Alternative routes to teacher professional identity: Exploring the conflated sub-identities of Teach For America corps members

Abstract

Research on the development of professional identity for teachers who enter the profession through alternative routes is still in its infancy. In contrast to their peers who complete traditional initial teacher education programs, these teachers are exposed to different conditions and constraints that produce a range of sub-identities previously unidentified in the literature. This paper draws on interviews with 27 teachers who entered teaching through Teach For America and wrestled with these sub-identities as they considered their emerging professional identity. We argue that these sub-identities point to structural challenges embedded within Teach for America, and we highlight the need for additional research on the growing cadre of teachers entering the teaching profession through alternative routes, and subsequently influencing policymaking processes.

Teaching Synchronous-Service Teachers: Traditional Teacher Education at a Crossroads

“…This meant that these synchronous-service teachers completed at least eight courses (approximately 24 credits) while also working full time. It is perhaps unsurprising that the CMs with whom we worked were anxious as they sought to balance their multiple and conflated roles as novice teachers, as students, and as representatives of TFA (Thomas & Mockler, 2018). In the following section, we explore some of the complexities of these roles and draw on broader literature to conceptualize the synchronous-service teacher beyond the TFA case.…”

Professional Identity Formation Process of a Dance Teacher

“…Most recent researches (Olsen, Buchanan, 2017) state that professional identity is not only the ongoing process of a teacher continually relying on his or her self-understandings to make meaning out of present experience but is also the resulting, dynamic product of knowledge, goals, and selfunderstandings that is enacted in everyday practice. Thomas and Mockler (2018) argues that in the same way as it appears that professional identity cannot be framed in terms of professional knowledge, neither can it be framed in terms of experience in the way Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop contend. Thrue the wide discussions within the research Thomas and Mockler (2018) suggest that teachers' subidentities interplay in a complex way in the formation of their professional identities.…”

“…Thomas and Mockler (2018) argues that in the same way as it appears that professional identity cannot be framed in terms of professional knowledge, neither can it be framed in terms of experience in the way Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop contend. Thrue the wide discussions within the research Thomas and Mockler (2018) suggest that teachers' subidentities interplay in a complex way in the formation of their professional identities.…”

Human, Technologies and Quality of Education

“…Reynolds (1996) (Olsen, Buchanan, 2017) state that professional identity is not only the ongoing process of a teacher continually relying on his or her self-understandings to make meaning out of present experience but is also the resulting, dynamic product of knowledge, goals, and selfunderstandings that is enacted in everyday practice. Thomas and Mockler (2018) argues that in the same way as it appears that professional identity cannot be framed in terms of professional knowledge, neither can it be framed in terms of experience in the way Beijaard, Meijer and Verloop contend. Thrue the wide discussions within the research Thomas and Mockler (2018) suggest that teachers' subidentities interplay in a complex way in the formation of their professional identities.…”