Aspects of the professional identity of preschool teachers in Greece: investigating the role of teacher education and professional experience

Abstract

In this paper, we present the results of a research programme we developed to investigate the professional identity of preschool education teachers in Greece. Our aim was to investigate parameters affecting not only the creation but also the reform of professional identity and to highlight potential differences in terms of professional identity. Contemporary approaches to professional identity – developed since the 80s – raise issues related primarily to participatory processes, reflection, autonomy and emancipation. Teachers’ professional identity is gradually developed through an ongoing process of three interrelated and complementary steps: (a) pre-service teacher education, (b) vocational integration and (c) exercise of professional duties and in-service training. We interviewed 20 teachers on their professional identity. We chose two categories of teachers based on two criteria: (a) their studies, and (b) their professional experience in the field. Tentative findings showed that professional experience was more important than studies in the construction of their professional identity. Professional identity also relates to both their professional experience and the dominant beliefs about early childhood education.

Keywords:

• Professional identity
• teacher education
• dominant professional discourse
• professional experience
• change

Notes

1. The main feature of Pedagogic Academies and Nursery Teacher Schools was that they actually constituted professional training schools. The studies lasted for two years. The syllabus included psychology, with emphasis on the children’s individual characteristics, pedagogy and application of various subject matters. Teachers were practitioners, school counsellors, masters of puppet show and creative arts. It was not oriented towards the sociological dimension, educational politics or the analysis of educational practices. There were many ‘practices’, that is, observation sessions in model kindergartens, where students went to ‘learn the job’.

2. In Greece the University Departments of Education are an evolution of Teacher Colleges, (Pedagogic Academies) for primary education teachers and Nursery Teacher Schools for preschool and kindergarten educators (Presidential Decrees 1982, 1983).

3. As Greek University Departments of Preschool Education do not implement a common curriculum, while some of them preserve the practical orientation of training that was dominant in Academies, the participants chosen in the second category were graduates of the University of Athens, where we work as teachers’ educators and are familiar with the orientation of the Faculty.

4. TAc: Academy graduate teacher, TUn: University graduate teacher.