Identity development in teachers and why it matters in kids’ learning

Dr Robyn Moloneyrobyn.moloney@mq.edu.au

Two lectures

• 1. Your personal and intercultural identity development as a teacher

• 2. What you do with it- the impact your persona has on learning outcomes for kids

• Context: teacher identity as it relates to literacy, multicultural education and topics of equity and social justice

Connections…

• Anne Rene Elsbree:understanding ourselves, our choices, how we speak, the Lens through which we see our teaching and the kids; teaching as a political act , producing a better critical understanding, shifting both our and kids’perceptions

Connections…

• Karen Kime

• Many teachers in Australia teaching only from one cultural perspective. Idea of adopting the hat of LEARNER, become a learner again in understanding community in which we teach..

Connections…

• With your cultural plunge and your interpretation of your response…

• With my previous lecture: multicultural Australia, language, our “shifts”, Bennett and Hammer model DMIS

• Today: efforts to produce reflective practitioners and why – studies of preservice teachers

• Thursday: what effect you have- studies re effects of teacher identity on kids’ learning

• Reflective practitioner- teachers who have the tools the skills to question their practice, listen to themselves, listen to kids, critically evaluate the system.

• Norton (2000) identity = “how a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how that person understands possibilities for the future”- should occupy a central place in language research

• (Norton) Identity constructs and is constructed by language

• Pavlenko(2004) language as the locus of social organisation and power, and as a form of symbolic capital as well as a site of struggle where subjectivity and individual consciousnesses are produced”

5 studies:Brown & Miller (2006)

• Study of ESL preservice teachers

• Prac placement- school requested that uni “not send a student teacher with a foreign name”

• Construction of ESL teacher identity: it has to be a native speaker? Language competence? Racist?

The dance of identity

Identity lens Aspects focussed on

1.Individual identities

2. Self identities

3. Ideological identities

4. Agentic identities

5. Work identities

6. Group identities

Age, gender, class, body, sexual identity

Inner sense of who we are

Values and beliefs

Ability to act

Place in power structure

Identification with others

Trotman & Kerr (2001)

• Grad Dip , use of personal life histories

• Make internal more explicit

• Take external experiences, reinterpret them, reorganize them as internalised vision of self.

• Perspective transformation (Mezirwo, 1990)

Trotman &Kerr ctd

• Journal writing: 2 levels or types of analysis• Descriptive (373 assignments 2009) • Perspective transformation- reformulation of pre-

suppositions about schooling, society and adolescence.

• this capacity is essential foundation of the inclusive discriminating integrative framework of the critical reflective practitioner

• Our belief in the interactive and dialogic nature of learning was re-affirmed

Bagnall (2005)

• University of Sydney- • Cultural engagement model- preservice teachers

interacting with Polynesian community in Sydney• Cultural immersion model- PS teachers go and

live and teach in remote schools in Aboriginal communities, and Samoan village communities

• Write reflective journal assignment• Writing fell into three levels:

3 levels of writing

• Culturally descriptive- describe the other culture• Culturally Dialogic –analytical conversations with

self about culture, conflict, new ways of explaining..

• Culturally critical- examined their own behaviour in the context of the other culture, review own assumptions; think about how to organise best learning

• (compare with Bennett and Hammer DMIS?)

Jokikokko (2005) Finland PS ed.

• IC education integrated into all PS teaching and manifested in teacher attitudes and values, which also affected the objectives content and methods of teaching

• the graduated students mentioned difficulties they encountered in their jobs due to different worldviews values and ideas that their colleagues embraced. This highlights the importance of developing courage as part of intercultural competence.

Mushi (2004)perceptions of MC education- hand out

• What is multicultural education?• What activities have you done with kids that

constitute MC education? • shift in understanding beginning middle and end

of semester • Table 1- what shift is there?• Table 2- ranking of levels of activities,

assumptions, effectiveness• Comparison with Bennett and Hammer DMIS?

Teacher identity as implied by Institute of teachers?

• Teachers work as defined by governments, institutions, employers,..• An attribute missing from the standards: intercultural capital

(Mayer, Luke and Luke, 2008) • Learning to act across cultures in ways that make a difference in

working class and minority classrooms and schools – will require something beyond recognition of difference, speaking position and history.

• Need to develop capacity to “reason from the point of view of others (Benhabib,1992) and a “willingness to engage with the other…searching for contrasts rather than uniformity”

• teacher will have a sense of origin, broker between students and the world, and work for the betterment of individuals and groups”

• “world teachers develop for themselves and their students modes of intercultural capital”.

Recall- today

• Cornell notes- with partner- Explain alternate dotpoints

• Define or describe identity, aspects? • Why important in preservice teacher education? • Using your personal resources: Life history

journal writing- outcomes• Bagnall- 3 levels of cultural analysis in student

journals • Mushi- the effective activities?• Intercultural capital and the World Teacher.

• Refs• Bagnall, N. F. (2005). "Teacher cultural reflection and cultural action learning:

researching a cultural dimension in teacher education." Ethnography and Education European Review 4: 101-116.

• Moran, P. R. (2001). Teaching Culture: Perspectives in Practice. Scarborough, Ontario, Heinle & Heinle.

• Paige, M., Chi, J. (2001). Maximising Study Abroad.• Ryan, P. (1998). "Cultural Knowledge and Foreign Language Teachers: A Case

Study of a Native Speaker of English and a Native Speaker of Spanish." Language, Culture and Curriculum 11(2): 135-153.

• Seelye, H. N. (1994). Teaching Culture: Strategies for Intercultural Communication. Illinois, National Textbook Company.

• Jokikokko, K. (2005). "Interculturally trained Finnish teachers' conceptions of diversity and intercultural competence." Intercultural Education 16(1): 69-83.

• Jakubowicz, A. (1988). "The Celebration of (Moderate) Diversity in a Racist Society." Discourse 8(2).

• Mayer, D., Luke, C., Luke, A. (2008). Teachers, National Regulation and Cosmopolotanism . in (eds) A M Phelan, and J Sumsion . Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

• Trotman J., & Kerr, T. (2001) Making the personal professional: preservice teachers teacher education and personal histories. Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice. Vol 7 No. 2, 2001 p. 157-171.

• Mushi, S. (2004). Multicultural competencies in teaching: a typology of classroom activities. Intercultural Education. Vol 15, no.2 179-191.