Millennial Teacher Identity Discourses

Balancing Self and Other

Janet Alsup

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781138489929
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351036528
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Trading
• Index: Business

Over ten years after the original edition of Teacher Identity Discourses, Janet Alsup revisits her work with a new research study examining the characteristics of the millennial teachers now beginning to populate K-12 classrooms. Building off the first edition, this text is based on a qualitative, interview-based research study, and provides a contemporary look at how millennial teachers experience professional identity growth through language use. This innovative research investigates how formation of a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. Updated with new analyses of teacher identity discourses, the second edition covers themes that still resonate today and provides practical suggestions and sample assignments for teacher educators to use or adapt in methods courses.

1

A TEACHING LIFE, RE-VISITED

How and Why this Project Came to Be

In 2006 I published a book-length research study chronicling the identity development of six pre-service teachers in the university English education program in which I taught. At the onset of the study in 2001, I did not yet see it as ‘identity’ research, or even an investigation of the professional identity growth and struggles of six young women as they moved from ‘student’ to ‘teacher’ in a large, Midwestern university. However, after examining the many pages of interview transcripts, artifacts, and photographs, I realized that what was happening could be understood through the frames of identity development and discourse: the student teachers were literally talking themselves into being teachers; through their oral, written, and performative discourse (much of it in the form of narrative) they were practicing, and simultaneously becoming, teachers.

Now, more than ten years later, I revisit the issue of teacher identity as it is realized with a new set of beginning teachers at the same university—those student teaching in the spring semester of 2016. Similar to the 2006 project, I interviewed six traditionally aged, female, pre-service English education students and followed them from their last methods course through their student teaching internship and first independent teaching experience, investigating how their discourses of teacher identity both reflected and affected their developing teacher selves. What I discovered revealed both similarities and differences with the 2006 group; ten years later much had changed in the political climate surrounding education and the teaching profession, and the priorities, skills, and worries of young people themselves had shifted. These contextual changes conspired with the personal subjectivities or “identity themes” (Holland, 1975, p. 53) of the six new participants to reveal five genres of discourse, four of which remain focused on narrative: (1) narratives of opposition, (2) narratives of authority and vulnerability, (3) narratives of the teacher persona, (4) narratives of balance, and (5) metaphors for the teacher self. I describe these genres in detail in the chapters that follow through examining the discourse of the six new pre-service teachers as they verbalize or visualize, and hence simultaneously enact, their teacher identities. I end the book with some suggestions for teacher educators and compare and contrast key findings and implications with those made ten years ago.

My Teacher Self

I have come to understand that a large component of the narrative inquiry process involves the researcher also re-telling, or re-living, his or her own story in conjunction with that of the participants. The process of storying or storytelling is mutual and co-developing (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990). Throughout this text you will see that I will enter it occasionally to insert bits of my own narrative, as I use narrative to explore teacher identity of others and of myself. Sometimes you might also notice that in interview transcript excerpts I also appear as a storyteller—sharing my own stories to help the participant voice her own.

In 2006, I wrote about my beginnings as a high school teacher in Mokane, Missouri, and my move to the university after seven years of high school teaching. I described how I didn’t feel complete or truly successful as a teacher, and I had a need to continue my education, and follow my own identity path, as a teacher and teacher educator. Ten years later, things are quite different. I was tenured in 2005, and then promoted again to full professor of English education. I am now the department head of my university’s Curriculum and Instruction Department, and my teacher identity has shifted once again: this time to encompass the male-dominated world of administration, including the mentoring of over 40 faculty members of various ranks, and sole responsibility for a budget of well over a million dollars. I continue to mentor graduate students, but my traditional classroom teaching has been put on hiatus—at least for a while.

Just as when I became a high school teacher and then a teacher educator, the most difficult part of this most recent transition for me was not the knowledge to be learned or the processes and procedures to internalize; it was how I felt in this new role—what did it mean to be a department head? How was I expected to speak, act, and even dress differently? How was I to embody this new professional self? The persona of ‘high school English teacher’ is considerably different from ‘college professor’; likewise, the expectations and subjectivities at play when one assumes the mantle of ‘administrator’ are unique. And I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was wearing this new cloak.

The first year was a time of experimentation and intermittent feelings of inadequacy and success—each day was a new emotional and intellectual adventure. And like both my previous transitions, there was also a physical component—I moved back to eight hours a day sitting at a desk, basically 12 months a year. My body rebelled, with both a frozen shoulder and lower back pain. I resolved not to let a job sap my physical health and re-discovered yoga and regular walking regimens. I worried about how I presented the department at meetings with university officials and administrators; I over-planned for meetings with my dean; I worried about dealing with budgets and raise calculations for staff.

However, at the end of that first year, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I survived, and I think I have been able to begin to own a new type of ‘borderland discourse,’ one that includes ‘administrator’ as an identity that can encompass my personal subjectivities and beliefs about teaching and mentoring. In 2006 I created a theory of discourse called ‘borderland discourse,’ a phrase borrowed and modified from James Gee (1999), who explained that borderland discourse happens when one finds “the borderland between two (or more) discourses in a sincere way and speak[s] from this new space, this site of alternative discourse, to enact change in a particular community” (Alsup, 2006, p. 9). I defined it as when students in the original study

did not completely repudiate their own discourses and (b) accepted (in perhaps modified form) some of the discourses of the ‘other,’ or of the educational community they were entering as young professionals. It was when they changed their minds, the moments when they realized they didn’t know it all, or realized that they indeed knew something . . . that they became teachers without giving up themselves.

(Alsup, pp. 9–10)

In short, borderland discourse grows out of cognitive and emotional dissonance, but can lead to identity growth. My own borderland discourses involved initial attempts to keep the parts of myself essential to past successes and joys as a teacher and mentor and integrate them with my administrative work. Such integration has begun to happen through a variety of discourses, including how I mentor pre-tenure faculty, how I lead and organize faculty meetings, and how I structure faculty retreats or working groups. It even happens in emails I write to the department or to my colleagues. I have begun to see that not only is administration intellectual work, it can be a type of instructional work as well. My teacher identity has begun to morph, and expand once again, as I embrace a new subjectivity or situated identity. I am a living example that teacher professional identity development occurs over a lifetime. I look forward to the next iteration.

What are Millennial Teacher Identity Discourses?

As in 2006, I continue to define discourse through the lens of James Gee’s (1999) work:

Gee discussed two types of discourse: discourse with a small ‘d’ and Discourse with a capital ‘D.’ Discourse with a small ‘d’ refers to language activities (e.g., writing and speaking), whereas discourse with a capital ‘D’ is “different ways in which we humans integrate language with non-language ‘stuff,’ such as different ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, believing, and using symbols, tools, and objects in the right places and at the right times so as to enact and recognize different identities and activities . . .” (p. 13).

(Alsup, 2006, p. 38)

The genres of discourse in which the 2006 pre-service teachers engaged rose to the surface during qualitative analysis, and they consisted of narratives, metaphors, belief statements, and philosophy statements. I think of discourse in a similar way in this current work, as narratives and metaphors (both verbal and visual) came to the fore once again. However, as you will see below, while equally powerful there were important differences between the stories and metaphors of professional identity shared by the so-called millennial participants and those of their older colleagues. The goal of the discursive analysis, however, remains the same: to explore how the participant teacher identities are manifested and reflected in the narratives and metaphors that were voiced.

The Holistic Nature of Teacher Identity

There are several types of identity(ies) and ways that identity can be understood. Many think of identity as a more-or-less fixed state, whereby one has a core identity that can’t be easily shaken. However, existing simultaneously with this core identity are multiple subjectivities or “situated identities” (Alsup, 2006, p. 206), which are dependent on context and perception and can shift over time. Such identity shifts can be both influenced by and reflected in discursive expressions. Professional identity is one of these situated identities, explicitly related to one’s work or professional life. Some identity researchers assert that identity is always multiple and dialogical (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011), and therefore personal and professional identity cannot be split apart. Such a notion of interconnectedness between the personal and the professional is an underlying and unifying theme of both the 2006 and 2016 projects.

Since 2006, there has been much interesting additional research published about teacher professional identity development. In 2013, Mahsa Izadinia from New Zealand reviewed 29 empirical studies about student teachers’ identity and found that overall they addressed four broad factors: (1) reflective activities, (2) learning communities, (3) context, and (4) prior experiences (p. 694). Izadinia further states that based on the studies reviewed,

ST [student teacher] identity can be defined as ST’s perceptions of their cognitive knowledge, sense of agency, self-awareness, voice, confidence and relationship with colleagues, pupils and parents, as shaped by their educational contexts, prior experiences and learning communities.

(p. 708)

Additional insights provided by this review include the idea that, overall, identity studies assert that teacher identity “is not stable or predetermined (Beijaard etal., 2004; Maclean & White, 2007; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009), rather, it is dynamic and created and recreated during an active process of learning to teach (Trent, 2010),” and that context, experience, and personality always play a role (p. 695).

Izadinia also summarizes how the 29 studies she reviewed characterize the shortcomings in current identity research involving student teachers by stating that “although it appears that there is a general acknowledgement of its significance, there is no clear definition of teacher identity” in the works cited (p. 695), and that researchers rarely describe how teacher educators affect student teachers’ identity development or summarize negative effects on identity growth (pp. 709–710). Overall, Izadinia’s review of research argues that by learning more about student teacher identity formation, teacher education might be improved (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009), as studies of identity often include concepts and characteristics such as self-efficacy, confidence, agency, and self-understanding (p. 695).

One study cited by Izadinia is that of Beauchamp and Thomas (2009). Their study provides an overview of issues discussed in recent published studies of teacher identity development. They state that in their review of research, they discovered that problems included defining the concept of identity itself, the place of the self in professional identity, and the related issues of agency, emotion, narrative and discourse, and the role of reflection in identity development (p. 175). Like Izadinia, they describe how identity is consistently seen in the research as multifaceted and dynamic and only understood in context. Therefore, the difficulties the researchers face are amplified by the ill-defined nature of teacher identity itself and the consistent belief of educational researchers that identity is constantly in flux.

Similar to my own 2006 work, Beauchamp and Thomas recognize the importance of narrative and metaphor in the studies on teacher identity (pp. 181–182) as well as the role of critical reflection. Also similar to my 2006 findings, they assert that research consistently reveals that tensions during identity growth are common and perhaps unavoidable. They end by recommending that teacher educators should attempt to “make this attention to identity more overt” in their practice (p. 185) in order to better prepare students for the life of a teacher.

Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004) also conducted a review of research on teacher identity from 1988–2000 and identified four features that appeared essential for productive teacher professional identity development: professional identity development must be seen as a process, professional identity implies both person and context, professional identity consists of sub-identities that should somehow harmonize, and agency, or active participation, is an important element (p. 122). As I wrote in a 2015 co-authored article about online teacher identity development, “they also determined that in future research on teacher identity more attention should be paid to several identified ‘gaps’: clear definition of terms and more attention to be paid to the context of teachers’ work (p. 126)” (Richardson & Alsup, p. 3).

My own original 2006 book-length research study likewise addresses how narrative and discourse are essential to professional identity growth, which is often highly subjective, changeable, and dependent on both context and the identity themes (Holland, 1975) of the young teachers themselves. I found that the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Can the Master’s Tools Destroy the Master’s House?
• 1 A Teaching Life, Re-visited: How and Why this Project Came to Be
• 2 What Does it Mean to be a Millennial Secondary School Teacher? The Paradoxical Chase
• 3 Living the Contradiction: Narratives of Opposition
• 4 Who’s in Control? Stories of Authority and Vulnerability
• 5 What Does a Teacher Look Like? Narratives of the Teacher Persona
• 6 Using Discourse to Create a Teacher Identity: Narratives of Balance
• 7 Seeking Identity Through Images: Metaphors of Teacher Self
• 8 To Know Thyself, Again: Teacher Identity Discourses for a New Generation
• Appendix A: Class Syllabus
• Appendix B: Interview Protocols
• Appendix C: Sample Assignments
• Index