Actualizing Democracy: The Praxis of Teacher Identity Construction.

Abstract

In the quest for democratic, rigorous and engaged classrooms, one of the main goals for some teacher educators is to connect teachers to the communities in which they work in order to be more conscious of the realities and identities of their students (McDermott, 1998). This quest is often hampered by the un-inspected and dominant-culture identities that prospective/new teachers bring to their work. Helping teachers reflect on their identity has emerged as a goal in my teacher education work, evolving out of a variety of experiences in my professional and personal life. These are: 1) my professional work as a classroom teacher in diverse, urban schools, 2) my professional research and practice with cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), and 3) my work with prospective/new teachers in and outside teacher education programs as a teacher education professor. Each of these activities has increased my focus on the importance and impact of activity on identity. Teacher identity has been defined in different ways through different methodologies. In this paper, I use autobiographical information, based on my life as an urban teacher and teacher educator, to depict my journey, insights and experiences. In doing so, I synthesize the personal, pedagogical, and political aspects of my identity as a teacher educator. My journey provides a picture that will further enhance the understanding of teacher identity development and practice to provide insights and guidance to current education students, teachers and teacher educators. Developing new lenses through which teachers see their identities and their school communities require teacher educators to provide activity spaces within their university classrooms where effective praxis is both possible and encouraged. Why Am I Looking at Teacher Identity Development through My Own Professional Journey? While there is inherent bias in using an autobiographical approach as a form of investigation and reporting in the scholarly community, I believe that there is also a validity in my sharing my first-hand experiences and reflections. Self-report is very appropriate when investigating people's perceptions and reflections on their own experiences and development. I also believe that an autobiographical approach will best portray the vision of activity proposed by CHAT. Framework for This Article In this article, I will describe my journey around some key areas. I will start with a consideration of the challenges I faced in urban schools. I will move on to describe my journey related to insights gained in the areas of teacher identity development, social interaction, mediation, and apprenticeship, and how I grew to apply CHAT in my work. I. Challenges Faced While Teaching in Urban Schools When I graduated from college, I became a teacher through the Teach For America (TFA) program. I was intrigued by the challenge and hope of work with urban youth, and surprisingly TFA returned me to my hometown of Los Angeles. There I worked in public and Catholic schools for the next 6 years. My experiences in three very different schools led me to simultaneous interests in the politics of education and the challenges new teachers face. With several years of classroom experience, and a sense of research I wished to conduct, I began graduate school while in my 6th year of teaching. This process shifted my perspective through the mediated reflection that theory and time for graduate work provided. I found there that theory could help me to understand and organize my experiences as a young teacher. Further, I found analytic tools to unpack my experience that larger politics were at work outside the classroom that affected my work inside the classroom. In fact, this discovery led me to enter teacher education with the hope that my work could support teachers as they currently straddle the pedagogical and political roles and identities of contemporary education work. …