TEACHER IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION: EXPLORING THE NATURE OF BECOMING A PRIMARY LANGUAGE TEACHER

Central to this paper is the question of how teachers construct their professional identity. This research explores the process of becoming a teacher and consequently of the construction of identity in terms of two specific components: belonging to a teacher community and the relationship between systems of knowledge and beliefs and classroom practice. A group of six Colombian pre-service teachers in the final stage of their five-year teacher education programme were research participants. Interviews, stimulated recall and on-line blogs as methods of data collection, and content and conversational analysis as the analytical approaches, were used. The findings reveal that while the process of learning to teach is individually constructed and experienced, it is socially negotiated. The research participants exhibited a permanent struggle between developing a personal professional style and coping with the restrictions imposed by living in a particular type of society that has already defined what teachers should do. This suggests that they had developed a sense of professional identity; a way to see themselves as teachers. The paper has relevance for policymakers in planning action promoting professional development in pre-service and in-service teacher education.