The construction of teachers' professional identity: An analysis of subjective learning experiences

This article explores the construction of teachers’ professional iden- tity through analysis of subjective learning experiences. In order to report on the progress of our work, we present a discourse analysis of three experiences considered to be of particular relevance by a final-year pedagogy student. The analysis yielded four important conclusions: i) The process of teachers’ professional identity con- struction is based on comparing and contrasting different experi- ences and culminates in the construction of new identity positions; ii) this process must involve experiences that call into question existing meanings of self; iii) future teachers must engage in pro- ductive dialogue with other significant actors in order to identify and recognise the value of certain positional objects; and iv) certain subjective learning experiences have a greater impact on the recon- struction of identity positions. Finally, we propose an analysis model based on subjective learning experiences for the construc- tion of teachers’ professional identity.