ABSTRACT
In the current neoliberal era of teacher accountability and standardized testing, which over-emphasizes measurable outcomes, it is ever more important not to lose sight of those dimensions of teaching that defy easy quantification. Of critical significance is the teacher’s and teacher educator’s sense of self (i.e., their professional identity). Our orienting conceptualization of teacher identity is that of “identity-in-discourse” (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005), with three key poststructuralist features of identity (e.g., Darvin & Norton, 2015; Varghese, Motha, Trent, Park, & Reeves, 2016). These features include identity as multiple, shifting, and in conflict; identity as crucially related to social, cultural, and political contexts; and identity as being constructed, negotiated, and maintained primarily through discourse.
