identity matters
Who am I as a teacher?
What kind of teacher do I want to be?
I attended the 2023 TEAN (Teacher Educator Advancement Network) conference last week and found myself drawn to speakers who were exploring teacher and/or teacher educator identity. The notion that issues of identity underpin everything in education was pervasive throughout the conference, openly and unapologetically. These discussions often sat alongside explorations of the tensions within education at the moment, of which there are many.
Two analogies that I heard stick in my memory - that of professional identity as a minefield… and that of identity as a complex mosaic. Yet despite the complexities and challenges that the two analogies above imply, the need for people to claim identity for themselves, in an empowering and emancipatory fashion, was also evident.
We need to acknowledge identity as changeable and flexible, certainly not something that navigates in a linear trajectory. There were discussions of identity as a ‘state of mind’, and differentiated from the notion of the ‘teachers’ role’. Wenger (1998) discusses teaching as a process of becoming. Acker too (1999), clarifies that
"teachers teach in the way they do not just because of the skills they have or have not learned. The ways in which they teach are also rooted on their backgrounds, their biographies, and so in the kinds of teachers they have become.”
It is also clear that there can often be some distance between what a person believes about their identity and the constraints of institutions/contexts/ policies and pressures.
The word identity doesn’t feature in the Teachers’ Standards, and there is only one reference to identity in the Core Content Framework (CCF) (2019a) and Early Career Framework (ECF) (2019b)- and even that is in relation to student identity, not teacher identity. Yet the seemingly unanimous consensus, amongst those in the profession, is that identity matters. It matters a lot.
Narrative enquiry as a useful tool for exploring teacher and teacher educator identity was prevalent in at least two of the sessions I attended. The speaker asked - ‘where are the spaces to do this?’ and ‘how can we build a collective and powerful narrative about our identities?’
Goodson (1992) argues that allowing their voice to be heard is, for many teachers, an existential issue. Grumet (1990, p.324) in talking about teacher narrative autobiographical enquiry, says
“I would be naive if I refused to admit influence in what we notice, what we choose to tell, and in how and why we tell what we do. Auto-biographical method invites us to struggle with all those determinations. It is that struggle and its resolve to develop ourselves in ways that transcend the identities that other have constructed for us that bonds the project of autobiography and education.”
But the key message about identity that permeated the conference, that felt very powerful, is that speaking the truth and finding their voice are important issues for teachers and teacher educators of this political generation. The need to have their voice not only heard but heard ‘loudly and articulately’ is instrumental in bringing teachers out of the role of objects being ‘manipulated for particular ends.’ (Goodson, 1992).
“We need to watch and listen to the ways in which teachers themselves seek to attach significance to what it is they do, and how they individually and collectively struggle to contest and redefine the work of schooling. (Smyth, 1995, p.82)
So I wonder what the answers might be. I don’t have those answers. I wish we could find those spaces and places. They seem important. Identity matters.
References:
Acker, S., 1999. Realities of teachers' work: Never a dull moment. A&C Black.
Department for Education. (2019a). ITT core content framework. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-core-content-framework
Department for Education. (2019b). Early career framework. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-career-framework
Goodson, Ivor, F. (1992). ‘Studying teachers’ lives - an emergent field of inquiry.’ In I.F. Goodson (ed) Studying Teachers’ Lives. London: Routledge. Ch.1.
Grumet, M. (1990) Retrospective: autobiography and the analysis of educational experience, Cambridge Journal of Education, 20:3, 321-325, DOI: 10.1080/0305764900200311
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. 6. 185-194.