TEACHER IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION: exploring the nature of becoming a language teacher

Capitulo del Libro: Lecturas y Escrituras: Lecciones Doctorales
Doctorado en Lenguaje y Cultura

Universidad Pedagogica y Tecnologica de Colombia -UPTC. 


1. Introduction


 Research in the field of teacher identity has attracted increasing interest in the last decade (van Veen & Sleegers, 2005; Richards, 2006; Clarke, 2008; Day et al., 2006). The subject has generally been approached from the perspective of what constitutes both the visible and invisible domains of the work and lives of teachers. The visible side includes what teachers do, for example, classroom interaction, assessment, material design, or task implementation. This is generally represented in the literature on teacher education as the technical or functional dimension of teaching. On the other hand, the invisible side involves more personal phenomena such as cognition, beliefs, expectations, or emotions. In principle, the exploration of teacher identity might be more fruitful if these two perspectives could be reconciled. To do this, the interplay between participation in a teacher community and their systems of knowledge and beliefs, for example, could be explored.

 Teacher identity develops as a trajectory of participation and interaction in a teacher community. Although different forms of participation may be involved, it is argued that engagement, alignment and imagination are three important distinct modes (Wenger, 1999). Teacher identity is also constructed from a complex cognitive dimension that involves what teachers ‘know, believe and think’ (Borg, 2006: 1). Although the nature of teachers’ mental images varies and different elements are difficult to disentangle, evidence suggests that a teacher forms pre-conceptions about teaching and learning as result of their previous experiences as a learner (Lorti, 1975; Bailey et al., 1996; Borg, 2004; Malderez et al., 2007). These pre-conceptions are the main source of a teacher’s beliefs and experiential knowledge, which are believed to inform most of their teaching practice. But theoretical knowledge is also a fundamental domain in understanding what makes a teacher. This results as teachers become enrolled in a teacher education programme.

 Students come to a teacher education programme with expectations about becoming teachers. During their course, they construct identities as students, which then change into those of teachers by the end of the preparation period. Teachers take on a new identity over time and construct the sense of what it means to be a teacher (Britzman, 2003; Danielewicz, 2001; Alsup, 2005; Clarke, 2008). This process is identified as learning to teach and it is fundamentally constructed from, for example, experience, skills, subject and pedagogical knowledge, classroom practice, and professional development. As a part of this process a teacher either builds a sense of affiliation with the teaching profession or gives it up (Nieto, 2003; Inman & Marlow, 2004; Yost, 2006; Clandinin et al., 2009). If a teacher decides to assume her/his role, what follows is generally identified in the literature of teacher education as professional development.


  2. The Concept of identity 


Despite increasing scholarly interest in identity in the last two decades, consensus about what precisely this term means is far from being reached. Identity has become a powerful issue, despite its complex and varied meanings and interpretations including those relating to people’s internal systems (Schwartz, 2001); group membership (Brown, 2000; Tajfel & Turner, 1986); nationalism (Schildkraut, 2007); or positions taken in conversations (Bamberg, 2006; Benwell & Stoke, 2006).

 In considering a definition of identity, a core issue which must be addressed concerns the fundamental question ‘who am I?’ or ‘who are you?’ This apparently simple way to begin exploring the meaning of identity turns out to be rather complex. Such a question could entail a self-concept originating from an introspective reflection (I am South American, a lawyer, a university lecturer, married, a father, and/or a cyclist, for example). Identity here is something personal (Who I am?). But it could also be a response to an external inquiry from another individual or group (Who are you?). This domain essentially entails a more social perspective, and these two dimensions might also involve plural meanings ‘who are we?’ or ‘who are you?’ The personal and the social then become inseparable.


 The personal dimension can be said to evolve from the conception of the individual as a ‘self-sufficient subject’ (Gill, 2000: 54). This entity is generally acknowledged as ‘the self’ and is therefore associated with people’s minds. Nevertheless, ‘the self’ cannot escape the challenges of interpretation. Lemke (2008: 19) raised awareness about the complexity of understanding the meaning of ‘who we are’, because this ‘changes with interactants and settings’. He expands on this in terms of subjective as opposed to projected identities. Put simply, while the former represents notions of who ‘we are to ourselves’; the latter entails ‘who we wish to seem to the others’. This notion of identity is also determined by the effects of a globalised society, which is increasingly ruled by consumerism and the access to complex systems of information. The idea that ‘the self’ does not exist in isolation but rather exists in relation to others must be therefore explored.


 The role played by others in the construction of identity is argued to be crucial (Hall, 2004). Identity evolves as individuals participate in social life or as they act as members of a group. This leads towards the conceptualisation of collective identities when an individual identifies with a group and builds up a sense of group membership (Tajfel and Turner, 1986). Nevertheless, we might relate to several groups at the same time, and so this relationship is changeable and dynamic rather than static. We might also experience different levels of affiliation and alignment with the groups we belong to (Lemke, 2008). Therefore, our roles and personalities may also correspond to those varied settings and interactants. Our affiliation with broader social structures and cultures may also be part of this. As a result of these processes, identity is constructed, shaped, or transformed. In summary, the concept of identity necessarily engages the meanings surrounding the person, as well as her/his experience as a member of a social community.


Talking about identity in personal terms implies psychological, affective, and cognitive notions. On the other hand, the sociological dimension includes labels such as gender, race, age, or nationality as well as social, historical and cultural factors. Although these two perspectives have been approached separately by psychologists and sociologists, it is difficult to locate precisely where the person ends and the social starts, so that ‘the focus must be on the process of their mutual constitution’ (Wenger, 1999: 146).


 So far, this brief exploration of the concept of identity may still not be enough to encompass the minimum characteristics of a coherent definition of the term. Part of the explanation for this is that it is interpreted in terms of the personal and social dimensions. Nevertheless, both become relevant in the attempt to answer the questions ‘who am I?’ or ‘who are you?’. This may be expressed broadly in the two complex domains of seeing the person as an individual and as a member of a social group. Identity is argued to develop as a result of becoming members of a community. ‘There is a profound connection between identity and practice’ (Wenger, 1999: 149). We fundamentally define ‘who we are?’ in terms of how we relate to other members of a group and how we negotiate our participation within the community. Practices and experiences within a community significantly determine the answer to ‘who we are’ and how we feel and think as a person. Rather than being a straightforward process, this evolves as part of a trajectory and engages varied forms of community membership. In fact, we belong to different communities, which may be either spatially or virtually located.


 3. A historical overview of identity


 Identity is a term that has historically evolved from the interpretation of human behaviour. It has also been represented as an external or internal phenomenon. Sociologists claim that identity is ‘the result of external, social, political, and economic forces’ (Cote & Levine, 2002: 9) while, on the other hand, psychologists argue that it concerns – the self- ‘internal, individual, wilful potentials’ (ibid). Both fields have contributed to understanding the meaning and principles of identity.


 Cooley (1902) introduced the concept of the ‘looking glass’, seeing the formation of the self as ‘part of a reflexive, learning process by which values, attitudes, behaviour, roles and identities are accumulated over time’ (cited in Day, et al., 2006: 602). This interpretation contrasts with the claim that identity is a process linked to social interactions in which language and experience play a significant role (Mead, 1934). To substantiate this claim, Mead introduced three core principles: personality (mind), interaction (self) and social structure (society). Cooley and Mead’s early concepts of identity sparked a great deal of scholarly interest. For example, Kuhn & McPartland (1954) introduced the Twenty Statements Test (TST), also called the ‘who I am? test’ which was considered a very popular instrument for studying identity. They also suggested the notion of a fixed and relatively stable self. How do scholars assess the concept of fixed identities? Goffman (1963) prompted a new debate by proposing that each person has a number of ‘selves’, where each one behaves according to a particular situation at any given time. He concurs with Mead that three are structural levels of identity namely ego, personality and social identity. Nevertheless, the notion of multiple selves generated fresh debate inside and outside the sociological field.


 The assumption that identity involves several dimensions is echoed in the work of Erickson (1968). Erickson (cited in Cote & Levine, 2002: 15) includes: ‘ego identity (a sense of temporal-spatial continuity); the personal dimension (a behavioural and character assemblage that distinguishes individuals); and the social dimension (the roles played within a group)’. According to Erickson, all three of these dimensions together generate a consistent ego identity, making behaviour and character stable. This new theoretical perspective locates identity as a complex entity with both psychological and sociological characteristics. But is the notion of a fixed and stable identity, although multiple, still pervasive? This question is answered by Ball (1972), who differentiated between situated and substantial identity. Situated identity means for him a kind of adaptive presentation of the self that changes according to specific situations for example, at school, and by substantial identity he points at a more stable condition that includes the way a person thinks about her/himself.


 The contemporary saturation with technology, it is argued, progressively transforms the life of a person (Gergen, 1971). The impact of new forms of interaction and communication is part of the post-modern debate concerning what identity is. There is no doubt that this mutating reality shapes new images of the self, as well as social interactions of a person who has to adapt according to those scenarios. ‘The post-modern self comes to exist only in relation to external images (conveyed to, reflected on, and received from others). The interior self is now populated by others and their images’ (Ibid, cited in Cote and Levine, 2002: 26). This early perception of a vertiginous ever-changing post-modern reality anticipated a more malleable representation of who I am, how I see myself, and how others acknowledge or recognise me. The self and the social have thus now gain consensus as being essential dimensions in the definition of identity.


 The controversies between sociologists and psychologists have not been entirely resolved in the last two decades. Meanwhile, the study of identity has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and researchers in other disciplines. Sociolinguistics, like psychology and sociology, has also contributed important perspectives. This field sees language in socio-cultural, economic and geographic contexts, as well as considering the reasons a person has for using it. Although the primary focus of sociolinguistics has not been specifically concerned with the study of identity, sociolinguists have historically recognised that variations in speech can be used to ‘signal important information about aspects of speakers’ social identity’ (Eckert 1997: 64). Moreover, the connection between social identity and language use has been a subject of study of variationist sociolinguistics. Research in this area has analysed linguistic variables such as accent, dialect change or syntactic or morphological features, and has attempted to establish a relationship with social factors such as sex, age, or social class.


Eckert (1997-98) studied variations in patterns of speech in terms of gender and age, and argued that how language is used reveals important information about certain aspects of the social distinctiveness of the speaker and his local context. Research in this area also tries to explain why ‘individuals speak differently from each other (inter-speaker variation), and why an individual’s own speech may sometimes vary (intra-speaker variation)’ (Dyer, 2007: 101).


 The study of identity has also captured the interest of discourse analysts. Discourse is used by people to accomplish social actions. It is through discourse that we reveal who we are, how we talk, what we say or what we mean. That social construction of identity is ‘accomplished, disputed, ascribed, resisted, managed and negotiated in discourse’ (Benwell and Stokoe, 2006: 4). The conversation analytic view, for example, looks at the way identity is performed and negotiated in discourse. This perspective concentrates on how actors ascribe themselves in terms of interactional patterns, actions accomplished, turn-taking, and organisational choices.


The analysis of the complex connections between talk and the accomplishment of institutional goals is argued to develop a picture of the way identity is co-constructed or negotiated in interaction. This overview of former and current trends in the conceptualisation of identity provides a general frame of reference for the context of this essay. Some of the relevant historical perspectives have been summarised, which is not intended to diminish other valuable sources. Rather, the concepts illustrated may allow this study to reconcile the psychological perspective of identity which supports the interest in exploring teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs, whereas the sociological stance supports the argument that a teaching community forms, shapes, or transforms professional identities.


 4. The concept of teacher identity (TI) 


 The meaning of being a teacher can be generally revealed by what constitutes the visible and invisible domains of her/his work and life. While the former includes what teachers do, for example, classroom interaction, assessment, materials design, or task implementation; the latter involves more personal phenomena such as cognition, beliefs, expectations, or emotions. These two domains seem to be explained in the long standing debate conceptualising identity as an internal (the self) or external (social) phenomenon, as briefly explored before.


 TI is then explained according to two complex dimensions regarding knowledge and roles, which include broad characteristics and meanings. While the selves of teachers may entail an understanding of, for example, their knowledge, beliefs, emotions, or motivations; the social element implies macro- cultural structures intimately linked to the professional actions undertaken in performing their roles. The personal and the social inform and complement each other. TI is fundamentally linked to the concept of ‘who am I?’ and ‘who are you?’ which comprise internal (personal) and external (social) realities. The former entails cognition, while the latter denotes roles. The internal images constructed by teachers, which are considered vital in the development of teacher identity, come from a lengthy process which starts in their experiences as learners (Lorti, 1975; Bailey et al., 1996; Borg, 2004; Malderez et al., 2007). During this time, for example, professional expectations, motivations, emotions, and core beliefs about teaching and learning emerge.


The experience gained in classrooms, the notion of what teaching is about as well as the capacity to judge models of good and bad teachers, enable prospective teachers to construct a predefined notion of what makes a teacher. This source of experiential knowledge is strengthened with professional or theoretical knowledge as they enrol in a teacher education programme (Johnson, 2009). This decision represents a vital stage in the process of constructing professional identity.


The process then expands as part of a long trajectory in terms of development and affiliation or disaffiliation with the profession. This is generally defined as the process of learning to teach, a time when teachers construct personal images of being a teacher, which are fundamental notions in professional identity. Nevertheless, there is no absolute border of ‘the self’, which is surely the result of social processes shaping the way an individual feels, thinks and experiences emotions or motivations. The recognition of others – the social dimension of TI – is fundamentally linked to the roles of teachers. Although these roles may be experienced by learners (who in fact are able to distinguish, for example, between good and bad models of teachers, task effectiveness, or assessment goals), they are substantially constructed in the experience gained as members of a teacher community as well as in engagement with classroom practice (Tsui, 2003).


Community and practice are vital constructs in understanding the meaning of being a teacher and consequently of professional identity. While the act of belonging to a teacher community translates into direct interaction and the negotiation of forms of participation, classroom practice helps teachers to get a real sense of the role of the teacher. These general domains evolve as a dynamic process resulting from the experience of becoming a teacher: a learning to teach trajectory where all of the constructs described here come together to frame the meaning and identity of teachers. In summary, teacher identity is viewed as ‘relational, negotiated, constructed, enacted, transforming and transitional’ (Miller, 2008: 174). This is not a fixed property of a teacher but rather a process that evolves changes or resists as teachers gain experience, consolidate professional knowledge, and adopt plans of personal and professional development (Tsui, 2003). This process is significantly influenced by culture and the socio-political context in which teachers live and work.


 5. Learning to teach and identity


 Becoming a teacher is undoubtedly a demanding and complex task. The process starts with students’ enrolment in teacher education, which in the Colombian situation, for example, is not an easy goal to achieve. Prospective teacher candidates need a minimum score in a national examination, which allows them to apply for a place in higher education. Places in public institutions are offered to a low percentage of applicants. Limitations to becoming a teacher in Colombia involve financial issues, including tuition fees and personal expenses.


Once the candidate is offered a place in a teacher education programme, coping, for example, with assignments, assessment, or the practicum may challenge motivation and the professional expectations of student teachers. After successfully finishing teacher education, further obstacles remain. Finding a job and dealing with administrative and pedagogical problems such as schedules, class size, job stability, low salaries or the assessment of their professional capabilities may also be important factors in understanding the process of constructing identity. Why do students persevere in considering teaching as a professional option?


Although there is no a simple answer to this question, the explanation may entail notions of social commitment and idealism. The meaning of teacher and teaching has been seen in teacher education from two distinctive perspectives: being and becoming a teacher. Being a teacher might be temporal and role dependent, while becoming a teacher involves a more dynamic and lasting perspective. Mayer (cited in Clarke, 2008: 8) states that: “Learning to teach can be learning the skills and knowledge to perform the functions of a teacher or it can be developing a sense of oneself as teacher. In the former, one is ‘being the teacher’, whereas in the latter, one is ‘becoming a teacher”.


 Teacher education can focus on preparing student teachers to perform teaching roles efficiently. To do this, a lot of emphasis is placed on pedagogic knowledge, for example, classroom management, lesson planning, task implementation, or assessment. Pedagogic and subject knowledge are also central. University tutors and school-based mentors make a lot of effort to guarantee that pre-service teachers prepare and follow the steps of a lesson. In that way, teaching can be assessed and learning is believed to be assured. The present author’s experience as a pre-service teacher educator over the last decade in Colombia indicates that a significant number of institutions follow this approach.


The literature of teacher education acknowledges this cycle as the technical dimension of teaching. Could teacher education programmes go beyond this technical dimension and foster a more proactive teaching and learning climate concerning, for example, cooperative learning, reflection or networking? Britzman (2003: 31) argues that ‘learning to teach – like teaching itself – is always the process of becoming: a time of formation and transformation, of scrutiny into what one is doing, and who one can become’. This process of the construction of the meaning of teaching includes forces of commitment, motivation, and professional growth, as well as notions related to the functions of teaching – assessment or task implementation, for example. During this process, teachers gain professional experience, work with other teachers, and establish professional relations with local and broader communities.


Although learning to teach evolves as a long term trajectory, including stages of professional development, this essay focuses on the period of teacher education. Learning to teach and consequently constructing professional identity entail more than developing teaching skills. While skills are linked to function, expressions of identity lead to the voicing of ‘investments and commitments’ (Britzman, 1992: 29). Learning to teach becomes then a matter of personal scrutiny comparing what is already established and what we can become.


Put simply, the meaning of being a teacher could involve either reproducing pre-established identities or re-signifying them as an alternative for change and transformation. The former positions the teacher in the realm of practice and experience. Under this paradigm, a teacher is an expert whose main function is to accomplish teaching and learning goals. By contrast, re-signifying the meaning of teacher entails an understanding of her/his role in the context of political and social struggles for voice and recognition. Under this paradigm, a teacher is not merely somebody who informs, but who transforms or provides opportunities for learners to interpret reality critically.


Although learning to teach evolves as a long term trajectory during the teacher’s life, teacher education could play a fundamental role in favouring one paradigm or the other. Teacher education concerns the formation of professional identity (Danielewicz, 2001). It fosters the transition from being students of teaching to becoming teachers. It is important to note that when students enrol in a teacher education programme, they are not yet teachers. However, by the end of the training period they have adopted an identity as teachers. Although this identity is not fixed and is shaped or transformed during a teacher’s biography, a teacher education programme is vital by virtue of awarding a teaching degree, as well as providing pedagogical and subject knowledge. While the former becomes essential for their recognition as teachers (the visible domain); the latter frames what teachers know and believe (the invisible domain). Both become fundamental in an understanding of professional identity, as has been explained in previous sections of this paper.


 Teacher education lays the foundations of professional identity. As explained above, teachers adopt a new identity as a result of their experience as students of teaching, especially at the end of the training period in the practicum. How teacher education helps in attaining this identity is a more complex issue. A curriculum fostering this development may be an important step forward, and the implications for professional growth and transformation might be significant. Although there is no specific formula for adopting a particular identity, Danielewicz (2001: 9), for example, proposes asking students ‘to develop personal theories of action – how they might act if they were teachers’.


 Learning to teach is a highly demanding activity. It requires making decisions, for example, about content, materials, learning goals, and assessment. It also asks teachers to relate their teaching to the cultural context, policies, the learners, and different approaches, among other things. But it also involves good relationships and behaviour with students, colleagues and parents. Additionally, teachers need to cope with the demands of the classroom, including, for example, lesson planning, task implementation, and assessment. It seems that learning to teach and adopting professional identity requires more than normal moral and social concepts. Put simply, if learning to teach involves social and personal dimensions, it is clear that helping students to adopt a new professional identity entails more than training them to perform the role of teachers. ‘Identities require the commitment of the self to the enterprise in a way that acting out a role does not’ (Danielewicz, 2001: 10). Attention now turns to second language teacher education.


 6. Identity and second language teacher education 


 Second language teacher education is fundamentally concerned with preparing students to become foreign language teachers. To do this, teacher education programmes generally focus on developing foreign language competence and teaching skills. These two dimensions guide the concept of how language teachers come to know what and how to teach. Although this process is not concluded in the cycle of teacher education, but rather develops as part of a long trajectory of participation in school environments, personal and professional development, target language competence, and classroom experience, teacher education becomes vital in understanding what a second language teacher is and what other expect of her/him.


 Prospective language teachers come to a teacher education programme with previous experience as language learners. This might have raised awareness of, for example, what language learning entails and what the process is like as well as what kind of teaching and learning activities are promoted in language classrooms. Students of foreign languages have deep experience of the process of learning a second language themselves. However, as a result of students’ enrolment in second language teacher education, these assumptions might be reconceptualised as a result of exposure to various theoretical trends, conceptions, or scientific paradigms concerning skills development and language as well as teaching and learning. This connection ‘enables learners to move beyond the limitations of their everyday experiences and function appropriately in a wide range of alternative circumstances and contexts’ (Johnson, 2009: 21). 


Second language teachers are asked to possess communicative skills in one or more foreign languages. This has guided teacher education programmes to define learning goals concerning levels of target language proficiency (Kamhi-Stein, 2009). Some of these include native speakers as ideal models to emulate. Nevertheless, the distinction between native and non-native speakers has been a thorny issue especially when language teachers’ competence and pedagogical ability is judged, leading to ‘dichotomise the world neatly into “us” and them’ (Kaplan, 1999: 5).


This selective and discriminative linguistic categorisation means that language teachers whose mother tongue is not English, are invariably labelled as non-native speakers ‘regardless of their actual proficiency in English’ (Pasternak and Bailey, 2004: 156). This hidden practice has a great impact on the personal and professional identity of language teachers. There is a need not only to improve the use and knowledge of the target language, but to deal with the social disadvantage of always being judged less competent than the native speaker. Learning the language, and about the language, become vital principles in second language teacher education.


The experience of the present author as a language teacher educator in the last decade in Colombia provides evidence of how the curriculum of a Foreign Language Programme at Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia -UPTC, has focussed on knowledge of syntactic, phonetic and phonologic rules as well as grammar and vocabulary. Nevertheless, research attempting to examine how linguistic knowledge shapes the instructional decisions of language teachers has shown discouraging results (Bartels, 2005). Evidence suggests failure ‘to transfer this knowledge to classroom language teaching’ (Johnson, 2009: 43). This paper has so far explored different perspectives of what constitutes the concept of identity in general and the identity of teachers more specifically.


If identity fundamentally entails the recognition of others, this could be explored in terms of the experience of teachers of belonging to a teacher community. The theoretical framework that underpins this first domain is derived from the notion of communities of practice (Wenger, 1999). But identity also implies ‘who I am’, which in this essay is explored through the connection between beliefs and classroom practice. The theoretical framework of Grossman (1995) is used in this respect. Each domain is explained in turn in the next sections.


7. Communities of practice (CoP)


 The notion that identity is formed, shaped, or transformed as teachers participate in a teacher community is supported by the theoretical framework of Communities of Practice (CoP) (Wenger, 1999). A CoP is a group of people who share a common enterprise and pursue mutual goals. Wenger bases the concept of CoP on the fact that:

 “As we define these enterprises and engage in their pursuit together, we interact with each other and with the world accordingly. In other words, we learn. Over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect both the pursuit of our enterprises and the attendant social relations. These practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. It makes sense, therefore, to call these kinds of communities, Communities of Practice” (p. 45).


 Wenger (1999) builds up a new theoretical construct that conceives identity from the perspective of the person and the social experience of an individual within a community. This integrating position sees identity in the interplay between ‘the social, the cultural, and the historical with a human face’ (Wenger, 1999: 145). He also questions the mistaken dichotomy viewing the person as separate from the social, and rather argues for an explanation of identity through the lens of a reciprocal connection between the personal and the social.


When a new person enters a community, s/he experiences an act of belonging to a CoP, which entails forms of participation, non-participation, and interaction. Interacting with each other and being acknowledged by others is argued to engage negotiated ‘ways of being a person’ (ibid, 164). Practice is then a substantial domain for understanding the nature of who a person is. Here it is far more important what ‘we think or say about ourselves’ or ‘what others think or say about us’ (Wenger, 1999: 151). Identity results from combining several layers of experience which come together to build up a constant process of ‘negotiating the self’ (ibid). They also frame the kind of perspectives the individual constructs about the world and helps her/him make some choices about her/his contribution to the communities s/he belongs to.


 A teacher community offers a realistic experience of what teaching is about. Classroom practice, theories of teaching and learning, and the tension of working in a team constitute a unique opportunity to explore the nature of becoming a teacher and consequently of identity construction. To what extent does a teaching community shape professional identity? A teacher community has to be understood beyond the assumption that working together is a conceptually appealing notion. It involves more complex factors that include, for example, teachers’ stories about choosing teaching, their previous experiences as learners, institutional tensions, or their interactions with broader communities.


Various research studies have addressed these subjects, mainly in the last decade (Malderez et al., 2007; Clarke, 2008; Taylor and Otinnsky, 2008; Farell, 2009). The nature of belonging to a teacher community incorporates four general dimensions: choosing teaching, engagement, alignment, and imagination. Malderez et al., (2007) give evidence that prospective teachers choose teaching partly with expectations of team working and becoming a part of the school community. However, this attractive factor is not always an easy task to accomplish. Their findings give accounts of functional and dysfunctional relationships with mentors, as well as unwelcoming school environments. They also report experiences of student teachers being shunned in staffrooms.


Belonging to a teacher community is not always a straightforward process and the possibility to work cooperatively might become especially traumatic. Farell (2001: 49-50) defines this period as socialisation. Student teachers face all the demands that are linked with teaching, such as: “coping with school rules inside and outside the classroom, following the school rules for lesson planning, following or developing curricula, learning the routines of the classroom, and learning how to interact with school authorities and colleagues”. Farrell’s research case study was conducted in Singapore while working as a supervising university tutor for one student teacher. The researcher traced the process of socialisation and development that took place during the period of the teaching practicum. The findings indicate communication problems and weak support for the pre-service teacher, as well as tension not only between the trainee and senior teachers but also among members of the staff or with the school board of administrators. This particular reality sheds light on how complex negotiating participation in a teacher community can be.


 Engagement is generally defined as an ‘active involvement in mutual processes of negotiation of meaning’ (Wenger, 1999: 173). In other words, it is the direct interaction and participation of a newcomer within the structures, conceptions, and norms of a particular community. There are different ways of engagement with a teacher community. In fact, teachers are permanently participating and interacting: from meeting every day and sharing daily greetings or morning coffee to more structured forms of action and transformation. It is important to note here that engagement evolves as part of the experience of learning to teach and that it is negotiated as part of the complex process of becoming a teacher. Teachers usually participate in the same meetings, share similar stories, or face the same reality in terms of routines and timetables, for example. These contexts of relationship create forms of mutual engagement.


Clarke (2008: 86) reports findings regarding ‘offers of assistance to each other concerning the challenges of teaching’. His research also shows how this professional dialogue reflects upon building an understanding of teaching as a common enterprise. Jenkins (1996, cited in Clarke, 2008: 88) asserts that: “What is significant is not that people see or understand things in the same ways, or that they see and understand things in ways which differ from other communities, but that their shared symbols allow them to believe in what they do”. The role of teachers is not only spatially located in the communities where they work on a temporary or permanent basis. They also interact with broader professional communities. That sense of professional participation is labelled in the literature as alignment, which results from ‘coordinating our energy and activities in order to fit within broader structures and contribute to broader enterprises’ (Wenger, 1999: 174). Teachers could interact with national or overseas teacher communities, network with peers, or attend professional conferences, for example. These are forms of professional alignment.


Alignment also plays an important role in the construction of the meaning of teacher. Clarke (2008: 92) states that ‘alignment transcends the here and now and focuses on coordinating and synergizing a community’s energies with those of other communities’. His research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) suggests interesting findings with regard to how pre-service teachers establish forms of on-line interaction with other teachers, for example. In those dialogues, they actively discuss topics such as: teaching methodologies, the role of the mother tongue in a context of foreign language learning, or the imposition of materials without considering local factors. Needless to say, those language teachers necessarily also developed relationships with publishers or materials designers. This professional network of interaction is acknowledged as ‘border practices’ and it is argued to play a foundational role in ‘learning to teach’ (Clarke, 2008: 94). There is no doubt that such border practices play an important role in the process of constructing professional identity. However, teachers may have chosen them by default. Can teacher education programmes consolidate more structured forms of participation and cooperation with members of other communities?


 Some research studies have drawn conclusions about forming and sustaining a teacher community (Little, 2002; Bell-Angus, 2008; Mitchel and Mitchel, 2008; Taylor & Otinsky, 2008). Mitchel and Mitchel (2008) presented the research findings of a longitudinal study that started in 1985 in Australia. It has now developed into a learner community that engages over 600 teachers from nearly 200 schools. This project has significantly expanded into publishing, organising conferences, and networking with international communities. This experience illustrates that alignment could be purposefully built modes of cooperative action.


 Taylor and Otinsky (2008) have also explored modes of professional alignment. They explained how two university teachers worked collaboratively with pre-service teachers and a group of sixth graders to develop an enquiry about issues of social justice in New Jersey. They examined a model of a three-week intensive project aiming to prepare student teachers before teaching. The findings suggest a positive impact of this model, which generated active engagement and led to important decisions being made about teaching, learning, the curriculum, and learners. Finally, in this part imagination is considered another construct that helps in exploring the nature of belonging to a teacher community.


 The process of becoming a teacher is claimed to be ‘in part a journey of imaginative development. Students come to imagine teaching and themselves as teachers in new ways’ (Fettes, 2005: 3). Imagination, as an act of belonging to a teacher community, is generally defined as the capacity to see teaching from different perspectives. A classroom, for example, may represent different things. For a teacher it could be either a place to do a teaching job or an opportunity to enrich the lives of future citizens with knowledge and better values. For a student it may represent either a boring place where s/he is forced to attend lessons daily, or an exciting place where fascination and friendship become a motivation to participate. For parents, school administrators or educational authorities, the classroom certainly has different meanings. That capacity to see teaching from alternative perspectives may be a way to explain imagination: ‘creating images of the world and seeing connections through time and space by extrapolating from our own experience’ (Wenger, 1999: 173).


Imagination then comprises an ability to move ‘beyond the immediate world of experience’ (Clarke, 2008: 98). Through imagination we re-construct the images of ourselves and envision new representations of our internal and external images of the world. It does not mean that new sources of inspiration necessarily entail fantasy or an entire discourse of the unreachable. Imagination is simply an innate human condition that encourages people to re-invent their past, re-build their present, and project their future. Clarke (2008: 98) asserts that imagination could be represented in forms of self-consciousness and reflection which are argued to provide ‘a platform for further growth and development’.


Teachers’ imagination leads to envisioning new scenarios for teaching and learning, classroom practices, or innovation, for example. This capacity to participate actively and creatively helps to construct a different notion and meaning of teacher, as well as to expand the concept of the role of a teacher community in shaping professional identities, but even more importantly how the teacher also shapes and transforms the identity of the community s/he belongs to. Some research studies have reported interesting findings about trainees’ proactive participation in a teacher community.


Roberts & Graham (2008: 1401) investigated some of the strategies used by 32 English trainees ‘to establish a personal teaching identity’. Their findings suggest three distinctive strategies used in order to exercise their own autonomy: fitting in, following a teacher’s advice selectively; and taking the initiative. These results contradict the general belief that student teachers’ self-initiative is not fully exercised and that their teaching is mainly driven by the initiatives of their supervisors. Robert and Graham’s findings show evidence instead of their capacity for self-direction and innovation. These are representations of how imagination is exercised by pre-service teachers. Is imagination an innate human characteristic that is naturally transferred into the classroom? Can teacher training promote or engage prospective teacher candidates with forms of imaginative teaching? Some of these questions are briefly explored below.


 Fettes (2005: 4) argued that ‘attending to imagination may both aid the process of personal reflection and help students come to a deeper understanding of pedagogy and curriculum’. He introduced a module based on the concept of imagination as part of a one-year professional certification programme at Simon Fraser University in Canada. A group of teacher instructors designed a course for a cohort of 32 students. The course aims included: reflective capacity, critical-mindedness, other-directedness, as well as pedagogical sensitivity. The project aimed to tackle a previously identified problem that students entering the programme came ‘with a fairly narrow set of ideas about teaching’. The findings reported that, although students found the approach challenging, the imaginative development of teacher candidates may mediate the imaginative development of children. Although the results were not conclusive, this experience opens another direction for research that may have significant implications for the context of teacher education and professional development in the future.


 8. The concept of teachers’ knowledge 


 What teachers know is considered according to the theoretical framework provided by Grosman, (1995: 20). He states that the psychology of teachers has been ‘examined in terms of its domains, its forms or structures, and its relation to classroom practice’. Various research and theoretical stances then consider each of these issues separately, although it can be strongly argued that they are interwoven in practice. Grossman introduced a typology for understanding teachers’ knowledge, which includes knowledge of content, general pedagogy, curriculum, integration of knowledge domains and the creation of new knowledge, as well as knowledge of self. These theoretical preferences implicitly introduce the idea of the complex and varied nature of teachers’ systems of knowledge. This suggests that teachers’ knowledge is not static and that they develop new understandings of teaching and themselves in a very dynamic way. 


Grossman (1995: 22) highlighted that ‘while teachers can acquire knowledge from a wide variety of sources, they also create new knowledge within the crucible of the classroom’. Such new knowledge is believed to be represented as either paradigmatic or narrative ways of knowing. The former emphasises ‘generalizable laws and principles applicable across a wide variety of contexts’ – within the natural sciences, for example – while the latter is ‘more contextualised and situation specific’ (Bruner, 1986, cited in Grosman, 1995). These two ontological stances have significance for methods of assessing teachers’ knowledge with regard to classroom practice.


While some researchers claim that teachers need scientific principles that could be applicable across different contexts, others reject this idea and argue that knowledge is personal and embedded within specific local contexts. Teachers’ knowledge spreads over several interwoven domains which are complex and dynamic in nature. While we can examine content and pedagogical knowledge, or knowledge of the self, for example, the scientific principles that inform their classroom practices are perspectives which must also be considered. This essay does not expect to resolve this theoretical debate, preferring to exercise caution by focussing on the convergence between teachers’ beliefs and classroom practice. This study now turns on this relationship. Although the notion of teachers’ beliefs has been explored in the literature of teacher education in the last three decades, there is no clear explanation of what this term entails (see, for example, Clark and Peterson, 1986).


Thompson (1992: 130) proposed the study of teachers’ conceptions as an alternative field of research that covers ‘a more general mental structure, encompassing beliefs, meaning, concepts, propositions, rules, mental images, preferences, and the like’. Consequently, it is hard to separate knowledge from beliefs. In spite of an increasing research interest in the last decade in the field of teachers’ beliefs (Johnson, 1994; Cabaroglu and Roberts, 2000; Peacock, 2001; Santagata, 2005; Blay and Ireson, 2009) a consensual definition is still elusive. Pajares (1992: 316) noted that the term ‘belief’ is complex in nature and meaning, and he defined it as ‘an individual’s judgement of the truth or falsity of a proposition, a judgement that can only be inferred from a collective understanding of what human beings say, intend, and do’.


Pajares also provided a list of ‘fundamental assumptions’ to study teachers’ beliefs (see Borg, 2006: 26, for a summary). Over the last decade, the study of teachers’ beliefs has explored several areas: learning, learners, teaching, decision making, and subject matter, among others. Under the label of teacher cognition these terms are now generally defined as ‘what teachers know, believe and think’ (Borg, 2006: 2), which have been studied using a multiplicity of terms. Although the term ‘beliefs’ prevails in the literature of teacher education (Pajares, 1993; Johnson, 1994; Cabaroglu & Roberts, 2000; Peacock, 2001; Santagata, 2005; Gonzalez, 2008), notions such as pre-service teachers’ knowledge (Viera, 2006), pedagogic thinking (Borg, 2005), pedagogical beliefs (Allen, 2002), or perceptions (Fajet et al., 2005; Da Silva, 2005; Ryan & Healy, 2009) create more than a sense of terminological confusion since, while some terms appear to overlap, it is problematic to differentiate them precisely.


 Knowledge and beliefs are considered to be intertwined, even though some scholars locate the former as more factual while the latter are regarded as ideological and attitudinal. Nevertheless, ‘In the mind of the teacher, components of knowledge, beliefs, conceptions, and intuitions are inextricably intertwined’ (Verloop et al., 2001: 446). The concept of teachers’ beliefs appears recurrently in the literature of teaching and learning (see, for example, Cabaroglu & Roberts, 2000; Peacock, 2001; Garton, 2008). This study adopts the label of teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs as an inclusive term. This implies a connection between teachers’ beliefs and their teaching practices, which is an area that has been relatively under-researched (see, for example, Da Silva, 2005; Garton, 2008; Gonzalez, 2008; Blay and Ireson, 2009; Phipps and Borg, 2009; Li & Walsh, 2011).


On the other hand, this term allows the dimension of what student teachers know, believe and do in the classroom to be represented. It is generally accepted that prospective teachers come to teacher education programmes with already well-grounded beliefs about teaching and learning which are resistant to change (Pajares, 1992). However, Cabaroglu and Roberts (2000: 392) tested this assumption with twenty students at the University of Reading, UK, and the findings revealed that ‘only one participant’s beliefs seemed to remain unchangeable’. This paper even introduced the concept of belief reversal, in which teachers seemed to adopt a new belief that contradicted a former one.


 A similar interest was expressed by Peacock (2001), whose 3-year longitudinal study engaged 146 trainee teachers at the City University of Hong Kong. The study aimed to investigate if mistaken ideas about language learning that student teachers brought with them when entering a training programme would change as a result of studying teaching methodology. The findings showed non-significant changes in their pre-existing beliefs, but despite an apparent confirmation of beliefs as inflexible and resistant to change, Peacock highlighted the need to work on those mistaken conceptions. But if teachers’ beliefs are inflexible, how do these beliefs correspond to classroom practices?


 While teachers’ beliefs have received a lot of attention in recent years, the relationship between believes and classroom practice has scarcely been explored. Few studies could be found which have considered this field of research, and only one has specifically examined pre-service teachers’ beliefs (Da Silva, 2005). Four further studies shed some light on this area even though their participants were in-service teachers (Garton, 2008; Gonzalez, 2008; Blay and Ireson, 2009; Phipps and Borg, 2009; Li and Walsh, 2011).


 Da Silva (2005) investigated how pre-service language teachers’ perceptions about teaching the four skills related to their pedagogical practice. Her research engaged three student teachers at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. This study collected data from the teaching practicum – a 144-hour course in the last semester of the teaching preparation programme. By using a multi-method approach, data were collected via observation reports, lesson plans, video-recorded lessons, and recall sessions. It is important to note here that Da Silva used the concept of perceptions rather than, for example, beliefs or cognition, although the definition used includes a broad view of various interchangeable terms common to recent theoretical confusion, as mentioned previously. The findings suggested two characteristics of pre-service teachers’ knowledge: theoretical and experiential.


While the theoretical knowledge resulted from their teacher preparation programme, the experiential knowledge arose from direct and previous participation and observation experienced throughout their lives as learners. Da Silva (2005: 14 - 15) draws important conclusions indicating that: “When teachers perceive that their experiential knowledge is supported by theory, they acquire the theoretical knowledge as part of their professional knowledge without strong conflicts or dilemmas” But when their “experiential knowledge is contradicted by theory, teachers tend to reject the ‘new’ knowledge and maintain old practices no matter how logical or sound it could be and strong conflicts and dilemmas may arise” This study seems to confirm the implicit consensus that beliefs are inflexible and resistant to change. According to these findings, it seems that experiential knowledge informs teachers’ practice more than theoretical knowledge. The question that arises here is what teacher education can do in order to create alternatives for better teaching and learning (Peacock, 2001).


The present author’s experience as language teacher, teacher educator, and supervisor suggests that teacher education can effectively contribute to transforming, for example, students’ misconceptions about teaching and learning. Reflective practice, communities of practice or action for professional development and growth may help in such an endeavour. The chance to re-shape teachers’ experiential knowledge into critical theoretical knowledge is believed to raise their awareness and encourage change and transformation. Research in the field of in-service teachers’ beliefs and their correspondence with classroom practice enlarge this point.


 The levels of coherence found between what teachers believe and do in the classroom vary widely. While some research findings indicate that there is a close link, other studies imply a rather different reality. For example, Garton (2008) indicated a consistent degree of correspondence between beliefs and classroom practices in two Italian teachers. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, and the study strengthens the widely accepted view that experiential knowledge informs professional practices more than theoretical knowledge (Johnson, 1994; Peacock, 2001; Pajares, 2002). 


Gonzalez (2008) examined the connection between teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and classroom practice. Two language teachers working in extension language courses at the National University in Colombia were the research participants, and the findings suggest that, in spite of their lack of clarity about communicative competence, there was a coherent connection between their stated beliefs and what they planned to achieve in the language classroom. Unfortunately, the study did not examine if the sources of those beliefs were theoretical or experiential. Nevertheless, if there are misconceptions about communicative competence, teachers may mistakenly emphasise particular learning goals and tasks in the classroom.


Teacher education has the social obligation of transforming such a reality. The debate around whether beliefs are inflexible or not and what the role of education is in changing them, challenges many previous research findings about teachers’ beliefs. Gonzalez’ study is significant as it was the first to approach this research area in Colombia. Phipps and Borg (2009) observed and interviewed three teachers over a period of 18 months in Turkey. The study aimed to examine the way they taught grammar and the beliefs that underpinned their classroom actions. The researchers highlight the fact that research in this area has adopted various negative terms such as ‘incongruence, mismatch, inconsistency, and discrepancy’ (ibid: 380), but they suggest instead the term ‘tensions’. This is defined as ‘divergences among different forces or elements in the teacher’s understanding of the school context, the subject matter, or the students’ (Freeman, 1993; cited in Phipps and Borg, 2009: 380). The findings indicate that the teachers’ beliefs about teaching grammar did not always align with their classroom practices, and that tensions at the level of presenting, practicing, or doing oral work were identified. ‘There were, therefore, several cases where teachers’ professed beliefs about language learning were in strong contrast with practices observed in their lessons’ (ibid, 387).


Moreover, the researchers highlight the issue that core beliefs seem more consistently to inform teachers’ classroom practices. They also felt it important to look at teachers’ beliefs beyond merely understanding their levels of correspondence with classroom practice. Phipps and Borg (2009: 388) rather propose the need to ‘explore, acknowledge and understand the underlying reasons behind such tensions’. This perspective opens new possibilities for future research in the field of teacher cognition. It is widely claimed that what teachers do in the classroom is significantly informed by their beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning (Pajares, 2002). This connection can be explored from varied perspectives.


For example, Blay and Ireson (2009) approached it from the connection between pedagogical beliefs and activity choice and structure in nursery classrooms in London. Four in-service nursery teachers in two different schools participated, and the findings suggest that their pedagogical beliefs informed the kind of activities they implemented in the classroom. However, the relationship between their stated beliefs and classroom practices did not always match. While some stated beliefs highlighted children’s active decisions and participation, for example, the enacted performance of the activities showed a high level of adult control.


There were other cases where the process of children’s self-determination was better achieved. Overall however, this study illustrates that teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices are not always in accord. However beyond questions of the existence of tensions between stated and enacted beliefs, a significant step forward in teacher education research should be the exploration of the reasons for such tensions (Phipps and Borg, 2009). Li and Walsh (2011) explored the relationship between beliefs and classroom interaction in a novice and an experienced secondary school teacher in China. By using interviews and classroom observation data, the researchers assessed whether or not the participant teachers’ stated beliefs about language teaching and learning were in accord with what they did in the classroom. The findings suggested that beliefs and classroom actions were not always convergent. In summary, examining teachers’ systems of knowledge and beliefs fit the purpose of exploring the nature of becoming a teacher in this paper.


While plenty of evidence suggests that teachers’ beliefs inform their classroom practice, the relationship between stated and enacted beliefs has been less conclusive. Few studies have explored this new field of research, which is believed likely to produce new insights, theoretical constructs, and research exploration. The next section explores how teacher identity has been approached in Colombia.


 9. The research area in Colombia 


 This section examines the contribution of Colombian scholars and researchers in the field of teacher identity construction. This exploration introduces a general overview of studies investigating the two fundamental constructs that underpin this essay: participating in a teacher community and systems of knowledge and beliefs. This overview is mainly based on a review of material published in the most influential Colombian journals in the last decade. Research in the area of teacher identity has been relatively scarce in Colombia.


Colombian scholars have made outstanding progress in areas related, for example, to language teaching and learning, skills development, autonomy and bilingualism. However, the interest in this essay is to focus on the Colombian contribution to framing an understanding of teacher identity, starting with studies that have included in their titles the terms teacher identity, knowledge, beliefs, teacher communities or communities of practice. Two references were found that matched the field of identity. The first included a theoretical contribution, while the second reported findings into bilingual education for minority indigenous groups.


Serna (2005) approached pre-service teacher identity as a matter of intellectual status, developing a sense of belonging in a community of professionals, and listening to their voices through reflection and research. Although no data supported the author’s arguments, this was an important scholarly attempt to introduce the notion of teacher identity into the debate about teacher education in Colombia. Escobar and Gomez (2009) explored the concepts and structure of bilingual education with minority indigenous groups in Colombia. The authors showed awareness of the need for Colombia to be recognized as a multicultural country, and their research focused on the analysis of sociopolitical issues. Despite the fact that the meaning of identity spread over several fields, the authors attempted to make connections between the context of bilingual education for minority groups and English language teaching in Colombia. There was no explicit reference, however, to studies exploring the nature of belonging to a teacher community.


 Teachers’ system of knowledge and beliefs are referenced in four articles published by three local scholars and one overseas researcher. Piñeros and Quintero (2006) built up theoretical connections from the concept of the changes that resulted from experiential and academic knowledge in undergraduate student teachers’ monographs. Gonzalez (2008) examined the connection between teachers’ beliefs about communicative competence and classroom practice. The findings suggested that, in spite of a lack of understanding of communicative competence, the participating teachers’ classroom practice indicated a high level of congruence. This was the first reference in the Colombian research context to establish a direct connection with one of the research questions in this study.


 Schuldz (2001) conducted a cross-cultural study aiming to compare American and Colombian students’ and teachers’ beliefs about the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback in foreign language learning. The findings indicated a significant level of agreement in the two contexts concerning the benefits of these strategies. This article was published by an overseas researcher in an international language journal. So far this general review of the research area in Colombia shows that research in the area has been scarce. This general overview of current trends in the study of teacher identity provides an image of how Colombian scholars have explored the subject so far.


 Conclusion 


 This paper addresses the ongoing debate about how teachers take on a new identity. It is argued that teachers construct professional identity as a result of the experience of learning to teach. Furthermore, this process evolves as part of a long term trajectory in which they participate in local and broader teacher communities, develop teaching competence and undertake professional development. Nevertheless, a teacher education programme plays a substantial role in this trajectory. It generally provides pedagogical and subject matter knowledge, as well as teaching experience, which are all argued to be fundamental in doing the job. In a nutshell, prospective teachers are trained in the technical dimensions of teaching, and little has been done to prepare them for a more proactive participation within professional communities, to identify the sources of beliefs and tackle possible misconceptions about language teaching and learning or to help them to affiliate with the teaching profession.


 An overview of current trends in the field of pre-service teachers’ identity construction suggested that few studies have been undertaken in this area. This paper is expected to generate further explorations in this field. Furthermore, the findings could be used as a point of departure in order to introduce changes into the curricula of language training programmes in the future, and might also attract the attention of policymakers in planning action to promote professional development among pre and in-service teachers.


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