Abstract
This article focuses on the methodological use of reflective narratives from discourses and activities of an experienced primary teacher as evidence of her professional identity. The teacher’s reflective narratives emerge from her participation in a 3-year developmental and research project, Learning Communities in Mathematics, conducted at the University of Agder (UiA) in Norway. As background for our study, we firstly present the teacher in action with her sixth-grade pupils in a mathematics lesson, and then analyse selected clusters of reflective narratives from different empirical situations in the project. We have identified four identity indicators, which have been elaborated and organised thematically, related to the teacher’s engagement and critical alignment in the community of participants: (1) Positioning in relation to pupils, (2) Reflecting on developing a workshop model in teaching, (3) Integrating and expanding models of teaching and (4) Challenging positioning in relation to didacticians. These indicators provide evidence of the teacher’s professional identity. We suggest that the emergence of these indicators also gives empirical evidence of professional teacher identity development.
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Notes
This study was supported by the Research Council of Norway (Norges Forskningsråd): Project number 157949/S20.
“Didacticians in the project were mathematics educators in a University in Norway, working within a Department of Matematikk Didaktikk” (Bjuland and Jaworski 2009, p. 37).
Circular sliding also framed circular point-slide comprises “pointing with a circular movement of the hand” (Bjuland et al. 2008a, p. 280).
Linear sliding also framed linear point-slide is “identified when the pupils point and move their fingers along a line” (Bjuland et al. 2008a, p. 280).
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Acknowledgments
We offer special thanks to the teacher, Agnes, for giving us the opportunity to collect empirical material from her school lesson. We thank our colleague Espen Daland at UiA for filming the lesson. We should also like to thank our former colleague Barbara Jaworski for reading a previous version of this manuscript and giving helpful comments.
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Bjuland, R., Cestari, M.L. & Borgersen, H.E. Professional mathematics teacher identity: analysis of reflective narratives from discourses and activities. J Math Teacher Educ 15, 405–424 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-012-9216-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-012-9216-1