Understanding novice teachers’ identities through metaphors: a multi-perspective study

ABSTRACT

Employing ‘identity’ as an analytical lens, this study examined a group of novice school counselling teachers’ (SCTs) professional identities in the Chinese context. Informed by a multiple, integrated theoretical perspective focusing on the cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions of teacher identities, the findings reveal five types of metaphors (i.e. cognitive, social, cognitive-emotional, social-emotional and cognitive-social-emotional) that reflect the novice SCTs’ most prominent identities in their embedded institutional and social contexts. The study contributes to our understanding of SCTs’ professional experiences and identity construction mediated by a range of personal (e.g. limited professional competence) and contextual factors (e.g. a lack of school support and social bias against psychological counselling). It also provides useful implications on how to promote and sustain new teachers’ continuing identity development in complex school settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher identity
• metaphor
• novice teachers
• school counselling teachers