Working with identity work: Supporting professional identity development in teacher education

Abstract

The development of a coherent sense of self as a teacher often emerges from tensions between multiple and competing identities. While grappling with these tensions can be stressful, and sometimes demoralizing, it is through disruption that spaces for development are provided. For preservice teachers, identity development can be supported through engagement with these processes. With a focus on conceptualizations of the self that foreground its narrative structure and conflicted nature-and taking the work of learning to teach English as an example-this chapter presents a series of tools that can be used for 'working with identity work' at different stages of a preservice teacher's education.