Teachers’ Professional Identity Construction: A Sociocultural Approach to Its Definition and Research

Abstract

In the research about teachers’ professional development, there is an increasing interest in analyzing the processes related to the construction of their professional identities. However, in many studies this concept is not sufficiently defined and there is a lack of coherence between the theoretical assumptions and the methodological options used. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to offer a definition of teacher professional identity, from a sociocultural and dialogical approach. We conceptualize the construction of teacher identity as a dialogic, relational, dynamic, and socio-historically situated process, which implies the discursive construction of meanings about oneself as a teacher and about the profession to which one belongs. In the second part of the paper we present some methodological implications that stem from this conceptualization and can be useful for designing research studying teachers’ professional identity.

Keywords:

• Educational research
• professional development
• teacher identity
• sociocultural theory

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education (PhD scholarship AP2009-0380).