(Dis)Identifying as Writers, Scholars, and Researchers
Former Schoolteachers’ Professional Identity Work during Their Teacher-Education Doctoral Studies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13682785 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ann M Lawrence (University of South Florida Sarasota–Manatee, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 181-210 |
| Publication date | 2017-11-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Research in the Teaching of English (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-527X • E-ISSN: 1943-2348 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.58680/rte201729379 |
| OpenAlex | W2804235106 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Professional knowledge production through involvement in research/writing activities is a valued dimension of the work of university-based teacher educators. However, little attention has been given to how teacher-education doctoral students (predominantly former schoolteachers) become education-research writers as part of their professional development as university-based teacher educators. In this article, I examine 11 former elementary and secondary teachers’ professional identity work as writers, scholars, and researchers during their teacher-education doctoral studies. All 11 specialized in language, literacy, and/or literature education. I focus my analysis on their (dis)identifications with the terms writer, scholar , and researcher in stream-of-consciousness quick-writes that they produced at regular intervals throughout their semesters of participation in five extracurricular peer writing groups that I facilitated. To contextualize these writings, I also draw on observations that I made during five years of ethnographic fieldwork for my longitudinal study. Through my analysis, I demonstrate that the 10 women respondents tended to recount a similar genre of (dis)identification narrative, one in which they disavowed their own authority as writers, scholars, and/or researchers, excluding available evidence to the contrary. I argue that the women’s teacher-education doctoral program, which maintained researcher/teacher, faculty/teacher, and faculty/student hierarchies, may have resonated in particular with these former schoolteachers’ previous experiences of sociocultural marginalization as women, and may thus have contributed to the emergence of their (dis)identification-narrative genre. To enhance the professional development of teacher-education doctoral students and faculty alike, I offer suggestions for how faculty might facilitate doctoral students’ writing groups while positioning/figuring themselves as group members’ colleagues
Educational research · Identity (music · Pedagogy · Professional development · Sociology · Teacher education · Work (physics · Doctoral Education Challenges and Solutions · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
What are the disadvantages of having a foreign background as a female academic and working at a university in Europe
Discoursal scholarly identity in research writing
Manifestations of professional identity work
Using positioning theory and narrative to explore doctoral students’ developing understandings about theory in educational research
| Citations per year | 1.33 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |