice English teachers’ identity construction from the perspective of interaction between mentor teacher and preservice teacher.Data collected from interview,observation and other documents were used to explore the following two research questions:1)How do preservice English teachers interact with their mentor teachers in the practicum?2)How do preservice English teachers construct their teacher identity in their interaction with mentor teachers?Participants were three female preservice English teachers who conducted their practicum in the second academic year of their M.Ed.program in the same junior high school.The findings of the research are concluded as followed:Firstly,the difference of interaction lies in the content of interaction,mentoring approach and psychological relationship in the interaction.Secondly,Influenced by different interaction situation,preservice English teachers construct their identity accordingly.For one thing,various interaction contents deepen preservice teachers’ perceptions of their self-image as a teacher and of teacher profession.Positive comments as well as concrete and effective mentoring from mentor teachers increase preservice teachers’ self-esteem as a teacher.In addition,mentor teachers’ role modeling and psychological atmosphere in the interaction play parts in preservice teachers’ specific teacher profession choice and expectation.For another thing,it is noteworthy to find that preservice teachers,agency matters in the construction of teacher identity.