Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces

In this book, Janet Alsup reports and theorizes a multi-layered study of teacher identity development. The study, which followed six pre-service English education students, was designed to investigate her hypothesis that forming (or failing to form) a professional identity is central in the process of becoming an effective teacher. This work addresses the intersection of various types of discourse within the process of professional identity development, emphasizes that the intersection of the personal and professional in teacher identity formation is more complex than is acknowledged in typical methods classes, and accents the need for teacher educators to take steps to facilitate such integration. Specific suggestions for methods courses are presented that teacher educators can use as is or adapt to their own contexts. Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces speaks eloquently to faculty, researchers, and graduate students across the field of teacher education.

"Teacher-educators, in particular, would find this a helpful supplement to literacy education courses, since it suggests ways to encourage preservice teachers to reflect on their professional dispositions and assumptions...Current and future teachers will appreciate this combination of theoretical and practical suggestions, the potentional uses of which will not leave an educator wondering how to bring aspects of identity into a collective light." -- Language Arts, March 2009, Vol. 86, No. 4