Teacher professional identity as multidimensional: mapping its components and examining their associations with general pedagogical beliefs

Abstract

Research on teachers’ professional identity integrates many constructs that are treated independently in most cases. This study described the associations between components of teacher professional identity and their association with teachers’ general pedagogical beliefs. Secondary teachers (n = 236) completed a survey about several components of their identity (self-efficacy beliefs, motivation to become a teacher, affective commitment and perceived type of expertise) and general pedagogical beliefs (constructivist and direct transmission). Multidimensional scaling revealed that the components could be mapped on two dimensions: form of motivation and degree of subject specificity. The resulting map revealed four meaningful groups of components. Furthermore, whereas direct transmission general pedagogical beliefs were found to be strongly tied to an identity grounded in the subject taught, constructivist beliefs were independent of identity components. This study provides new insight into the structure of teacher professional identity and its relevance for teaching.

Keywords:

• Identity
• teacher self-efficacy beliefs
• teacher commitment
• teacher motivation
• sense of responsibility
• teacher beliefs

Notes

1. A belief is “a proposition that is accepted as true by the individual holding the belief” (Richardson 1996, 104).

2. We rely on Beijaard, Verloop, and Vermunt (2000) definition of pedagogy and didactics. Pedagogy has moral and ethical features; it concerns multiple aspects related to the teacher’s involvement with the students, but also how the teacher communicates with the students or his/her implication in helping to solve the students’ personal problems. In contrast, didactics concern models of teaching that “prescribe how the planning, execution, and evaluation of lessons should be done” (Beijaard, Verloop, and Vermunt, 2000, 752). These models are grounded in a discipline or a topic. The shift toward more learner-centred teaching illustrates a recent didactical development adopted in the teaching of many disciplines.

3. Intrinsic, utility, and attainment values are components of the construct of task value (Eccles and Wigfield 2002). Intrinsic value is “the enjoyment the individual gets from performing the activity or the subjective interest the individual has in the subject” (120). Utility value concerns “how well a task relates to current and future goals, such as career goals” (120). Finally, attainment value refers to “the personal importance of doing well on the task” (119).

4. This modification was done to fit with the themes of the larger research project in which this study is embedded: instructional planning and classroom management.

5. According to Giguère, “In essence, MDS is a technique used to determine a n‐dimensional space and corresponding coordinates for a set of objects, strictly using matrices of pairwise dissimilarities between these objects” (2006, 26). “MDS assists the researcher in determining the perceived relative position of a set of objects or items (Hair et al. 1995). If two items are similarly rated by respondents, they will be located in multidimensional space in a way that the distance between them is smaller than the distance between other pairs of items. The resulting perceptual map indicates the relative positioning of all items. The researcher then interprets the underlying dimensions in a way that best explains the positioning of items in the map” (Martin et al. 2005, 367).