Identity Transformation on Becoming a Teacher: Threshold Concepts and Professional Praxes

Year 2021, Volume: 10 Issue: 3, 275 - 295, 31.12.2021

Virginia M. Tucker Michelle Holschuh Simmons

Abstract

Identity transformation is essential for young adults transitioning into a professional community of practice such as the teaching profession. In this study, the ten participants were in a teacher-education program and completing their practicums, transitioning from identifying as a student to becoming a teacher. The research explored evidence of transformative learning and identity shifts as manifested in the participants’ written and spoken discourse. Datasets were reflective writings and semi-structured interviews, coded thematically. Seven of the ten resultant themes demonstrated characteristics of threshold concepts, critical concepts that transform understanding of a given domain; the other 3 themes represented professional praxes, important to dispositional readiness for teaching, but not characterisable as transformative, threshold knowledge. The findings contribute to: a nuanced approach to evaluating identity transformation and transformative learning in young adults; a keen understanding of identity transitions as integral to dispositional readiness for a professional domain; and further definition of the theoretical characteristics of threshold concepts, particularly as differentiated from praxes and dispositions.

Keywords

dispositions, identity transformation, teacher education, threshold concepts, transformative learning

Supporting Institution

Monmouth College

Project Number

Low Risk Research Project Approval #17-40

Thanks

Acknowledgments The authors are grateful to the student-teacher participants for their willingness to share their experiences and their candor in reflecting on them. Ethics clearance and permission to use participants’ anonymized datasets are in accordance with Monmouth College’s Low Risk Research Project Approval #17-40. No funding was provided for the research project.

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