Preparing to be future early childhood teachers: undergraduate students’ perceptions of their identity

ABSTRACT

Teachers’ professional identities, or the professional images teachers have of themselves, play an essential role in teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and their propensity to stay in the profession. Even though with a shared recognition of the importance of professional identities among teachers, research is limited in terms of examining preservice teachers’ professional identities in early childhood education (ECE). This study, thus, investigated Chinese ECE undergraduate students’ perception of their identities as future teachers and the factors perceived to influence their professional identities. Altogether 182 preservice early childhood (EC) teachers were surveyed, and six graduates from the teacher training programmes were interviewed. Latent profile analyses generated three profiles of professional identity: low, medium, and high profiles. Regression analyses revealed that the year of study negatively predicted preservice teachers’ profile of professional identity, while the academic competency positively predicted the profile. Further interviews indicated that the social images of EC teachers, professional learning in universities, and requirements in kindergartens were perceived as the main obstacles to achieving a high identity, which refers to a strong, emotional recognition of ECE, satisfaction with the teacher education programme, and positive career prospects.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• preservice teachers
• professional identity
• influencing factors
• the onion model

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by funding from the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University and the China Scholarship Council (No. 201908440437). Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University and the China Scholarship Council [201908440437].

Notes on contributors

Runke Huang

Runke Huang is a DPhil student in Department of Education, university of Oxford. Her research interests include classroom quality, preschool teachers’ professional development, and teacher-child pedagogical interaction.

Hao Zheng

Hao Zheng is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, University of Alberta. His research interests lie in the fields of intra-individual developmental process.

Tianxue Duan

Tianxue Duan currently works as a deputy project manager in China Development Research Foundation. She got her master’s degree in early childhood education from the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University.

Weipeng Yang

Weipeng Yang is currently an Assistant Professor in Early Childhood Education at The Education University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on early childhood curriculum and teacher learning.

Hui Li

Hui Li is the Dean and Chair Professor in Early Childhood at Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China. His research interests lie in developmental psycholinguistics, early Chinese literacy, early childhood curriculum and pedagogy, and educational policy.