ABSTRACT
What are the sources and nature of our earliest images of teachers’ work and professional identity? In the ongoing deliberations on teachers’ work and on policy changes in education, teacher identity is too often treated as unproblematic and singular in nature. It is usually taken for granted in some a priori way as an outcome of pedagogical skills or as an aftermath or function of classrooom experience (Britzman, 1992, p. 23). Goodson reminds us that this way of viewing the teacher ‘represents a subject who is on the one hand depersonalized, that is, essentially interchangeable with other subjects, and on the other hand static, seen as existing outside time or unchanging’ (in Elbaz, 1991, p. 7). Britzman (1992) concurs, stating that this static view unproblematically scripts teacher identity as synonymous with the teacher’s role and function. But role and function are not synonymous with identity; whereas role can be assigned, the taking up of an identity is a constant social negotiation that can never be permanently settled or fixed, occurring as it necessarily does within the irreconcilable contradictions of situational and historical constraints (Britzman, 1992, p. 42).
