Understanding teacher identity: an overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education

2009/05/27 by Catherine Beauchamp, Lynn Thomas · 6 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Collaborative Teaching and Inclusion #EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning #Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

paper · doi:10.1080/03057640902902252

openalex publication_date 2009/05/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

While literature on teaching emphasizes the importance of identity in teacher development, understanding identity and the issues related to it can be a challenging endeavour. This article provides an overview of the issues revealed in recent discussions of teacher identity: the problem of defining the concept; the place of the self, and related issues of agency, emotion, narrative and discourse; the role of reflection; and the influence of contextual factors. A particular focus is placed on identity in pre‐service teachers and new practitioners. Implications of an understanding of these issues for programmes of teacher education are highlighted.

Citations

• Preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do
• Telling Identities: In Search of an Analytic Tool for Investigating Learning as a Culturally Shaped Activity
• Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity

Cited by

• Student Teachers’ Emotions, Dilemmas, and Professional Identity Formation Amid the Teaching Practicums
• The Logics of Teaching: How Institutionalized Ideas about Teaching Shape Teachers’ Professional Identities
• School choice, teachers’ work, and professional identity
• Teacher Identity in Language Teaching: Integrating Personal, Contextual, and Professional Factors
• The Tensions Between EFL Teacher Identities and INSET in the Turkish Context
• Teacher professional identities and their impacts on translanguaging pedagogies in a STEM EMI classroom context in China: a nexus analysis

Related

• Reconceptualizing teacher identity development
• Teacher Identity in Language Teaching: Integrating Personal, Contextual, and Professional Factors
• Beginning student teachers’ teacher identities based on their practical theories
• Teacher, Learner and Student-Teacher Identity in TESOL
• Pedagogising language teacher identity: bridging theory and practice in teacher education