"Looking in the mirror": the construction of professional identity as a teacher during school placements

Abstract

The construction of professional identity occupies a complex place among the various components of effective teacher training. School placements, in particular, represent fundamental sites for the identity development of the student, with oftentimes notable and distinctive differences apparent according to the institutional context in which this takes place. This article compares aspects of school placements within Primary Education and Early Childhood degrees in Spain and England, taking the universities of Girona and Gloucestershire as examples. We go onto present the results of a study on the construction of teacher identity with a group of second-year undergraduate students (N=16) participating in a transnational project across the two universities. For this, we look across the curricula and organisational practices of both institutions, drawing on Garner & Kaplan’s (2018) “Model of Dynamic Role Identity Systems” for the empirical study. We apply qualitative content analysis, a mixed inductive-deductive categorisation technique, and axial coding to an analysis of the students' narratives and provide illustrative examples of these. The data analysed are presented in three matrix categories and 14 subcategories, that highlight the dynamics of identity development, as seen and exemplified among the students of both nationalities. We observe how the transnational dynamic feeds the contrast and self-reflection and how the personal and the professional form a binomial of these dimensions that spill-over, one to the other.