From first year in teacher education to the first year as a teacher: The tensions and the becomings

Findings are presented from a longitudinal study of teacher identity, focusing on one teacher followed from her first year as a student in teacher education (2022) and through her first year of practice as teacher (2025). Drawing on dialogical self-theory, the study explores professional identity development using a narrative interview approach that considers temporality, sociality, and spatiality, with parts of the dialogue being mediated by pictures and AI-generated graphics. The findings illustrate an ongoing process of interpreting and reinterpreting experiences over time, revealing both continuity—such as tensions in finding her place related to the understanding of the teacher profession in the social world—and both continuity and discontinuity in the I-positions shaping her self-understanding at different stages of becoming, for example when interacting with colleagues, pupils, and parents and balancing between ideal and reality in the job as a teacher. Implications for supporting student teachers’ identity development are discussed.

Extended summary

Research topic/aim
Facilitating (student) teachers’ identity work is often undervalued, despite its essential role in becoming, being, and remaining a teacher (Beijaard, 2023). Based on previous research the complexity must be acknowledged including the role of emotions in the situated interplays (Beijaard, 2023; Rodrigues & Mogarro, 2019). Referring to Dialogical Self Theory (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011) teacher identity is dynamically evolving, intrinsically related to others, and consisting of multiple identities, and the aim of this research is to apply a combination of micro and macro analysis to take a situated perspective on this complexity and the dynamics in the development over time.

Research questions:
How can aspects of becoming a student teacher and a first-year teacher be interpreted through situated narratives over time, focusing on formative encounters and evolving perceptions of the teaching profession and self within it?

Theoretical framework
To study teacher identity formation through DST, this research analyses self-dialogues to reveal individual identity struggles during career transitions (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Identity formation is conceptualised as involving an ongoing process of negotiation of multiple positions in relation to the self and the experiences.

Methodology/research design
One way to study a teachers identity formation referring to DST is to analyse the teachers’ self-dialogues to reveal the (individual) identity struggles (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011, p. 317), i.e. as experienced in the periods of transitions in the career. The longitudinal research design includes repeated narrative interviews with a teacher pseudonym Freia first being interviewed in 2022 in a group with fellow students and in her first year as teacher being interviewed twice. The interview guide focuses on the teacher’s narrative and the experiences perceived to form her as teacher. Part of the dialogue was mediated by pictures and ai-graphics to stimulate reflections on external perspectives on the teaching profession. The analysis consists of several steps of ‘restorying’, condensing themes and key elements (Ollerenshaw & Creswell, 2002).
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Findings
The findings illustrate the ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences. There are both continuous aspects, for example Freia as student teacher point to how the teaching profession is described as under strain in the news and how friends and family have advised here against choosing the study. This perspective was still present when she reflected on applying for a job three years later: “I had this anxiety [..] what did I throw myself into, what is it you read about schools in the media”. Furthermore, there are examples of both continuity and discontinuity in the I-positions being foregrounded. In the first year of teacher education, she wanted to become a teacher working on relations, doing a difference for students and applying inquiry-oriented pedagogy, e.g in the nature. This I-position is still present when interpreting the first experiences as a teacher. She repeatedly emphasizes building relationships with her class, yet acknowledges how this ideal is challenged by the everyday realities of demanding pupils and parents, and she talks about surviving by “decreasing the expectations for herself”. When reflecting on pictures of teachers as student teacher she challenged the teachers transmitting from a blackboard arguing about other pedagogical approaches. These same pictures are challenged from the position as first year teacher, but now because they only represent a small part of all the daily and somewhat stressful demands, and Freia emphasises now an ai-graphic of an octopus teacher.

Conclusion and implications
The findings from this in-depth longitudinal study—adding to an understanding of the challenges and constraints referring to, e.g. ideologies and conflicts related with ways of teaching (personal vs. others) and the implications concerning professional identity learning (Beijaard, 2023) at different times of the transition—will be further discussed in the presentation. It is emphasised that supporting (student) teachers’ professional identity development is crucial for preparing them to navigate the stress arising from societal expectations, systemic pressures, and their own professional beliefs.