ABSTRACT
Previous chapters have outlined the importance of teachers within the epistemology of education. This chapter now covers the important concept of teacher identity and connects it to what is valued in terms of teacher expertise and practice in contemporary school-systems across the globe. The chapter grapples with the role of the educator as primarily being either an art or a science to explore specific teacher characteristics directly associated with enhanced learning outcomes to question the development of a teacher, which is closely aligned in the contemporary economic and political context with the hallmarks of performativity and effectiveness. This is to suggest that important teacher characteristics which contribute to student achievement such as creativity, curiosity, collaboration, critical thinking and so on, whilst arguably evident in teacher practices across most education jurisdictions, are impeded by the at times inflexibilities of current curriculum and assessment reforms with implications for teacher identity. We make the claim that this has consequences for the type of teacher one becomes.
