Examining the Discourses That Shape Our Teacher Identities

Abstract

In this article I advocate for explicitly teaching prospective and practicing teachers about the concept of discourse. Within discourses, teachers, children, and families are positioned in very particular ways in relation to one another. Learning to examine the discourses through which we enact our teaching lives provides us with opportunities to select those discourses that allow for the creation of positive social and academic identities for the children in our care. The ideas for this article evolved from conversations that I had with a student enrolled in a graduate-level child growth and development course. Her provocative ideas and insights caused me to question my teaching and explore how our class struggled to speak and act within two discourses, a child-centered discourse and a sociocultural discourse. I discuss the tensions that we experienced in our university classroom as we challenged ourselves to understand the shifts in our identities as they were constructed within a sociocultural discourse. It was through the activities surrounding an adolescent tradebook that we came to understand how power operates in and through our language to shape our identities and the identities of the students and families with whom we work.