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Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ tate

Profiles and change in beginning teachers’ professional identitytensions

M.T. Pillen a,b,*, P.J. Den Brok a, D. Beijaard a

a Eindhoven School of Education, Eindhoven University of Technology, PO Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The NetherlandsbWindesheim University of Applied Sciences, 8017 CA Zwolle, The Netherlands

h i g h l i g h t s

� Profiles in beginning teachers’ professional identity tensions were studied.� Professional identity tensions were classified into three themes.� A cluster analysis identified six teacher profiles.� Professional identity tensions changed over time.� Professional identity tensions affected by support provided by significant others.

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 30 May 2012Received in revised form3 April 2013Accepted 4 April 2013

Keywords:TensionsBeginning teachersProfessional identity

* Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: m.t.pillen@tue.nl, mt.pillen@w

p.j.d.brok@tue.nl (P.J. Den Brok), d.beijaard@tue.nl (D

0742-051X/$ e see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.003

a b s t r a c t

This study reports on profiles in beginning teachers’ professional identity tensions regarding theirchanging role from student to teacher, their care for students and their orientations towards learning toteach. 373 teachers completed a questionnaire. Cluster analysis identified six profiles: teachers strugglingwith (views of) significant others, teachers with care-related tensions, teachers with responsibility-relatedtensions, moderately tense teachers, tension-free teachers, and troubled teachers. Data of 42 teachers whocompleted the questionnaire twice showed that tensions are subject to change, implying that tensionscan be reduced, coped with or altered if support is provided by teacher educators or mentors in schools.

� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The process of learning to teach is not only very complex but alsovery personal (McLean, 1999; Olsen, 2010). When beginningteachers enter the teaching profession, they bring with them theirown conceptions of teaching and learning based on their prior ex-periences as students, their biographies, personal characteristics,norms and values. At the same time, the contexts inwhich they (aregoing to)work expose them to a great number of expectations from,for instance, students, parents, colleagues, school leaders, and thecommunity (Stronach, Corbin, McNamara, Stark, & Warne, 2002;Warin, Maddock, Pell, & Hargreaves, 2006). Teachers need to adaptto the demands that come with the teaching profession. Forinstance, becoming a teacher means deciding how to express one-self in the classroom and adapting personal understandings andideals to institutional demands (Carter & Doyle, 1996). The constant

indesheim.nl (M.T. Pillen),. Beijaard).

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process of reconciling the personal and professional side of being orbecoming a teacher characterises the development of a teacher’sprofessional identity (Alsup, 2006; Lipka & Brinthaupt, 1999; Olsen,2010; Volkmann & Anderson, 1998). In this study, professionalidentity development is perceived as the process of integratingone’spersonal knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, norms, and values on the onehand, and professional demands from teacher education institutesand schools, including broadly accepted values and standardsabout teaching, on the other (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004).

Beginning teachers need to have a sense of their professionalidentity in order to better understand on which grounds theirconduct and beliefs are based (Coldron & Smith, 1999; MacLure,1993). Developing a professional identity, however, can be verydifficult, because ‘what is found relevant to the profession mayconflict with the personal desires from teachers and what theyexperience as good’ (Beijaard et al., 2004, p.109). Such conflicts mayemerge as tensions in the professional identity of (beginning)teachers and are described byWarin et al. (2006, p. 237) in terms of‘identity dissonance’. In this study, professional identity tensionsare considered to be internal struggles between aspects relevant to

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97 87

the teacher as a person and the teacher as a professional. Suchtensions may challenge a teacher’s personal feelings, values, beliefs,or perceptions and, as a consequence, they are often not (easily)resolvable.

In previous research conducted by the authors (Pillen, Beijaard,& Den Brok, in press), a great variety of professional identity ten-sions among beginning teachers was found. One example of such atension was that of a student teacher who felt trapped betweenhaving to follow his mentor in the school andwanting to go his ownway. Owing to his beliefs about teaching and dealing with students,he could barely bring himself to teach the way his mentor did. Hefelt, however, that teaching the way he thought was best for hisstudents was not an option as his mentor was also the onewho hadto assess him. Beginning teachers often indicated that their ten-sions were accompanied by negative emotions, like feeling helplessand angry or being aware of shortcomings. For some of them,experiencing such tensions had severe consequences forcontinuing their teacher education or their professional develop-ment. Theywere regularly at a loss regarding how to deal with theirtensions (Pillen et al., in press; see also Alsup, 2006; Olsen, 2010;Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004). To preventbeginning teachers from feeling frustrated in the process oflearning to teach, they should not be left to cope on their ownwiththeir professional identity tensions. It is essential that teacher ed-ucators or mentors in schools support beginning teachers in thisrespect and are aware of their professional identity tensions(Volkmann & Anderson, 1998). After all, the transition period frombeing a student to becoming an in-practice teacher can be verydifficult for a great number of beginning teachers (Huberman,1989;Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002; Veenman, 1984). Meanwhile this is aperiod that heavily influences their perceptions of who they are asteachers and the teachers they wish to become. In this respect,professional identity tensions are one of the difficulties which canconfront many beginning teachers.

This study aims at profiling beginning teachers according totheir professional identity tensions whereby the different tensionsthat are experienced next to one another, are being summarisedinto smaller bits that are more accessible and easier to comprehend(cf. Rickards, Den Brok, & Fisher, 2005). This might help beginningteachers to become better aware of their professional identitytensions and make these explicit; it also makes it easier for teachereducators and mentors in schools to recognise such tensions andassist beginning teachers in dealing with them. Moreover, profilescan be very useful tools for stimulating reflection, especially whenthey are accompanied by powerful labels that can help to makebeginning teachers’ associations with certain professional identitytensions explicit (cf. Rickards et al., 2005; Wubbels, 1992). Thisstudy also aims at contributing to a better understanding of theextent to which the professional identity tensions of beginningteachers are stable or subject to change. Insights into the stabilityand the persistence of professional identity tensions are importantadditional information for teacher educators and mentors inschools in their support of beginning teachers. So far, not much isknown about the extent to which these tensions change over time.

In this study the following research questions will be answered:

1. What sort of profiles in beginning teachers’ professional iden-tity tensions can be found?

2. To what extent are professional identity tensions, as repre-sented in these profiles, subject to change?

In order to answer these research questions, a questionnairewasused that was administered twice among beginning teachers. Thequestionnaire was based on a prior study by the authors (Pillen etal., in press) in which a small sample of beginning teachers were

interviewed about their professional identity tensions. The presentstudy also seeks to confirm the findings of this prior study with amuch larger sample of beginning teachers. By beginning teacherswe refer to final-year student teachers and first-year in-practiceteachers, since the focus in this study is on the transition from beinga student to becoming an independent in-practice teacher. Studentteachers in their final year are considered to be beginning teachersin the Netherlands, since they spend a relatively large amount oftime in practice schools and operate as rather independent teachersthen. Beginning teachers who were educated for, or work in pri-mary education, general secondary education or secondary voca-tional education were asked to participate in this study. For each ofthese types of education, student teachers in the Netherlands areeducated at different teacher education institutes. Primary teachereducation institutes educate students to teach pupils aged four to12 years old (elementary school). To teach students from 12 to 16years old (secondary school), students are educated at teachereducation institutes for general secondary education if they havechosen to teach a general subject, or at teacher education institutesfor vocational education if they want to teach a vocational subject.All programmes last four years and lead to a bachelor’s degree.

2. Theoretical background

2.1. Professional identity (development)

In general, researchers who study teachers’ professional identitydiffer in terms of how they define, view, and study this concept.They usually do agree, though, on the fact that professional identityis not a stable product, but rather a continually changing, active,and on-going process. They also believe that it is not only influ-enced by teachers’ personal characteristics, learning history, priorexperiences and beliefs, among other things, but also by profes-sional contexts, colleagues, or teachers’ knowledge, skills andeducational attitudes (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Beijaard et al.,2004; Cooper & Olson,1996; Flores & Day, 2006; Hong, 2010; Olsen,2010, 2011; Schepens, Aelterman, & Vlerick, 2009). Teachers’ pro-fessional identity is thus both a product and a process (Olsen, 2010).The first refers to how teachers see themselves as a result of theinteraction among aspects or elements of the teacher as a personand the teacher as a professional at a given moment. The latterrefers to changes in that perception because of influences from‘outside’ (for example, the feedback of a mentor), or from ‘inside’(for example, the desire to experiment with something new).

In order to develop their professional identity, beginning teachersneed to be consciously engaged in shaping their professional iden-tity, preferably in relationship with and supported by their teachereducators, mentors in schools and peers (Pearce & Morrison, 2011).

2.2. Tensions in beginning teachers’ professional identity

In this study, professional identity tensions are considered to beinternal struggles between how a teacher sees him/herself as aperson and as a professional. Unlike ‘typical’ beginning teacherproblems (Veenman, 1984), which are generally consideredresolvable, professional identity tensions as conceived in this studyare more complex to cope with and challenge a teacher’s feelings,values, beliefs, or perceptions. A nice example of such a professionalidentity tension is given by Smagorinsky et al. (2004). Theydescribe a student teacher who tried to negotiate different con-ceptions of teaching at her practice school: the university taughther a constructivist teaching approach, whereas her mentor at thepractice school adhered to a ‘traditional’ teaching approach. She feltfrustrated, because she lacked the opportunity to teach in the wayshe wanted, and was afraid of becoming the (traditional) teacher

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e9788

she did not want to be. Similar examples have also been reportedby, for example, Olsen (2010). More serious consequences of ten-sions can be derived from Volkmann and Anderson’s work (1998)on a beginning chemistry teacher’s professional identity con-struction. This student’s tensions, which were real dilemmas to her,were caused by the fact that her own ideas about teaching differedfrom the reality of whatmakes a professional teacher. One dilemmaconcerned her desire to make chemistry understandable and funfor the students, although she felt herself that chemistry wasdifficult and dull. She did not succeed in resolving this dilemma anddecided to leave the profession for a couple of years in order to gainmore content knowledge (Volkmann & Anderson, 1998).

In our previous study, a literature study was conducted onteachers’ professional identity tensions (Pillen et al., in press). Inorder to gain a comprehensive overview of professional identitytensions, we studied literature in the field of teacher education,nursing and social work education. These domains are all socialprofessions whose practitioners, in one way or another, serve otherpeople. It appeared that tensions encountered by beginning nursesand beginning social workers were quite similar to the tensionsexperienced by beginning teachers (Kälvemark, Höglund, Hansson,Westerholm, & Arnetz, 2004; Richards, Ruch, & Trevithick, 2005).The tensions described in the literature, however, were often notconceptualised from a professional identity perspective by theoriginal authors (e.g., Kälvemark et al., 2004; Katz & Raths, 1992);they were interpreted by us as such if the tensions expressed aconflict between personal and professional desires of workers in

Table 1Three themes and corresponding professional identity tensions.

Theme

1. The changing role from beinga student to becoming a teacher

2. Conflicts between desired andactual support given to students

3. Conflicting conceptions oflearning to teach

*Tensions that were not found in the literature, but were mentioned by two or m

these domains. Thirteen professional identity tensions could beidentified in the literature. Although a substantial amount of liter-ature was studied, we cannot claim our search was exhaustive.

In order to examine the extent to which beginning teachersexperienced the 13 tensions described in the literature, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 beginning teachers(12 final-year student teachers and 12 first-year in-practice teach-ers, teaching in primary education, general secondary education orsecondary vocational education). By asking open questions,we triedto gain insight into the beginning teachers’ ‘professional identitytensions’. If interviewees had difficulties recalling such tensions, anexample was presented (the same example for every interviewee).The interview continued with semi-structured questions about thecause and nature of the tension(s). Subsequently, a comparisonwasmade between the professional identity tensions that weredescribed in the literature and those that were mentioned by theinterviewees. Of the 13 professional identity tensions that werefound in the literature, nine were also regularly mentioned by theinterviewees. Four tensions identified in the literature (see Table 1)were not at all, or only rarely, recognised by the interviewees. Thesefourwere therefore not included in the final list of tensions that wasused for the questionnaire in this study. Interviewees alsomentioned tensions that were not found in the literature. Whenthese newly formulated tensions werementioned by at least two ofthe interviewees, they were added to the final list (see the tensionswith an asterisk in Table 1). The final list of, again,13 tensions servedas input for the questionnaire. The tensions were classified into

Tensions

Feeling like a student versus being expected to actlike an adult teacher (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Volkmann & Anderson, 1998)

Wanting to care for students versus being expected to betough (Fuller & Bown, 1975;Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011; Volkmann & Anderson, 1998)

Feeling incompetent of knowledge versus being expectedto be an expert (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Katz & Raths, 1992;Volkmann & Anderson, 1998)

Wanting to invest time in practising teaching versus feelingpressured to invest time in other tasks that are part of theteaching profession (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Kälvemark et al., 2004)

Feeling treated like a student versus wanting to takeresponsibility as a teacher (Pillen et al., in press)*

Feeling like a peer versus wanting to take responsibility asa teacher (Pillen et al., in press)*

Wanting to respect students’ integrity versus feeling theneed to work against this integrity (Kälvemark et al., 2004;Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011)

Wanting to treat pupils as persons as a whole versus feelingthe need to treat them as learners (or vice versa) (Berlak & Berlak, 1981)

Experiencing difficulties in maintaining an emotionaldistance (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Veenman, 1984)

Experiencing conflicts between one’s own and others’orientations regarding learning to teach (Alsup, 2006;Rajuan, Beijaard, & Verloop, 2007)

Being exposed to contradictory institutional attitudes(Hatch, 1993; Olsen, 2010; Smagorinsky et al., 2004)

Feeling dependent on a mentor (colleague/supervisor)versus wanting to go one’s own way in teaching (Pillen et al., in press)*

Wanting to invest in a private life versus feeling pressured tospend time and energy on work (Pillen et al., in press)*

ore of the interviewees.

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97 89

three themes according to content, namely: (1) the changing rolefrom being a student to becoming a teacher, (2) conflicts betweendesired and actual support given to students, and (3) conflictingconceptions of learning to teach. Table 1 shows the three themes andtheir corresponding tensions.

The first theme comprises tensions regarding the changing rolefrombeing a student to experiencing the sudden responsibilities thatare part of the teacher’s responsibility. Although beginning teachersare gradually prepared for the teaching profession by, among otherthings, spendinga relatively large amountof time in schools, theycanbe taken by surprise by the responsibilities they have as a teacher.They are placed, for example, solely in charge of lesson content andthe students, and they need to learn how to behave when dealingwith colleagues, students, the director or parents. An example of atension that was categorised in this theme is Feeling incompetent interms of knowledge versus being expected to be an expert. This form oftension was mentioned by several interviewees and referred to byseveral authors (Fuller & Bown, 1975; Katz & Raths, 1992; Volkmann& Anderson, 1998). Beginning teachers who experience this tensionmay feel that their students expect them to be an expert in theirsubject although they do not feel that they are.

The second theme comprises tensions that beginning teachersexperience regarding whether they will be able to provide thesupport their students need. When beginning teachers startfocusing on their students, they will, for example, notice that someof them are poor learners who achieve disappointing results andthat others have a troubled home environment. Beginning teacherswho feel responsible for their students’ well-being may not knowhow to respond to such situations. They may also experience dif-ficulties in offering help to their students because they lack thetime, resources, or capability to do so. Wanting to respect students’integrity versus feeling the need to work against this integrity is anexample of such a tension. Beginning teachers who experience thistension may find their students to confide in them. The situationbecomes difficult when they are forced to decide whether torespect a student’s confidence or betray it to protect the student orother people (Kälvemark et al., 2004; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011).

The third theme includes tensions about conflicts regardingconceptions of learning to teach between beginning teachers andothers. Beginning teachers are supervised by a mentor or teachereducator, and they cooperate with colleagues and the director oftheir school. If the conceptions of beginning teachers regarding howto learn how to teach differ too much from those of others, sometension is likely to be experienced. Beginning teachersmay not knowwhether to listen to others or to go their own way. Being exposed tocontradictory institutional attitudes is an example of such a tension.Beginning teachers who experience this tension have to deal withinstitutes (university, i.e. teacher education institute, and practiceschool) that express contradictory attitudes towards learning andteaching (Hatch, 1993; Olsen, 2010; Smagorinsky et al., 2004).

Table 2Examples of statements with the corresponding tension, one for each of the themes.

Theme Tension

1. The changing role frombeing a student tobecoming a teacher

Wanting to care for students versusbeing expected to be tough

2. Conflicts between desiredand actual support given tostudents

Experiencing difficulties inmaintaining an emotional distance

3. Conflicting conceptions oflearning to teach

Experiencing conflicts between one’sown and others’ orientations regardinglearning to teach

These three themes with their corresponding professionalidentity tensions, derived from the literature and interviews with24 beginning teachers (see Table 1), served as input for the ques-tionnaire that was used in the current study.

3. Method

3.1. Instrumentation

As mentioned before, the questionnaire that was used for thisstudy was based on the list of 13 tensions derived from both theliterature study and the interviews. Initially, the questionnaire wasdeveloped to map beginning teachers’ professional identity ten-sions, feelings and coping strategies (Pillen, Beijaard, & Den Brok,2012). For the present contribution, only the percentage of re-spondents that recognised themselves in each of the 13 profes-sional identity tensions was of importance. Therefore, only answersto questions regarding the recognition of tensions were used (seeAppendix 1 for the complete questionnaire).

The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The first part con-tained questions about the background characteristics of the re-spondents, such as their gender, age, teaching experience, andteacher education. In the second part of the questionnaire, all 13tensions (see Table 1) were presented in statements (see Table 2 forexamples). All authors were consulted before these statementswere formulated in such a way that beginning teachers would beable to recognise the tensions expressed in the statements in theirown practice. For each of the statements the respondents wereasked whether they recognised their own experiences in it or not. Asimple yes or no was sufficient. Examples of statements repre-senting a tension, and the corresponding theme are shown inTable 2 (see the questionnaire in Appendix 1 for the complete list ofstatements).

Before the questionnaire was conducted, it was presented to 10beginning teachers (who were excluded from participation in thestudy). They were asked to pay attention to the intelligibility of thequestions and statements and to give suggestions for improvement.Three statements needed adjustments and some questions wererephrased.

3.2. Data collection and sample

To find a sufficient number of beginning teachers to completethe questionnaire, we approached directors of eight teacher edu-cation institutes in the Netherlands: five for primary education, twofor general secondary education and one for secondary vocationaleducation. All were willing to cooperate in the distribution of thequestionnaires among their final-year student teachers and grad-uates (first-year in-practice teachers, who graduated during theprevious year). For each of the institutes, a contact person was

Statement

‘In order to maintain order in the classroom, Nicole needsto be strict with her students. This is difficult, because she wantsthe students to like her and she adheres to a positive atmosphere inthe classroom. Nicole wants her students to feel that she is there forthem, but that does not allow her to be strict’.

‘Howard is very concerned about his students’ well-being. He has ahard time accepting that he is not capable of helping his students tofulfil their needs’.

‘Geoff finds that he did not learn the things that he should have learnedduring teacher education in order to be able to function well at the school’.

Table 3Distribution of 373 respondents in terms of teacher education, teaching experience, and gender. Between brackets: the 42 respondents who completed the questionnaire forboth periods.

Beginning teachers Gender Primary (teacher) education General secondary (teacher) education Secondary vocational (teacher) education Total

n % n % n % N %

Final-year studentteachers

Male 12 (1) 3.2 (2.4) 26 (3) 7.0 (7.1) 14 (2) 3.8 (4.8) 52 (6) 14.0 (14.3)Female 101 (14) 27.1 (33.3) 61 (4) 16.4 (9.5) 11 (2) 3.0 (4.8) 173 (20) 46.5 (47.6)

First-year in-practiceteachers

Male 5 (0) 1.3 (0.0) 17 (1) 4.6 (2.4) 14 (2) 3.8 (4.8) 36 (3) 9.7 (7.1)Female 49 (7) 13.1 (16.7) 58 (4) 15.6 (9.5) 5 (2) 1.3 (4.8) 112 (13) 30.0 (31.0)

Total 167 (22) 44.7 (52.4) 162 (12) 43.6 (28.6) 44 (8) 11.9 (19.0) 373 (42) 100.2 (100.0)

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e9790

assigned to distribute the questionnaire at the end of the schoolyear, in May/June 2009 and May/June 2010. This contact personasked the student teachers for their consent, and if students agreedto participate they subsequently received the questionnaire andcompleted it.

In order to characterise beginning teachers in terms of theirprofessional identity tensions, data from both final-year studentteachers and first-year in-practice teachers were included in theanalyses. The cross-sectional data consisted of the completedquestionnaires of the beginning teachers in the first period (May/June 2009) and the second (May/June 2010). In total, 373 beginningteachers completed the questionnaire: 181 in the first moment (108student teachers and 73 first-year in-practice teachers) and 192 inthe second (117 student teachers and 75 first-year in-practiceteachers). Their ages ranged from 19 to 59, with an average of 27.8.Over 75% of the respondents were between 20 and 28 years old.

In order to achieve (a small sample of) the longitudinal datarequired for investigating the extent to which characterisations ofprofessional identity tensions changed during the transition periodfrom student to first-year in-practice teacher, all student teacherswho completed the questionnaire in the first moment (108 in total)were asked if they were willing to complete the questionnaireagain in the second. Seventy of them agreed to this and providedtheir e-mail addresses and 42 of these 70 students (60%) actually

Table 4Themes with corresponding tensions and percentage of respondents who experienced e

Theme 1 Theme 2

The changing role from being a student to becoming a teacherMeana 25.6%

Conflicts betweengiven to studentsMeana 22.7%

Tensions theme 1 % ofresp.b

Tensions theme 2

Wanting to care for students versus beingexpected to be tough

60.4 Experiencing diffian emotional dist

Feeling incompetent in terms of knowledgeversus being expected to be an expert

26.9 Wanting to treatwhole versus feelthem as learners

Wanting to invest time in practising teachingversus feeling pressured to invest time inother tasks that are part of the teaching profession

25.8 Wanting to respeversus feeling thethis integrity

Feeling like a student versus being expected toact like an adult teacher

16.5

Feeling like a peer versus wanting to takeresponsibility as a teacher

15.4

Feeling treated like a student versus wanting totake responsibility as a teacher

8.8

a Mean: average percentage to which respondents recognised tensions within each ofb % of resp.: percentage of respondents who experienced each of the tensions.

completed the questionnaire again in May/June 2010. These 42beginning teachers appeared rather representative of the totalnumber of 373 beginning teachers with regard to type of teachereducation (c2 (2) ¼ 4.05, p ¼ 0.132), teaching experience (c2

(1) ¼ 0.49, p ¼ 0.486), gender (c2 (1) ¼ 0.99, p ¼ 0.753) and age (c2

(2) ¼ 1.58, p ¼ 0.453). The number of professional identity tensionsthey experienced differed slightly from that of the total number ofrespondents. The group that completed the questionnaire twiceexperienced more tensions (3.5 on average) than the total group ofrespondents (2.9 on average).

Table 3 provides an overview of all respondents who completedthe questionnaire(s), their distribution across types of teacher ed-ucation, teaching experience (final-year student versus first-yearin-practice teacher), and gender.

3.3. Data analysis

In Section 2.2 it was explained that the 13 professional identitytensions of the questionnaire were grouped into three themes.Before profiles were created, the average extent to which re-spondents recognised tensions within each of the three themeswas examined. Table 4 shows the corresponding tensions pertheme and, for each of the tensions in order of frequency the

ach of the tensions, listed in order of frequency.

Theme 3

desired and actual support Conflicting conceptions of learning to teachMeana 26.0%

% ofresp.b

Tensions theme 3 % ofresp.b

culties in maintainingance

26.9 Wanting to invest in a privatelife versus feeling pressured tospend time and energy on work

36.3

pupils as persons as aing the need to treat(or vice versa)

23.6 Experiencing conflicts betweenone’s own and others’ orientationsregarding learning to teach

33.5

ct students’ integrityneed to work against

17.6 Feeling dependent on a mentor(colleague/supervisor) versuswanting to go one’s own wayin teaching

20.9

Being exposed to contradictoryinstitutional attitudes

13.2

the three themes.

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97 91

percentage of respondents who experienced the individualtensions.

Subsequently, based on the questionnaire data, a cluster anal-ysis was conducted to create clusters with the three themes asvariables. In cluster analysis, respondents are assigned to groups(clusters) based on a set of variables or objects, so that the re-spondents in the same cluster are more similar to each other thanto those in other clusters (Tan, Steinbach, & Kumar, 2005). In thecurrent study, cluster analysis was used to identify groups ofbeginning teachers (profiles) who showed different patterns in thetensions experienced across the three themes. Hierarchical clus-tering with squared Euclidian distances and Mahalonobis distancenormalisation was used to make sure that profiles were optimallydifferent from each other. Ward’s method was selected to makesure that teachers within a profile were optimally similar. In orderto create clusters, an agglomerative strategy was used and thedendrogram was inspected to check how profiles were hierar-chically grouped. Solutions with two to eight clusters were testedin the search for the optimal number of profiles. For each of thecluster solutions, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conductedin order to establish the amounts of variance explained by thesolution(s) and to determine whether the profiles were statisti-cally significantly different from each other. The optimal numberof profiles was six. Solutions with more than six profiles explainedlittle extra variance in teachers’ scores, whereas solutions withfewer than six profiles explained considerably lower amounts ofvariance. Moreover, in the six cluster solutions, each of the profilesappeared to be interpretable. The six profiles will be discussed inthe Results section. Finally, discriminant analysis was used tovalidate the classification results. Discriminant analysis revealedthree discriminant functions underlying our grouping, explainingall variance. A total of 89.3% of the respondents was correctlyclassified by the discriminant analysis when compared with thefindings of our cluster analysis.

In order to investigate the extent to which the profiles ofbeginning teachers concerning their tensions were subject tochange, it was examined whether the total numbers of tensionsexperienced by the 42 beginning teachers in the second periodincreased, decreased or remained stable, compared with the firstperiod. This was also done for the numbers of tensions for each ofthe themes separately. Subsequently, we grouped each of the 42beginning teachers into one of the profiles by computing the dis-tance of the teacher to each of the six profiles e in terms of thethemes underlying the profiles e and by assigning the teacher tothe profile showing the smallest distance. In the light of the relativenumber of tensions they experienced within each of the themes, apersonal profile was created for every teacher. Subsequently, everyteacher was assigned to the profile that aligned best with his/herpersonal profile (see Fig. 1 in Section 4.1). This was done for bothperiods.

Table 5Overview of the distribution of beginning teachers over the profiles, average percentagesolution.

Profiles Number of

1 Teachers struggling with significant others 692 Teachers with care-related tensions 253 Teachers with responsibility-related tensions 574 Moderately tense teachers 755 Tension-free teachers 1356 Troubled teachers 12

Total 373Eta squared

4. Results

4.1. Profiling beginning teachers

Table 5 provides an overview of the distribution of beginningteachers over the six profiles, the average percentage of tensionswithin each of the themes, and the variance that was explained foreach of the three themes (eta squared).

The explained variances of theme 2 and theme 3 are relativelyhigh, whereas the explained variance of theme 1 is somewhat low.This means that differences between respondents in themes 2 and3 are better explained by the profiles than is the case for differencesin theme 1. Thus, there is more overlap between the profiles withrespect to theme 1 than with respect to the other two themes. Apossible explanation for this might be that theme 1 contains moretensions than themes 2 and 3 and, consequently, the nature oftensions in theme 1 may be more broadly interpretable than thenature of tensions in theme 2 and theme 3.

Fig. 1 is a graphical display in which the percentage of tensionswithin each of the themes is shown for each of the six profiles. Thesize of the circles reflects the number of teachers classified in eachprofile.

4.2. Profiles

In Table 5, theme 2, ‘conflicts between actual and desired sup-port provided to students’, seems to play a crucial role in charac-terising the six profiles. Theme 2 is very prominent in profile 2 andprofile 6, low to moderate in profile 1 and profile 4 and does notplay any role in profile 3 and profile 5. The six profiles will now bediscussed in detail.

4.2.1. Teachers with care-related tensions and troubled teachersAs said earlier, ‘conflicts between actual and desired support

provided to students’ (theme 2) is largely present in profile 2 andprofile 6. Profile 2 is represented by a relatively small group ofbeginning teachers whomainly experience tensions that have to dowith the concerns they have about their students or pupils. Profile 2teachers can also experience tensions about ‘the changing role frombeing a student to becoming a teacher’ (theme 1) or about ‘con-flicting orientations regarding learning to teach’ (theme 3), but to asmaller extent. They are labelled as teachers with care-related ten-sions, because they attach strong importance to the well-being oftheir students or pupils. They want to do a good job as a teacher infulfilling their students’ or pupils’ needs, but have a hard timeaccepting that they are not always capable of doing so. They mayexperience a lack of time, resources, or capability. It is striking thatas many as 64% of teachers in profile 2 are teachers in primaryeducation. A very small group of beginning teachers is classified inprofile 6. These teachers are similar to teachers with care-related

of tensions within each of the themes, and explained variance in themes by cluster

teachers Average %Theme 1

Average %Theme 2

Average %Theme 3

29% 15% 58%22% 75% 21%42% 0% 8%32% 36% 14%9% 0% 9%60% 72% 65%

0.49 0.85 0.71

Fig. 1. Graphical display. For each of the six profiles, the average percentage of tensions within each of the themes is shown. The size of the profiles is reflected by the size of thecircle.

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e9792

tensions in that they also experience a large number of tensions thatare related to theme 2. In contrast with profile 2 teachers, they alsoexperience tensions that are often related to theme 1 and theme 3.This small group of beginning teachers, dominated by teachers ingeneral secondary education (eight out of 12 teachers), experiencesmany tensions across all three themes and is therefore labelled astroubled teachers.

4.2.2. Teachers struggling with (views of) significant others andmoderately tense teachers

Theme 2 is low to moderately present in profile 1 and profile 4.Beginning teachers who are classified in either one of these profilesexperience some tensions related to ‘conflicts between desired andactual support given to students’, but not as much as teachers in theprevious two profiles. Beginning teachers who are classified inprofile 1 experience some tensions about the ‘changing role frombeing a student to becoming a teacher’ (theme 1), but they mainlyexperience tensions that are part of theme 3, ‘conflicting orienta-tions regarding learning to teach’. Since beginning teachers inprofile 1 do not (easily) seem to adapt to others’ orientationsregarding learning to teach, but strongly adhere to their own ori-entations, these teachers are labelled as teachers struggling with(views of) significant others. Teachers in profile 1 want to feel incontrol of the choices they make in their work, but they feel limitedin doing so by the conflicting orientations of others regardinglearning to teach. Beginning teachers who are classified in profile 4experience to a similar degree as teachers from profile 1 tensionsregarding the ‘changing role from being a student to becoming ateacher’ (theme 1), but fewer tensions that are part of theme 3,‘conflicting orientations regarding learning to teach’, comparedwith profile 1 teachers. Unlike some of the other profiles, profile 4 isnot a very distinctive profile. Therefore, teachers in this profile arelabelled as moderately tense teachers. They do experience tensionsacross all three themes, but not to a great extent, and none of the

three themes clearly stands out. Teachers of all three types of ed-ucation are distributed roughly equally over profile 1: 19.2% of allparticipating teachers in primary education, 18.5% of all partici-pating teachers in general secondary education, and 15.9% of allparticipating teachers in secondary vocational education wereclassified in profile 1. The same applies to the distribution ofteachers in profile 4: 23.4% of all participating primary teachers,16.1% of general secondary teachers, and 22.7% of secondaryvocational teachers were classified in profile 4.

4.2.3. Teachers with responsibility-related tensions and tension-freeteachers

Theme 2 is not present in profile 3 and profile 5, so beginningteachers who are classified in one of these profiles do not experi-ence any tension regarding ‘conflicts between desired and actualsupport given to students’. Profile 3 teachers also hardly experiencetensions that are part of theme 3, ‘conflicting orientations regardinglearning to teach’. They mostly experience tensions that are con-nected with ‘the changing role from being a student to becoming ateacher’ (theme 1). Teachers in profile 3 are labelled as teachers withresponsibility-related tensions. They want to be taken seriously bysignificant others, like colleagues and students/pupils, but theyexperience difficulties in accepting the responsibilities that are partof the teaching profession. For teachers with responsibility-relatedtensions the percentages of primary teachers, general secondaryteachers, and secondary vocational teachers are rather similar at12.6%, 18.5% and 13.6% respectively. A relatively large group ofbeginning teachers is classified in profile 5 and can be characterisedas tension-free teachers, because they do not or hardly experienceany of the tensions. The percentages of teachers in the differenttypes of education are roughly equal here again: 33.5% of allparticipating primary teachers, 37.7% of teachers in general sec-ondary education and 40.9% of teachers in secondary vocationaleducation are classified in profile 5.

Table 6Overview of the division of 42 beginning teachers over the six clusters at period 1 (T1) and at period 2 (T2).

Profile Profile 1Teachers strugglingwith sign. others

2Teachers withcare-relatedtensions

3Teachers withresponsibility-relatedtensions

4Moderately tenseteachers

5Tension-freeteachers

6Troubledteachers

Total

T1 T2

1 Teachers struggling withsign. others

6 2 1 1 3 0 13

2 Teachers with care-relatedtensions

3 4 e 2 e e 9

3 Teachers with responsibility-relatedtensions

1 e e 4 1 e 6

4 Moderately tense teachers 2 e 7 e 2 e 11

5 Tension-free teachers e e e e 2 e 2

6 Troubled teachers 1 e e e e e 1

Total 13 6 8 7 8 0 42

Note. The diagonal shows the ‘stable’ teachers.

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97 93

4.3. Profiles and change

In order to investigate changes in profiles, we compared thetotal number of tensions that the 42 beginning teachers mentionedin the first and the second questionnaires. In general, a decline intensions was seen: beginning teachers experienced 26.5% fewertensions in the second period than in the first period. Teachersexperienced significantly fewer tensions around ‘the changing rolefrom being a student to becoming a teacher’ (theme 1; t (41)¼ 2.86,p < 0.01, r ¼ 0.49)1 and around ‘conflicts between desired andactual support given to students’ (theme 2; t (41) ¼ 2.36, p < 0.05,r ¼ 0.31). Tensions that were part of theme 3, ‘conflicting concep-tions on learning to teach’, stayed rather stable: a very small in-crease was detected (t (41) ¼ �0.18, p > 0.05, r ¼ 0.50).

Subsequently, the stability over time in terms of the profiles wasexamined. Table 6 shows that 30 of the 42 beginning teacherschanged profiles in the transition period from student teacher to in-practice teacher. With a Kappa of 0.101, agreement betweenmoment 1 and moment 2 seems more or less owed to chance. Thismeans that from the profile present in the first period, it is veryhard to predict the profile visible in the second period.

Tensions in beginning teachers’ professional identity develop-ment are significantly subject to change. The numbers on the di-agonal in Table 6 show that only 12 of the 42 beginning teachers didnot change profiles after graduation. Six of them were teachersstruggling with (views of) significant others, four were teachers withcare-related tensions, and two were tension-free teachers. Thesebeginning teachers experienced tensions that concerned the sametheme(s) in their first year as in-practice teacher as in their finalyear as student teacher. Of the 12 teachers who did not changeprofiles, sevenwere primary teachers (31.8% of all primary teacherswho completed the questionnaire twice), three were teachers ingeneral secondary education (25% of all general secondary teacherswho completed the questionnaire twice) and two were secondaryvocational teachers (25% of all secondary vocational teachers whocompleted the questionnaire twice). Thirty beginning teacherschanged profiles after graduation: 68.2% of all primary teachers,75% of all general secondary teachers, and 75% of all secondaryvocational teachers. Some striking shifts were detected. Mostdistinct was the shift from teachers with responsibility-related ten-sions to moderately tense teachers after graduation, and vice versa.

1 Since the t-value concerns moment 1emoment 2, a decline shows a positive tvalue, whereas an increase shows a negative t-value.

None of the six teachers who were teachers with responsibility-related tensions in the first period stayed in profile 3 in the sec-ond period, and four of them became moderately tense teachers. Atthe same time, none of the 11 moderately tense teachers of the firstperiod stayed in profile 4 after graduation. Seven of them becameteachers with responsibility-related tensions. Teachers withresponsibility-related tensions who became moderately tense teach-ers started to experience tensions around theme 2 (conflicts be-tween desired and actual support given to students). Theproportion of teachers in secondary education (general or voca-tional) who changed from profile 3 to 4 or from profile 4 to 3 wasrelatively high (eight out of 20) compared with the proportion ofprimary teachers who changed between profile 3 and 4 (three outof 22).

In both questionnaires the highest number of beginning teach-ers were teachers struggling with (views of) significant others (n ¼ 13for both periods). It was noticeable that the seven teachers whochanged profiles were spread out over all other profiles (exceptprofile 5) in the second period. Also, the seven teachers strugglingwith (views of) significant others in the second periodwere classifiedinto one of the other five profiles before graduation. Because six ofthe 13 profile 1 teachers stayed in this profile after they became in-practice teachers, profile 1, in comparison to other profiles, seemsto be the most stable profile. Profile 2 teachers, teachers with care-related tensions, also seems rather stable: four of the nine beginningteachers, three of whom were primary teachers, were still mostlyconcerned about the support they could give their students aftergraduation. The fact that the total number of experienced tensionsdecreased in the second period from the first was supported by anincrease in the numbers of tension-free teachers from two to eight.Six of the eight tension-free teacherswere primary teachers and twowere secondary vocational teachers.

5. Discussion

5.1. Profiles of professional identity tensions

Below the six profiles of professional identity tensions found inthis study will be discussed.

Teachers struggling with (views of) significant others mainlyexperienced tensions around conflicting orientations regardinglearning to teach. Since teachers in profile 1 did not (easily) adapt toothers’ orientations regarding learning to teach, but stronglyadhered to their own orientations, it seems likely that they put ahigh value on their own agency. Agency is the extent to which

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e9794

someone feels in control of their goals and own actions (Ketelaar,Beijaard, Boshuizen, & Den Brok, 2012; Metcalfe & Greene, 2007).Teachers in profile 1 seemed towant to feel in control of the choicesthey made in their work, which were based on their own interestand motivations (Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, Eteläpelto, Rasku-Puttonen, & Littleton, 2008), but they felt limited in experiencingagency by the conflicting orientations of others regarding learningto teach. Teachers with care-related tensions mainly experiencedtensions around the desired and actual support they give theirstudents. The fact that these teachers wanted to do a good job infulfilling their students’ or pupils’ needs, but had a hard timeaccepting that they were not always capable of doing so, is incongruence with the literature on dilemmas that have to do withthe caring role of teachers (Aultman, Williams-Johnson, & Schutz,2009; Shapira-Lishchinsky, 2011; Volkmann & Anderson, 1998).Volkmann and Anderson (1998) also discussed a dilemma that is inline with tensions in profile 3 (teachers with responsibility-relatedtensions). Teachers in profile 3 were mainly concerned about thechanging role from being a student to becoming a teacher, similarlyto the beginning chemistry teacher in Volkmann and Anderson’sstudy. This beginning teacher felt like a student but was treated likea teacher and an adult by colleagues and students (Volkmann &Anderson, 1998, p. 299). Moderately tense teachers experiencedtensions across all three themes, (‘the changing role from being astudent to becoming a teacher’, ‘conflicts between desired andactual support given to students’, and ‘conflicting conceptions oflearning to teach’). None of these three themes was experienced toa high extent and none clearly stood out. Tension-free teachers andtroubled teachers were, in fact, contrary profiles: a relatively largenumber of tension-free teachers did not experience any or very fewprofessional identity tensions, whereas a few troubled teachersexperienced many tensions across all three themes. Beginningteachers who could be profiled as tension-free teachers possibly didnot, in the first place, perceive the teaching profession as a pro-fession for life. They may not plan on having a long career as ateacher, if, for example, they become disaffected with their choice.They may view the teaching profession as a ‘stepping stone’ toother careers, or find that teaching proves to be too demanding forthem (Watt & Richardson, 2008). The reason that beginningteachers were classified as troubled teachers may also be related totheir motives for entering the teaching profession. Troubled teachersmay be very insecure about how they perform professionally and,as a consequence, experience many tensions. If beginning teachershave a passion for teaching, want tomake a contribution to the livesof others, or view teaching as a morally good career (Watt &Richardson, 2008), they may feel pressured to succeed in their job.

Professional identity tensions are experienced if teachers havedifficulties in reconciling the personal and professional sides ofbecoming or being a teacher. Next to other influences of the pro-fessional side on this process, the context in which teachers areworking may have a strong impact. The influence of the context onhaving professional identity tensions may be part of the explana-tion why some profiles found in this study are dominated by acertain type of teachers. For instance, explanations for the largenumber of troubled teachers among teachers in general secondaryeducation e two-thirds of all troubled teachers were teachers ingeneral secondary education e may be found in the complex or-ganisations of schools for general secondary education in theNetherlands or in the diversity of students in these schools. The factthat teachers in primary education strongly predominated in pro-file 2, teachers with care-related tensions, might be explained by thefact that primary teachers are mostly women and women havetraditionally been seen as having a caring function (Grumet, 1988;Olsen, 2010). Caring reasons, like working with children, arefrequently occurring motives for entering primary education (e.g.,

Carrington, 2002). Further research may explain the role of thecontext in experiencing professional identity tensions.

5.2. Change in profiles

The number of tensions that beginning teachers experienced inthe second period was lower than in the first period. Comparedwith their final year as a student teacher, first-year in-practiceteachers experienced fewer tensions regarding ‘the changing rolefrom being a student to becoming a teacher’ (theme 1) and ‘con-flicts between desired and actual support given to students’ (theme2); tensions that concerned ‘conflicting conceptions on learning toteach’ (theme 3) appeared to be rather persistent. At first sight, thisseems a remarkable finding, since first-year in-practice teachers donot have to deal any longer with or are not (as) dependent onmentors in schools and teacher educators. First-year in-practiceteachers start to work, however, in a new environment to whichthey need to adapt. Another rather plausible explanation for thisresult is the fact that the number of beginning teachers whoexperienced the tension Experiencing conflicting orientations interms of learning to teach increased when they became first-year in-practice teachers. This tension was presented in the questionnaireas follows: ‘Geoff finds that he did not learn the things that he shouldhave learned during teacher education in order to be able to functionwell at the school’. Possibly, first-year in-practice teachers becameaware of the kind of knowledge or skills they lacked during teachereducation when they experienced what it was really like to be ateacher. This explanation corresponds with the ‘conscious compe-tence learning model’ (developed at the Gordon Training Interna-tional by Noel Burch in the 1970s). Applying this model to thisparticular tension, beginning teachers seem to shift from the stageof ‘unconscious incompetence’ to that of ‘conscious incompetence’.They become aware of the existence and relevance of skills andknowledge now that they need them. Obviously, this explanation israther speculative, and thus further in-depth qualitative research isneeded to verify its validity.

It is noteworthy that many beginning teachers change profileswhen they make the transition from being a student teacher totheir first year as an in-practice teacher. This shows that the themesreflected by the tensions are not stable at the beginning of theteaching career. In one way this is not surprising. It is known fromthe literature that (student) teachers’ concepts, beliefs, attitudes, orknowledge, which all play an important role in professional iden-tity tensions, are subject to change during the process of learning toteach (De Vries & Beijaard, 1999; Radloff, 2002; Richardson, 1996).On the other hand, a study by Zeichner, Tabachnick, and Densmore(1987) showed that student teachers’ personal values and beliefsand their ideas about teaching were elaborated rather thanchanged by professional training. The fact that most beginningteachers changed profiles does not appear to be in line either withliterature that states that tensions of teachers are rather persistentand difficult to deal with (Alsup, 2006; Katz & Raths, 1992). Wagner(1987), for instance, speaks about ‘knots’ in teachers’ thinking.These ‘knots’ are closely related to the professional identity ten-sions of the current study and are accompanied by negative feel-ings, like anxiety, which causes inability to cope with the ‘knots’that teachers face (Wagner, 1987). In addition, professional identitytensions mentioned by the beginning teachers in one of our pre-vious studies appeared to be difficult to cope with and were quiteenduring in some cases (Pillen et al., in press).

The present study suggests that the themes represented by theprofessional identity tensions of beginning teachers are notnecessarily endurable or persistent. They change when studentteachers make the transition to being a first-year in-practiceteacher. Although the results of this study do not provide us with

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e97 95

information about why beginning teachers change profiles, itseems likely that a change in context is of importance. Fourth-yearstudents find themselves in a different context from that of first-year in-practice teachers. In addition, first-year in-practice teach-ers have a different role in their practice school from that of fourth-year student teachers. As a graduated teacher they have full re-sponsibility for their pupils or students and for all other tasks thatare part of the teaching profession (Fuller & Bown, 1975). Further-more, it seems possible that some beginning teachers developedtheir professional identity in such a way that (some) existing ten-sions were resolved, but that for quite a few others new tensionsemerged. From the work of Alsup (2006) and Olsen (2010) it can beconcluded that a focus on the development of student teachers’professional identity could be very helpful in dealing with tensions.In their studies, experiencing these tensions appeared to beessential for the development of beginning teachers’ professionalidentity. It would be interesting to explore the extent to which thetensions of the beginning teachers who participated in the currentstudy, are important for their professional identity development.

5.3. Limitations and suggestions for future research

A questionnaire was conducted among beginning teachers inorder to be able to characterise beginning teachers with respect totheir professional identity tensions. The questionnaire also soughtindirectly to confirm the findings of our prior study with a muchlarger sample of beginning teachers.

The use of a questionnaire seemed to be the only possibleway toreach a large group of beginning teachers in order to profile theirtensions, but at the same time it implies that no in-depth infor-mation was gained about the nature and impact of the tensionsexperienced. This kind of information might be helpful for furtherdescribing and interpreting the profiles, as well as the possibletransitions that take place. In-depth interviews with beginningteachers who completed the questionnaire in both periods mayreveal why beginning teachers experience more, fewer, or differentkinds of professional identity tensions as first-year in-practiceteachers than in their final year in teacher education. In-depth in-terviews may also suggest how to weight the different kinds ofprofessional identity tensions; certain tensions seem to resolve‘spontaneously’, whereas other tensions are more persistent.Insight into ‘weighting’ professional identity tensions would beespecially interesting, since it is known from previous research thatsome tensions can be very severe and may have a strong influenceon beginning teachers’ learning and functioning (Pillen et al., inpress). In-depth interviews may also uncover the extent to whichprofessional identity tensions influence teachers’ professionalidentities. Furthermore, for future research we suggest studying e

on a larger scale than in the current study e the extent to whichprofiles change during the transition period from students to first-year in-practice teachers, since the number of respondents whocompleted the questionnaire twice was relatively small. In order togain more information about the development of beginningteachers’ professional identity tensions, beginning teachers couldbe tracked during their first years as independent teachers or evenbeyond that period.

The current study was limited to beginning teachers, whichmaygive the impression thatprofessional identity tensions are typical forbeginning teachers. We can only speculate, but it seems very wellpossible that more experienced teachers encounter professionalidentity tensions aswell. Teacherswho change schools, for example,need to adapt to the new context in which they are going to work.They are exposed to different expectations from pupils/students,parents, colleagues, school leaders, and the community than theywere used to (see Stronach et al., 2002; Warin et al., 2006).

A final limitation of this study to be mentioned here is thesomewhat poor result of the cluster analysis for theme 1 comparedwith themes 2 and 3, suggesting that the cluster solution does notfully explain differences in answers among respondents for theme1. Theme 1, therefore, does not distinguish the profiles as well as itshould do. Additional themes may be needed to create a clearerdistinction in this respect. A higher proportion of explained vari-ance for theme 1 could have led to higher reliability of the classi-fication into clusters.

5.4. Implications for practice

The results of this study provide empirical support for the factthat professional identity tensions may be subject to change andthusmay be affected by the support and other activities provided byteacher educators or mentors in schools. It is already stressed in theliterature that teacher education institutes should pay attention tostudent teachers’ professional identity development (Beauchamp &Thomas, 2009; Bullough, 1997; Hong, 2010; Rodgers & Scott, 2008).If tensions contribute to beginning teachers’ professional identitydevelopment, it seems also very important that teacher educatorsandmentors in schools should support beginning teachers in copingwith their professional identity tensions.

First of all, teacher educators and mentors in schools need to beable to recognise the (kind of) tensions that beginning teachersmayexperience. Without ignoring the personal character of profes-sional identity tensions, we believe the profiles in this study couldhelp teacher educators to recognise their student teachers’ ten-sions. The interrelated tensions are summarised in profiles withclear labels and interpretations, which makes it possible tocomprehend themmore easily (Rickards et al., 2005). It also makesit possible for teacher educators to use profiles as a reflection toolfor their student teachers. Profiles can stimulate associations andlinks that beginning teachers have with certain tensions (Rickardset al., 2005; Wubbels, 1992). The importance of reflection in rela-tion to teachers’ professional identity development is stressed inthe literature (Alsup, 2006; Ehrich, Kimber, Millwater, & Cranston,2011; Sutherland, Howard, & Markauskaite, 2010). The profiles,themes, and tensions provide a language for such reflection. Lan-guage seems an obvious means to bring up professional identitytensions. Beginning teachers can be encouraged to discuss theirown tensions with teacher educators or peers in consultation orreflection sessions. If student teachers are classified in groups ac-cording to their profiles, consultation and reflection can be attunedto their personal needs. Sharing experiences can make them realisethat they are not the only ones with these tensions, and thatexperiencing tensions is not an unusual part of the process oflearning to teach (Pillen et al., in press). For teacher educators it canbe a difficult task to make beginning teachers share their tensions,since tensions often remain salient (Sugrue, 1997). The presentstudy and profiles could help teacher educators by showing thatthere are several common types of tensions. Student teachers notonly need to be aware of their own professional identity tensionsbut should also have an idea of other tensions that they mayencounter after graduation.

Although this study was carried out in the Netherlands, theaforementioned implications may also be interesting for student/beginning teachers in other countries. This study did not showsignificant differences between different types of teachers (stu-dent/beginning teachers in primary education, general secondaryeducation, and secondary vocational education) and the numberand kind of tensions they experienced. A relatively equal distribu-tion of the different types of teachers was detected for profiles 1, 3,4 and 5 and although profile 2 was dominated by primary teachersand profile 6 was dominated by teachers in general secondary

M.T. Pillen et al. / Teaching and Teacher Education 34 (2013) 86e9796

education, it should be mentioned that only a small number ofteachers were classified into these two profiles (respectively 25 and12 from the total of 373 participants). It can thus be suggested thatthe number and type of tensions cannot be predicted by the type ofschool in which a student/beginning teacher is working, meaningthat the findings on the support that student/beginning teachersneed with respect to their professional identity tensions may begeneralisable to teachers in other countries.

6. Conclusions

In this study an attempt has been made to profile beginningteachers according to their professional identity tensions. Based ona cluster analysis of the questionnaire data from 373 beginningteachers it appeared that these teachers could be classified into sixdifferent profiles, namely: teachers struggling with (views of) sig-nificant others, teachers with care-related tensions, teachers withresponsibility-related tensions, moderately tense teachers, tension-free teachers, and troubled teachers.

Furthermore, 30 of the 42 beginning teachers who completedthe questionnaire twice changed profiles after the transition periodfrom student teacher to in-practice teacher. We need to be cautiousabout drawing a conclusion about this finding, because the numberof respondents was relatively small, but it seems that tensions inbeginning teachers’ professional identity development are notstable during the transition period from final-year student to first-year in-practice teacher. Our study also showed that for mostbeginning teachers tensions do not disappear. Teaching in primaryeducation, general secondary education or secondary vocationaldid not seem to be a predictor for the particular profile accorded toa teacher, since the different types of teachers were fairly evenlydistributed across profile 1 (teachers struggling with (views of) sig-nificant others), profile 3 (teachers with responsibility-related ten-sions), profile 4 (moderately tense teachers), and profile 5 (tension-free teachers). Teachers with care-related tensions, however, pre-dominated in primary education and two-thirds of all troubledteachers (profile 6) were teachers in general secondary education.

Summarising, interrelated tensions in profiles with labels andinterpretations makes it possible for beginning teachers, teachereducators and mentors in schools to comprehend tensions moreeasily. Profiles can also be used as a reflection tool for studentteachers. Not taking into account the large group of tension-freeteachers (profile 5), it seems important that special attention isnecessary for profiles 1, 3, and 4, since relatively many teachersfrom all three types of teacher education were classified into thesethree profiles. For primary teachers it seems important that there isspecial attention for profile 2, since two thirds of all teachers withcare-related tensions were teachers in primary education. Similarly,special attention for profile 6 seems necessary for teachers ingeneral secondary education, because two-thirds of all troubledteachers were teachers in general secondary education. Profilesthusmay serve as a tool for resolving professional identity tensions.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data related to this article can be found online athttp://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.003.

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