Pre-Collegiates Students' Teaching Identities

A review of the research indicates that identifying self as a teacher can be a life-long, complex personal and social process. This researcher investigated 4 pre-collegiate students' construction of a teaching identity during their participation in an introduction to teaching course conducted in a rural high school located in a southeastern state. Two purposes framed this investigation, 1) to gain an in-depth understanding of the pre-collegiate students' past and present experiences related to teaching and the meanings the students make of these experiences, and 2) to examine these experiences as connected to construction of personal teaching identities. Using a life history methodology, data sources included 3 interviews, drawings of self as a teacher, journal writings, and personal experience writings. The findings are presented in 4 narratives one for each participant. Each narrative, represented by an exemplar quote, (i.e., Being There, Being a Kid, Right Heart, Being A Helper) illuminates the nature of the participants' teaching prototype, which emerged from past and present educational experiences. Results indicate that the participants possessed well-defined beliefs pertaining to caring teachers and to teaching as a profession, in addition, to commonly held cultural teaching beliefs. These beliefs guided their course experiences and self-assessment of a teaching identity. Although the identification to a teaching identity varied among the 4 participants, results indicate that 1 participant was actively constructing a storied teaching identity. A storied teaching identity involved a significant nuclear episode with a teacher that became the bound context for a teaching story. This type of high school level career studies course can assist in strengthening the recruitment pool of teacher education candidates and assist in testing a vocational teaching identity. Implications are offered for future research involving pre-collegiate students enrolled in an introduction to teaching course and investigation of storied teaching identities.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Curriculum and Instruction

Department dc:contributor.department

Teaching and Learning

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2004

Author dc:creator

• Galyean, Teresa Ann

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Magliaro, Susan G.
• Burge, Penny L.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Samani, Tresia
• Doolittle, Peter E.
• Abraham, Jane L.

• teaching identity
• pre-collegiate students
• prior beliefs

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-11192004-123516

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/29671