Language-Teacher Professional Identity: Focus on Discontinuities from the Perspective of Teacher Affiliation, Attachment and Autonomy

Abstract

This chapter describes the investigation of language teachers’ professional-identity trajectories through an analysis of discontinuities (interruptions), as inspired by Herbart and Dewey, such as encounters with difference, unfamiliarity or disagreement. The paper discusses a four-year qualitative study that investigates the experiences of four pre-service teachers from Poland throughout their training course and the year following the course. Drawing on the proposed Three-A Teacher Identity Framework (3ATIF) comprising teachers’ willingness to teach English (Affiliation), their beliefs related to their teaching (Attachment), and agentive-reflective powers (Autonomy), the study traces the participants’ identity formation from their experiences as students to the time after the completion of their training. It focuses on what happened to various participants: The one who wanted to become a teacher and managed to do so, the one who did not want to but took up the job anyway, the one who wanted to become a teacher but dropped out and the one who never really wanted to be a teacher and did not become one. The procedure of working with the material is an “analysis of narratives” followed by a “narrative analysis” (Polkinghorne, 1995). The study reveals how complex the formation of teacher identity can be, questions the existence of clear dichotomies in professional trajectories and argues for the investigation of discontinuities that may initiate a new direction in language learning psychology.