Browsing by Subject "Teacher identity"
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Item Looking within : mathematics teacher identity using photo-elicitation/photovoice(2012-08) Chao, Theodore Peck-Li; Empson, Susan B.; Treisman, Philip U.; Stroup, Walter; Schneider, Cynthia; Salinas, CynthiaHow do mathematics teachers present themselves? The construct of identity–the stories mathematics teachers tell about themselves and their practice–is an important and understudied construct in understanding mathematics teaching. This study investigates the use of photo-elicitation/photovoice interviews with six high school algebra teachers. Each teacher captured or chose photographs of their “world”, then presented them during a formal interview. The teachers framed their mathematics teacher identity through three connected story types: Public Stories, the stories a teacher presents about their practice within a professional register, Private Stories, the stories about personal connections to practice shared only in closed spaces, and Touchstone Stories, the important stories a teacher constantly references but rarely shares. I found these teachers’ stories contained little about mathematics content or actual classroom practice. Rather, they positioned the teachers as isolated in their profession; the themes were about pain, being “othered”, or feeling powerless. Framing the identities of these six mathematics teachers through visual stories presented them as real, struggling humans. I posit this process of eliciting mathematics teaching identity through visual narrative is important to the field of mathematics education for three reasons: framing their identities helps mathematics teachers understand the complex lives of their own students, these narratives showcase the uniqueness of each mathematics teacher as an individual, and this process of telling stories is an empowering form of reflection.Item Negotiating and producing teacher abroad identities : overseas teachers in an American school in China(2011-05) Illescas-Glascock, Maria Luisa; Urrieta, Luis; Palmer, Deborah; Foley, Douglas; Brown, Keffrelyn; Gainer, JesseThis dissertation is a critical ethnography of teachers working abroad in an American/International school (ASC/pseudonym) located in the People’s Republic of China. The study focuses on the teacher abroad identity process of EC-12 teachers who moved from their country of origin to work in the PRC from 2008 to 2011. The three-year study serves as a snapshot of the formation of the teacher abroad identity. The theoretical framework include theories of identity in figured worlds (Holland et al., 1998), symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991), and language as mediator that served to answer three questions: 1) How does a teacher’s biography relate to the experience of working in an American/International school in China? 2) How does a first-time teacher at ASC recreate and negotiate her/his personal and professional self understandings? 3) What role does language play in the making of the teacher abroad identity at ASC? The study follows an interpretivist approach to explain, understand, and unveil the figured world of teaching abroad from the perspective of the participants’ and data analysis by the researcher. Data includes participant observation, interviews, observations, and field notes collected while closely following four teachers who portrayed the making of the teacher abroad identity. The researcher became a teacher abroad at the same school to fully immerse herself in participant observation. The inclusion of document analysis, interviews, and field notes, serve as validation and triangulation of the process. A reflexive approach to data analysis was followed at all times for trustworthiness of the study. Findings suggest that teaching abroad is a complex figurative world. Teacher abroad identity is created at the intersection of the social, personal, emotional, professional, and linguistic spaces. A major finding reveals that individuals who are hired overseas and teach abroad for the first time have to learn new ways to cope with unexpected landscapes brought by living in new country, and by teaching students from a plurality of nationalities, languages, and races. Teachers experience mostly a transformation at the personal level, but the transcendence at the professional level in the classroom is limited.Item Trajectories toward becoming a teacher : exploring the developmental processes of preservice teachers' conceptions of teaching and their teacher identities(2011-08) Lee, SoonAh; Schallert, Diane L.; Emmer, Edmund T.; Svinicki, Marilla D.; Gerwels, Mary C.; Brown, Keffrelyn D.“Becoming” is a natural phenomenon that is experienced throughout one’s life, and yet it does not appear to involve a simple process. This study was about how preservice teachers become teachers. As such, it was focused on the developmental processes that preservice teachers experience as their conceptions of teaching and their teacher identities change throughout their teacher education program. Although the two developmental aspects have been importantly considered by teacher educators when setting goals for teacher education and have been popular topics to educational researchers, few studies have explicitly observed how conceptions of teaching and teacher identities are related to each other in preservice teachers’ professional development trajectories. In a longitudinal study that tracked eight preservice teachers for three semesters of their teacher preparation, naturalistic observations of student teaching and semi-structured interviews served as the primary data sources. Data analysis was inductive and interpretative, using the qualitative methods of grounded theory. All of the preservice teachers in the study experienced conceptual change in their conceptions of teaching toward the direction aligned with their teacher education program, though their developmental patterns varied in terms of nature, speed, and distinctiveness. In the process of conceptual development, preservice teachers’ attention shifted from a focus on self to a focus on students, which I called an outward journey. They also evolved their teacher identities throughout the program with increasing confidence in becoming a teacher every semester. The formation of their teacher identities began by recognizing self as a teacher as positioned by others and continued with self-cultivation as a teacher, a process I called an inward journey. Needing continuous validation and reflection, the two journeys were closely related, sharing some characteristics and mechanism of growth and reciprocally influencing each other. Through interpretation of the data, I concluded that these two journeys cannot be separated from each other but, instead, should be integrated into external and internal development of becoming a teacher. As lifelong learners, preservice teachers are beginning the continual journey of becoming a good teacher throughout their career.