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This study explores teacher identity work in the context of a one-year programme, Pedagogical Studies for Adult Educators. The data consist of weekly learning diaries written by Anna, a university teacher, during one academic year. The diaries are analysed by means of dialogically oriented narrative analysis leaning on Bakhtinian notions of voicing and ventriloquation. The results show how Anna positions her storytelling and narrated self in relation to relevant characters by voicing and evaluating these characters. The construct of positioning provides tools for understanding the relationship between the self and others in teacher identity.

This paper presents a methodology designed to explore the role of context in collaborative knowledge construction activity in asynchronous web-based discussion. The discussions of two student groups participating in a web-based teacher education course were compared. The comparison aimed to highlight the differences and similarities between the groups' knowledge construction activity through studying the thematic structure, communicative functions and contextual resources used in their discussions. The results indicated that the different backgrounds of the two student groups influenced the way context was created and interpreted, and how meanings were negotiated. The differences and similarities between the groups' activity illuminated the situated and mediated nature of learning. The possibilities of the methodology used in this study for evaluating collaborative knowledge construction in context are also discussed.

The emergence of 'new managerialism' in academic institutions and professions has given rise to tensions between one's professional self and work context. Such tensions often originate from a misalignment between institutional and personal values. This study builds on a dialogical approach to identity and discusses the role of inner tensions and conflicts in terms of making sense of one's professional identity. These aspects are explored and exemplified by introducing a sample case of one individual student and university researcher/teacher, Anna, who participated in one-year Pedagogical Studies for Adult Educators. Leaning on the narratives of Anna's learning diaries and a later interview, the article describes tensions and critical conflicts in her professional Ipositioning. The study shows how tensions and their resolutions, at their best, can lead to constructive identity work, thereby finding a new personal sense resulting in a more integrated professional identity.

This article reports on a qualitative study on the dialogical approach to learning in the context of higher education. The aim was to shed light on the I-Position and multivoicedness in students' identity-building, and to provide empirical substantiation for these theoretical constructs, focusing especially on the connection between personal knowledge and theoretical knowledge.The study explored how health science students' reflections on their work and discipline-related experiences provided resources for making personal sense of and understanding the subject studied. The students undertook an online course on the philosophy of science. To study students' internal and external dialogue in terms of multivoicedness in their sense-making processes a discourse analysis combined with a dialogical approach was applied. The results showed that in reflecting on their experiences in the light of different scientific approaches, the students became engaged in dialogues with different voices, thereby experiencing tensions in their professional positioning. The reasoning tasks gave rise to internal dialogue, involving negotiation between different I-Positions of the self or heterodialogue with the texts. These identity negotiations were manifested in refining, strengthening, and re-constructing professional and scientific I-Positions, and in sharing and constructing a We-Position.

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This study aimed to find out how and on what level the students of two separate secondary schools shared and constructed knowledge on imperialism by interacting through historical role characters in a Web-based environment. Furthermore, the study aimed to find out how social and contextual features affected the nature of knowledge sharing and construction. The data about the history project were gathered by various means in order to validate the findings of the case study. The results demonstrated that the level of the Web-based messages remained quite low. Also the use of the Web-based environment in terms of shared knowledge construction was rather weak. In comparison, different instructional activities of the two teachers resulted in different learning activities in the two schools and, thus, different level of interaction in the Web-based environment. The findings of this research are discussed in terms of important factors influencing the knowledge sharing and constructing activities. 319