Future Teachers' Identity: Between an Idealistic Vision and a Realistic View.

Abstract

This study focuses on the way in which graduating student teachers represent themselves both as individuals and as future professional teachers, and compares these representations by identity status as defined by Marcia (Marcia et al., 1993). Seventy-six semi-structured interviews were conducted with students during their last year of a university elementary teacher preparation program. The results show consistency between personal and professional attributes among all the interviewed students. A high number of participants see themselves as both dynamic and empathic, thus reflecting an idealized conception of themselves and of the profession. IDENTITE PERSONNELLE ET PROFESSIONNELLE CHEZ LES FUTURS MAITRES: VISION IDEALISTE OU REGARD REALISTE? RESUME. Cette recherche se penche sur les representations que des etudiantes en fin de formation des maitres au prescolaire et au primaire ont d’elles-memes en tant que personnes et en tant que futures enseignantes. Soixante-seize entrevues semi-dirigees ont ete realisees dans quatre etablissements universitaires. Ces donnees sont analysees selon les etats identitaires des sujets tels que definis par Marcia (Marcia et al., 1993). Les resultats montrent une coherence entre les caracteristiques personnelles et professionnelles que les sujets s’attribuent quel que soit leur etat identitaire. Un grand nombre d’etudiantes se definissent comme dynamiques et empathiques, ces caracteristiques refletant une representation idealisee d’elles-memes aussi bien que de la profession enseignante. In the past years a growing debate has taken place in Europe as well as in North America concerning the recognition of a professional status for teachers. This issue has recently gained a lot of attention in Quebec with the reform in educational programs, including that of teacher preparation, which emphasize competency. Competencies, the creation of a professional order of teachers, autonomy, and professional ethics are the leading words in the new orthodoxy of the teaching profession. Gohier, Chevrier, & Anadon 142 REVUE DES SCIENCES DE L’EDUCATION DE MCGILL • VOL. 42 NO 1 HIVER 2007 In this context, one must also consider the worrisome fact that there is in North America a growing number of young teachers who turn away from the teaching profession. In Quebec, 15% to 20% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years (Martel, 2003). In the USA, this number seems to rise to about 30% to 50% (Auffret, 1997). Reasons to explain this phenomenon are still being investigated and links with professional identity are being studied. For instance, Kremer and Hofman (1985) found a relationship between burnout among teachers and a weak professional identity. Nias (1987) states that teachers most resistant to examining or changing their teaching are those who experience difficulty in separating their personal and professional identities. Making a change in their frame of reference is much more threatening because it involves the whole person, not only the professional self. In this context, it is important to enquire into the nature and the construction of the professional self-identity of present and future teachers with regard to the reality of teaching, starting with the way student teachers represent themselves both as individuals and as future professional teachers. Understanding these representations may shed light on the competencies that the students attribute to themselves or not, and therefore, on those worth developing in the training of teachers to be. From these data, hypotheses can also be made about the conception of the teaching profession underlying student teachers’ self representations, the particular focus of this study. Implications for teacher training programs will be formulated in the conclusion. Theoretical framework Debates around the recognition of the professional status of teachers refer to the question of professional identity and to its construction on the part of pre-service teachers during their initial university training as well as teachers during their actual practice. This question has led us to develop a definition of professional identity and a model for its construction (Gohier, Anadon, Bouchard, Charbonneau, & Chevrier, 1999, 2000, 2001). This model, which aims to integrate the psychological and the sociological dimensions, does not pretend to be theoretically exhaustive. The question of the construction of professional identity, when applied to the training of future teachers, is in itself an extensive question which borrows from different disciplinary traditions such as, for example, the marxist sociology of Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1970), the humanistic psychology of Rogers (1969, 1984), and the cultural approach of Hall (Hall & DuGuay, 1996). In the ’70s and ‘80s, Katz (1972) and Huberman (1989, 1993) were already talking about different identity stages in the career of teachers (Gohier, 1998). A comparison of our model with those of Dubar (1996) and of Sikes, Measor, and Woods (1985) can be found in Gohier, Anadon, Bouchard, Charbonneau, and Chevrier (2001).