Research On Beginning Teachers’ Identity Construction

Teacher identity is the core of the teaching profession.Teachers use identity as a resource to make sense of themselves in relation to others and the world around them.Therefore,focusing on the beginning teachers’ identity construction,the following research questions will be answered:(1)What kinds of identity conflicts and dilemmas do beginning teachers experience in different fields of teaching practice?(2)What strategies do beginning teachers use to cope with the conflicts and dilemmas that occur in their identity construction?(3)What kind of supports can we offer to facilitate beginning teachers’ identity learning?From the perspective of Situational Learning Theory,teacher identity is gradually formed in teaching practice.Based on foucault’s and Sato’s related theories,the teaching practice in the construction of teacher identity can be divided into three categories:cognitive practice,communicative practice and private internal practice.The three categories direct to three specific dimensions of teacher identity,namely knowledge identity,power identity and moral identity.The three dimensions of teacher identity established according to three categories of teaching practice constitutes the research framework of this study.Using qualitative research methods,this study will interview,investigate and observe 10 beginning teachers in Zhejiang province and then present the real picture of beginning teachers’ identity development.The main conclusions are as follows: Firstly,when they play the role of a teacher in cognitive practice,the beginning teachers are always faced with the dilemmas of insufficient theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge,which affect their understanding of the knowledge traits of their identity as a teacher.However,the perception of knowledge dilemmas will be the trigger for identity reshaping.Beginning teachers have gradually developed three identity construction mechanisms,namely autonomous learning,observation and comparison,practice and introspect,upon which the beginning teachers are able to develop knowledge identity in the process of generation and internalization of their knowledge.Secondly,in communicative practice,the beginning teachers’ professional power will be restricted by others,resulting in power conflicts between autonomy and regulation.The power conflict is mainly manifested in beginning teachers’ interaction with students,parents,peers and administration when they carry out education and teaching activity and guidance and evaluation activity.Although beginning teachers sometimes have to obey in the face of so many external restrictions,they are also active to strive for their own autonomous power through negotiation and resistance.In this process,teachers shape themselves into subjects who obey power relations and exercise power relations at the same time,realizing the construction of power identity.Finally,in private internal practice,the beginning teachers will encounter two kinds of tensions when developing their moral identity,i.e.the tension between“freedom” and “discipline” and the tension between “being for self ” and “being for others”.The former leads beginning teachers to establish a connection between their own behavior and the external ethics norms,and gradually form their own self-discipline system as a teacher through self-restraint;The latter promotes the beginning teachers to reinterpret teachers’ virtues in the examination of their own motivation,so as to construct a better educational life through the balance between “being for self ” and “being for others”,which also reflects the growing maturity of teachers’ self-moral orientation.In the dialogical relationship with the self,it is the formation of the teacher’s self-discipline system and the maturity of their own moral orientation that present the development of beginning teachers’ moral identity.To sum up,the identity tensions produced in different areas of teaching practice have become the important chance for the construction of teacher identity.Although beginning teachers are “newcomers”to the educational field,they are not “the impotent”.Actually,they always manage to achieve the identity transition from “the student” to “the teacher” in the process of coping with the identity tensions.Finally,implications and suggestions are discussed to enhance and support beginning teachers’ development of teacher identity.The study not only reflect on the pre-service training of beginning teacher from the aspects of improving pre-service teachers’ knowledge structure,cultivating pre-service teachers’ social affective competence,and developing pre-service teachers’ professional ethics,but also discuss the post career growth of beginning teachers from the aspects of optimizing the teacher training system,creating collaborative culture of the school and promoting teachers’ narrative reflection.