Abstract:
Educators are tasked with cultivating knowledge and affirming students. It is a responsibility that harbors an expectation for teaching and learning to occur without consideration for the complexities of teacher identity in communion with learners, the community, and the sociocultural and political context of uncertainty. “If students and subjects accounted for all the complexities of teaching, our standard ways of coping would do” (Palmer, 1997, p.2). There is no instruction without “I”, “we teach who we are” (Palmer, 1997, p.1). We are who we teach.
This paper is a narrative inquiry that explores the plausibility of “I” in “we teach, who we are” (Palmer, 1997, p.1) to offer insight that prompts discourse about the current approaches being applied to prepare teachers to teach. Dialogical self-theory and engaging the dialogical self is the theoretical framing for this narrative inquiry. “The dialogical self is based on the assumption that there are many I-positions that can be occupied by the same person” (Hermans, 2001, p. 249). Those I-positions have a dialogic relationship with each other that occurs within the self and may manifest as motivating actions beyond thoughts or dialogue.
Story as the site and source of this inquiry are offered as tools to help educators navigate how content and context of self manifest in the classroom. The inquiry challenges traditional professional learning and development opportunities available to educators suggesting teacher educators working in academic and professional contexts expand teacher professional development to include reflective and reflexive exercises that allow educators space to explore the inner landscapes of self as one of the most important factors in student learning and achievement. The purpose of this narrative self-inquiry is to consider how my identity has manifested in my work as an educator arguing the complexity of the “I” in instruction and the probable implications for teacher preparation, education, and development.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the Novel (M. Holquist, & C. Emerson, Trans.). In M. Holquist (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination (pp. 259-422). University of Texas Press.
Fecho, B. & Clifton, J. (2017). Dialoguing across culture, identities, and learning: Crosscurrents and complexities in literacy classrooms. Routledge.
Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward theory personal and cultural positioning. Culture Psychology, 7(3), 243-28.
Palmer, P. (1997). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's Life. Jossey-Bass.
This paper is a narrative inquiry that explores the plausibility of “I” in “we teach, who we are” (Palmer, 1997, p.1) to offer insight that prompts discourse about the current approaches being applied to prepare teachers to teach. Dialogical self-theory and engaging the dialogical self is the theoretical framing for this narrative inquiry. “The dialogical self is based on the assumption that there are many I-positions that can be occupied by the same person” (Hermans, 2001, p. 249). Those I-positions have a dialogic relationship with each other that occurs within the self and may manifest as motivating actions beyond thoughts or dialogue.
Story as the site and source of this inquiry are offered as tools to help educators navigate how content and context of self manifest in the classroom. The inquiry challenges traditional professional learning and development opportunities available to educators suggesting teacher educators working in academic and professional contexts expand teacher professional development to include reflective and reflexive exercises that allow educators space to explore the inner landscapes of self as one of the most important factors in student learning and achievement. The purpose of this narrative self-inquiry is to consider how my identity has manifested in my work as an educator arguing the complexity of the “I” in instruction and the probable implications for teacher preparation, education, and development.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Discourse in the Novel (M. Holquist, & C. Emerson, Trans.). In M. Holquist (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination (pp. 259-422). University of Texas Press.
Fecho, B. & Clifton, J. (2017). Dialoguing across culture, identities, and learning: Crosscurrents and complexities in literacy classrooms. Routledge.
Hermans, H. J. M. (2001). The dialogical self: Toward theory personal and cultural positioning. Culture Psychology, 7(3), 243-28.
Palmer, P. (1997). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's Life. Jossey-Bass.