Three teacher identities in two school education systems: Catalonia and Peru

ABSTRACT

This paper provides empirical evidence about the close relationship between two education systems’ orientations and priorities and teacher identities. Based on the Dialogical-Self Theory (DST), it identifies different schoolteacher identities and shows that these teacher identities are non-uniformly distributed across two education systems. Forty Catalan and forty Peruvian schoolteachers (eighty in total) provided information about their positions and I-positions concerning teaching via a written survey. The data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative procedures. The findings show three types of teacher identities: an educator and a learning guide, an instructor teaching, and a collaborative innovator. The results further demonstrate that most of the Peruvian schoolteachers assumed the teacher identity as an instructor teaching. In contrast, the Catalan schoolteachers assumed two teacher identities: an educator and a learning guide, and a collaborative innovator. We conclude by suggesting some implications for educational policy, teacher education and school organisation.

KEYWORDS:

• Education system
• teacher education
• teacher identity
• teaching in schools

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Statements on open data, ethics

This research paper was developed according to the ethical standards of the American Psychological Association and observing Spanish law on data protection and the right to confidentiality.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.