Mapping the contours of teacher identity: charting a journey to an arts informed methodology

Abstract

In recent decades, the heightened culture of accountability in education and demand for teacher quality have complicated what it means to become a teacher. Educational reform has largely focused on questions of what to teach and how best to teach it, seldom asking the who question - “who is the self that teaches?” (Palmer, 2007, p. 30). This project attends to the important question of “who” by exploring how I constructed and made sense of my teacher identity as a pre-service teacher (PST) through lived experiences of place in an initial teacher education course. In this project, I position myself as teacher-researcher and bricoleur to demonstrate the potential of mapping teacher identity through the lens of place, by providing a self-study account of mapping my own teacher identity as a PST entering the profession. Mapping is an arts-informed approach that offers opportunities to explore the ineffable and render tacit influences on identity visible, primarily because such research relies on tools other than words and positions the participant as researcher. In tracing the process and impact of creating a map as a means of making tangible the influence of experience and place on my identity development, I demonstrate the wider potential of mapping and distil the principles of a new methodology that can support other beginning teachers to reflect on their teacher identities.