(Routledge Research in Teacher Education) A. Cendel Karaman, Silvia Edling - Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching - International Narratives of Successful Teachers-Routledge (2021)

“The publication of this book is a relief. Scholarly as well as ethically.
An international group of authors stands up against the worldwide

dominance of standardized, de-contextualised comparative approaches
in educational policies and research agendas in which their meaning
is reduced to a narrow idea of effectiveness. The authors in this book
don't deny the importance of effectiveness in education. Yet, they right-
fully stress that this concern needs be addressed—conceptually as well
as empirically—in ways that acknowledge the inevitable contextualised
nature of teaching, as well as the crucial issue of purpose in education
(and the ethical, normative choices it implies). Replacing effective teach-
ing by the broader and more appropriate concept of successful teach-
ing, the different contributions in the book seek to build a stronger
research-based understanding of teacher professionalism and identity,
as well as their development in the particularities of a time-space con-
text. Narrative approaches once more demonstrate their theoretical and
methodological power for this scholarly endeavor.”
- Geert Kelchtermans, Professor of Education, University
of Leuven, Belgium (KULeuven); Chair of the Centre for
Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School
“This book, Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching: Interna-

tional Narratives of Successful Teachers, is a volume to savor due to the
vast international insights it offers. Editors Cendel Karaman and Silvia
Edling are to be commended for inviting a broad range of international
scholars to share narratives of teacher success in their home countries.
Stories of experience are arguably the only way to show what teachers
know and do. Such narratives unavoidably include contextual factors that
bound teachers’ knowing, doing and being. They offer windows into
teachers’ professional learning trajectories and identities-in-the-making.
Such matters are never conclusive; rather, they repeatedly play out as
time passes and new interactions unfurl. The teacher narratives in this
volume are vivid and particularistic. Equally revealing is the extent to
which neo-liberal agendas are grippingly present in international sys-
tems of education. Personal experience methods (i.e., narrative inquiry,
autoethnography) are the only way to unleash teachers’ voices in socially
engineered educational milieus rife with propositional knowledge claims
and instrumentalist thinking. Reading this book is a profound experi-
ence. Like Cendel Karaman and Silvia Edling, I recommend that readers
think with the many stories that follow. I also invite readers to imagine
contextual shifts that could more fully support successful teachers’ prac-
tices. The editors and authors provide plentiful clues concerning how
things could be otherwise. Because teachers are the only ones who
meet students in flesh-and-blood moments, the future is in their hands
regardless of the views of those external to classrooms and schools.”
- Cheryl J. Craig, PhD, Professor, Houston Endowment
Endowed Chair of Urban Education and American Educational
Research Fellow, Texas A&M University, USA
“This book provides the reader with a clear and rich account of how
professional learning and identities are central to teaching and teacher
education. Drawing upon case studies from various contexts, the book
demonstrates vividly the importance of looking at the complexity of
teaching from the inside. It should be read by teachers, teacher educa-
tors, policy makers, researchers and all those interested in learning more
about the process of becoming a teacher.”
- Maria Assunção Flores, Professor, Institute of Education,
University of Minho, Portugal; Editor, European Journal of
Teacher Education
Professional Learning and Identities in
Teaching
This book explores the reflective potentialities offered by analyses of teach-

ers’ professional learning narratives. The book has a specific focus on nar-
ratives on professional learning and professional identities emerging from
different contexts and gives a deeper understanding of successful teachers’
narratives globally.
Diverging from universally standardized constructions of idealized teacher
identity and professional learning, the book provides analyses of a diversi-
fied set of cases with detailed descriptions of each teacher’s idiographic and
professional context to gain a deeper understanding of situated professional
identities. With contributions from a range of international backgrounds, it
shows teachers of various age groups, subject areas, and curricula contrib-
ute their narratives to help readers reflect on different trajectories toward
becoming a teacher. These narratives provide insight into and a deeper
understanding of the conditions and complex processes that being a “suc-
cessful” teacher involves within these case studies, providing a useful contri-
bution to the field of teacher education.
Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching: International Narratives
of Successful Teachers will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and
post-graduate students of teacher education and international and compar-
ative education.
A. Cendel Karaman is Professor in the Faculty of Education at Middle East

Technical University, Turkey. His research focuses on interculturality, teacher
education, curriculum, professional development, identity, language educa-
tion, and international mobility in education.
Silvia Edling is a Professor and excellent teacher at the Academy of Edu-

cation and Business Studies at University of Gävle, Sweden, and specializes
in questions concerning democracy, teacher professionalism, historical con-
sciousness ethics, justice, and rights in education and higher education.
Routledge Research in Teacher Education
The Routledge Research in Teacher Education series presents the latest
research on Teacher Education and also provides a forum to discuss the latest
practices and challenges in the field.
Integrating Technology in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Donna L. Pasternak
Research-Informed Teacher Learning

Critical Perspectives on Theory, Research and Practice
Edited by Lori Beckett
Europeanisation in Teacher Education

A Comparative Case Study of Teacher Education Policies and Practices
Vasileios Symeonidis
Study Abroad for Pre- and In-Service Teachers

Transformative Learning on a Global Scale
Laura Baecher
Becoming Somebody in Teacher Education

Person, Profession and Organization in a Global Southern Context
Kari Kragh Blume Dahl
Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching

International Narratives of Successful Teachers
Edited by A. Cendel Karaman and Silvia Edling
Teacher Quality and Education Policy in India

Understanding the Relationship Between Teacher Education, Teacher Effec-
tiveness, and Student Outcomes
Preeti Kumar and Alexander W. Wiseman
Teacher Educators and their Professional Development

Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future
Edited by Ruben Vanderlinde, Kari Smith, Mieke Lunenberg and Jean
Murray
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

com/Routledge-Research-in-Teacher-Education/book-series/RRTE
Professional Learning and
Identities in Teaching
International Narratives of
Successful Teachers
Edited by A. Cendel Karaman and

Silvia Edling
First published 2021
by Routledge
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© 2021 selection and editorial matter, A. Cendel Karaman and
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Karaman, A. Cendel, editor. | Edling, Silvia, editor.
Title: Professional learning and identities in teaching :
international narratives of successful teachers / Edited by A.
Cendel Karaman and Silvia Edling.
Description: First edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2021. | Series: Routledge research in teacher education
| Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048791 (print) | LCCN 2020048792
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367463595 (hardback) | ISBN
9781003028451 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Teachers--Training of. | Identity (Psychology) |
Narrative inquiry (Research method) | Teachers--Psychology.
Classification: LCC LB1707 .P766 2021 (print) | LCC LB1707
(ebook) | DDC 370.71/1--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048791
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048792
ISBN: 978-0-367-46359-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-74713-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02845-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by SPi Global, India
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Author biographies x
Introduction 1
A. CENDEL KARAMAN AND SILVIA EDLING
1 Remaining a student of teaching forever: Critical

reflexive insights from a lifetime of multiple teacher
identities in the Republic of Ireland 20
GERALDINE MOONEY SIMMIE
2 From success/failure binaries to teaching for justice:

Conceptualizing education as access, responsibility,
dignity, and transparency 36
WALTER S. GERSHON
3 Teacher narratives as counter-narratives

of successful teaching 54
MARIA ALFREDO MOREIRA, ROSA MARIA MORAES ANUNCIATO
AND MARIA APARECIDA P. VIANA
4 “If I can do it at this school, you can put me anywhere”:

Case studies from Australian graduate teachers
in diverse and challenging schools 72
LYNETTE LONGARETTI AND DIANNE TOE
5 Professional development of EFL teachers through

reflective practice in a supportive community of practice 89
CHITOSE ASAOKA
viii Contents
6 Looking back with pride—looking forward in hope:
The narratives of a transformative teacher 106
FATMA GÜMÜŞOK
7 Understanding a teacher’s professional identity

through pedagogical rhythm 123
SÖREN HÖGBERG
8 Revisiting selves through a “success” perspective:

An autoethnographic quest of a language teacher
across intercultural spaces 138
TUGAY ELMAS
9 Path toward the construction of a professional identity:

A narrative inquiry into a language teacher’s experiences 155
PINAR YENİ-PALABIYIK
10 “Successful teaching”: Neoliberal influences and

emerging counter-narratives 172
EMRULLAH YASIN ÇİFTÇİ AND A. CENDEL KARAMAN
Conclusion: Context, interconnectedness, balance,

and risk in teachers’ narratives 190
SILVIA EDLING AND A. CENDEL KARAMAN
Index 203
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank, first, all the authors and research participants for
their interest and contribution to this volume. We are also grateful to the
anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticism and suggestions. We
would also like to acknowledge the important contributions of Editors
Emilie Coin and William Bateman for their enthusiasm and encouragement
throughout the project. This volume would also not become possible with-
out the support of our universities. We thank Middle East Technical Univer-
sity, Turkey and University of Gävle, Sweden for their support. Finally, we
are grateful to our families for all their support and encouragement through-
out this journey.
Author biographies
Editors
A. Cendel Karaman (Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of

Wisconsin-Madison) is Professor in the Faculty of Education, Department
of Foreign Language Education at Middle East Technical University. Dr.
Karaman is the author of several research articles in the field of teacher
education with a focus on systems thinking, intercultural education, field
experiences, identity, curriculum, and professional development. He
taught at the State University of New York Binghamton and University
of Wisconsin. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the European
Journal of Teacher Education.
Silvia Edling (Ph.D., Curriculum Studies, Uppsala University, Sweden) is
Professor in curriculum studies at the University of Gävle, Sweden and has
been rewarded as excellent teacher. Edling studies educational environ-
ments, including teacher education, with a particular focus on how ideas/
perspectives and actions work together, the requirements and conditions
for the teaching profession, the content of teaching and its democratic
dimension. A selection of her most recent publications are: Democracy and
Teacher Education. Dilemmas, Challenges, and Possibilities (Routledge),
Worlds best occupation?! A short introduction for you who have chosen
to become a teacher (Studentlitteratur), Let's talk about teacher educa-
tion. Analysing the media debates in 2016-2017 on teacher education
using Sweden as a case (Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education).
Authors
Maria Alfredo Moreira (Ph.D., University of Minho) is an Assistant

Professor in the Institute of Education at the University of Minho,
Portugal. She is the author of several articles and book chapters in the
field of teacher education and school pedagogy with a focus on teacher
narratives, social and cognitive justice, higher education, action research,
and autonomy.
Author biographies xi
Chitose Asaoka (Ph.D., Education, Institute of Education, University

College London, UK) is a Professor in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at
Dokkyo University, Japan. Her current research interests include teacher
education and teacher autonomy. She recently published a book, Early
Professional Development in EFL Teaching: Perspectives and Experiences
from Japan, from Multilingual Matters.
Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi is a research assistant at Middle East Technical
University, where he is also working on a PhD in the English Language
Teaching program. His dissertation focuses on neoliberal common
sense, international student mobility, and language teacher education.
His research interests include language teacher education, critical inter-
culturality, political economy in language education, critical discourse
studies, and qualitative inquiry. His work related to interculturality and
language teacher education has been published in several journals includ-
ing Australian Journal of Teacher Education, Educational Technology
& Society, Language and Intercultural Communication, ReCALL,
Qualitative Report, and Language Learning Journal.
Tugay Elmas is an English instructor at Başkent University's School of Foreign
Languages. He received his B.A. from Istanbul University, Department of
English Language Teaching. He also holds an M.A. in English Language
Teaching from Middle East Technical University. His research interests
include curriculum development, materials design, critical pedagogy, inter-
culturality in language education, and teacher identity development.
Walter S. Gershon (Ph.D.) is Associate Professor of Critical Foundations
of Education and Program Coordinator of Urban Education in the
Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Education at
Rowan University. His scholarship focuses on questions of justice about
how people make sense, the sociocultural contexts that inform their
sense-making, and the qualitative methods used to study those processes.
Although his scholarship most often attends to how marginalized and vul-
nerable youth negotiate schools and schooling, Walter is also interested
in how people of all ages negotiate educational ecologies outside insti-
tutions. In addition to peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and other
scholarly publications, Dr. Gershon is editor and/or author of five books,
including two national book award-winning monographs: Curriculum
and Students in Classrooms: Everyday Urban Education in an Era of
Standardization (Lexington Books, 2017) and Sound Curriculum: Sonic
Studies in Educational Theory, Method, and Practice (Routledge, 2017).
Fatma Gümüşok (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign
Languages at Bartın University, Turkey. Her research interests focus
on foreign language teacher education, professional identity, teacher
cognition, teacher professional development, and literature in English
Language Teaching.
xii Author biographies
Sören Högberg (Ph.D., Education, Örebro University, Sweden). He is
involved in pre-service, in-service teacher education as well as Educational
work on master and doctorial level at Dalarna University. His main
research interest has its focus on teachers’ work in general, and particu-
larly in settings of Social studies.
Lynette Longaretti is Senior Lecturer in Education at Deakin University,
Australia and coordinates the National Exceptional Teachers for
Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) program at Deakin University. Her
work addresses the social issue of educational disadvantage and is focused
on the preparation of teachers for disadvantaged schools and the promo-
tion of health and well-being in schools.
Geraldine Mooney Simmie (Ph.D.) is a Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head
School of Education in the Faculty of Education and Health Sciences at
the University of Limerick, Ireland. Geraldine lectures in Policy Studies
to doctoral students in education. Her research interest is in emancipatory
practices in teaching and teachers' identities for a just global world. She
has published articles in the Journal of Education Policy, Critical Studies
in Education, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,
Citizenship, Social & Economic Education, Teachers and Teaching Theory
and Practice, Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, Mentoring and
Tutoring. She has a book on Democracy and Teacher Education with
Professor Silvia Edling, University of Gavle, Sweden (Routledge, 2020).
Rosa Maria Moraes Anunciato (Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil)
is a full professor in the Centre of Education and Human Sciences at the
Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil. She is the author of several articles
and book chapters on teacher education with a focus on teacher’s narra-
tives, teacher’s professional development, and teacher professional identity.
Dianne Toe is the Deputy Head of the School of Education and Academic
Director of Professional Practice at Deakin University, Australia. Her
background is in educational psychology, deaf education, and teacher
education with a strong focus on social justice, inclusive education, and
the preparation of teachers for disadvantaged schools.
Maria Aparecida P. Viana (Ph.D., Federal University of Alagoas) is an Assistant
Professor in the Centre of Education at the Federal University of Alagoas,
Brazil. She is the author of several articles and book chapters in the field of
educational technology with a focus on the pedagogy of teaching in higher
education, distance learning, narratives, and professional development.
Pınar Yeni-Palabıyık is a lecturer of English at Sakarya University of Applied
Sciences. She is currently pursuing a PhD degree in English Language
Teaching at Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Her research inter-
ests at present are language policy, teacher professional development,
identity research, English language teaching methodology, and curricu-
lum research.
Introduction
A. Cendel Karaman and Silvia Edling
Introduction
This book1 explores the reflective potentialities offered by analyses of teach-
ers’ narratives. With a specific focus on narratives on professional learning
and professional identities emerging from different contexts, this book pro-
vides a variety of case studies. Specifically, to seek a deeper understanding
of successful teachers’ narratives in various contexts, researchers at different
settings explore focal participants at different stages in their teaching career.
Diverging from universally standardized constructions of idealized teacher
identity and professional learning, a main aim of this volume is to present
analyses of a diversified set of cases with thick descriptions of each teacher’s
idiographic and professional context. It is hoped that the inquiries presented
in this volume will contribute to reflective discussions among prospective
teachers, practicing teachers, educational researchers, educational leaders,
policy-makers, and teacher educators. The bricolage of these narratives con-
vey situated accounts of teachers’ professional development trajectories.
Worldwide, national and supranational institutions generate frameworks
that determine the “standards” that would be associated with being a “suc-
cessful teacher.” Coupled with the neoliberal processes of deskilling and
reskilling teachers, in the public sphere, teachers are increasingly assessed
based on accountability regimens that prioritize market-based needs and
processes (Apple, 2018). For example, policy initiatives such as the No Child
Left Behind Act and Race to the Top program in the United States influenced
states and districts to link students’ standardized test scores with teacher effi-
cacy. Organizations such as the OECD also frame certain constructions of
teacher quality through “cognitive and epistemological control” (p. 507).
As Berkovich and Benoliel (2020) noted, the OECD, through direct and
indirect strategies, “construct teachers as problematic professionals and the
OECD as being in a position of authority” (p. 507).
At the same time, in societies, teachers and teacher educators are facing
harsh criticism emerging, among other things, from a constructed need to
constantly reform educational processes in the “21st Century” (Zeichner,
2017). In this context, reform initiatives can often bring instrumentalist
approaches within which a technicist teacher identity with little autonomy
2 A. Cendel Karaman and Silvia Edling
is constructed (Karaman, 2010; Tochon & Karaman, 2009). In this vol-
ume, through the inclusion of a variety of teacher narratives including early-,
mid-, and late-career teachers teaching in diverse educational contexts, we
aim to highlight how being a “successful” teacher is a dynamic, complex,
and situated process as demonstrated within the various professional learning
trajectories followed by teachers in their teaching environments. As Morin
(2008) noted,
…complexity is not only quantities of units and interactions that defy

our possibilities of calculation; it is also made up of uncertainty, indeter-
mination, and random phenomena. … Therefore, complexity coincides
with a part of uncertainty that arises from the limits of our ability to
comprehend, or with a part of uncertainty inscribed in phenomena.
(Morin, 2008, p. 21)
Inquiring into constructions of successful

teaching within the field of education
It is important to reflect on the various public conceptions about the qualities
of successful teachers considering “the super-complexity of ‘good teaching’ as a
‘messy’ narrative of change and flows operating between teachers and a diversity
of inquirers and institutions (e.g. school, state, supranational institutions and
the academy of teacher education).” (Simmie et al., 2019, p. 66). While educa-
tion historically used to be a luxury for a few, such as religious groups and the
nobility, education nowadays is an essential part in human life and a crucial step-
ping stone to shape societies. Article 26 in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights from 1948 stresses everyone’s right to education2 and in 2018, five of
six children (90%) worldwide went to school, which says something profoundly
about the magnitude of education in current societies.3 Seeing that education is
important in the continuous formation of and strife for economic growth in a
nation, the will to encourage excellence in educational settings is not surprising.
There are numerous examples of research publications trying to dissect what the
notion of good education might imply and how the way to achieve excellence
might be best attained (see for instance Bryk et al. 2015; Dweck, 2016; Gray &
Streshly, 2008; Hattie, 2013; Stigler & Hiebert, 2009).
In this process of defining the meaning of good education, there is a strong
tendency to lean on the reliability and generality of quantitative findings and
hence large meta-studies trying to pin down what works best. Indeed, the
will to establish an order and control that cast out uncertainties have drasti-
cally been increasing lately (Levinsson, 2013). One of the leading researchers
in this area is John Hattie, an Australian professor in pedagogy, whose quan-
titative research about Visible Learning has reached a massive international
audience and stirred political interest. His study is based on 50,000 research
articles drawing on quantitative analysis, 800–900 meta-studies, and the
responses of 240 million pupils thus having an effect size of 150,000. The
Introduction 3
main intention of his study is to detect similarities between countries related
to what seems to work best for facilitating students learning. At the same
time, he is clear that his book is not to be seen as solid and quick fix solution
but rather as a starting-point for thinking (Hattie, 2012).
Whereas Hattie’s study draws on quantitative data, two Swedish peda-
gogical researchers namely associate professor Jan Håkansson and Professor
Daniel Sundberg (2012) conducted a meta-analysis of excellent teaching
based on a large amount of qualitative research in-between 1990–2010.
Based on these studies, they identified 20 of the most prominent interna-
tional research overviews about education within this time span and in the
same line, 23 research overviews from a Swedish perspective. Based on a
qualitative strategy, they strove to highlight inference chains influencing
education and learning. Although the strategy differs from Hattie’s, Håkans-
son and Sundberg concluded in line with Visible Learning that there is no
easy cut and secure strategy or strategies that can improve learning but lies in
the way professionals in education converge a multitude of various scientific
and contextual information and are able to zoom out to see overall patterns,
and zoom in, to detect the details and dynamics in the particular context
(pp. 15, 168).
These two examples of meta-studies are radically different from each other
in approach, but they nonetheless share some similar conclusions. They stress
among other things that: a) learning takes form in a larger school [learning]
environments where various factors are in relation to each other and thus
affect the outcome, b) that teachers’ perceptions (ways of seeing their task)
matter for what takes form in the class room, c) that a professional percep-
tion is built on deep knowledge composed out of various grounded perspec-
tives, and d) that teachers need to be able to use this knowledge to interpret,
puzzle, and make judgements in the various educational contexts (Edling &
Mooney Simmie, 2020, Chapter 4). The meta-studies contribute with an
overview of aspects of importance to teaching and learning which are vital to
acknowledge, but at the same time, they cannot exchange the influence of
and stories of individual teachers. Accordingly, in this web of relations, the
teacher is thus seen as one important factor for stimulating good learning and
seeing that perception in terms of meaning-making matter there is a point
in approaching the notion of successful teachers in the form of narratives.
Situating the teaching profession in relation purposes of education

In order to understand what it implies to be a successful teacher, it is vital to
remember that education as an institution and content always is in dialogue
with what a society and hence government deems as important. In relation to
this, education from a broad sense can be said to have three different purposes:
to provide with qualifications, to socialize, and/or to stimulate emancipation
(Biesta, 2007) as well as equal possibilities (Edling, 2016). The meaning of
these three purposes is not fixed but shifts from time to time and content to
content depending on what a society finds as important to strive for.
Generally, two traditions or ideologies highlight the relationship between the
state and education, which can be described as either broad or narrow state/
teacher responsibilities. If the prime aim of education is to preserve status quo
in a society and provide with knowledge necessary to feed the market and pri-
vate interests, it can be defined in terms of an education for private good. The
responsibilities of the state and educators is in this case simply to secure that the
particular knowledge required is delivered properly and with high quality and
in some cases to socialize people into adapting to an order needed to uphold
this system. However, if education is regarded as to be about more than chiefly
feeding the market and individuals’ personal interests and include questions like
promoting democracy in everyday life, handling environmental issues, protect-
ing everyone’s equal value, as well as promoting equal conditions and possibili-
ties, education becomes a question of public good. In this case, the state and also
professionals working in education are also responsible for providing necessary
qualifications to actively work with social challenge and relations. There is thus a
strong tension between those arguing for basing teacher education on conserv-
ative values and those favoring liberal and/or social (democratic) values. While
rhetorically there is a tendency to blame the opposite part for being ideological,
both parts are equally ideological, in the sense that they “are driven by ideas,
ideals, values, and assumptions about the purposes of schooling, the social and
economic future of the nation, and the role of public education in a democratic
society” (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2001, p. 3).
How educational policies frame teacher professionalism influences what
teachers can and cannot do. As Skourdoumbis (2019) noted:
The continued contemporary education policy emphasis on teacher per-

formance dispositions provides an educational divergence from the con-
tinuity needed between the individual particularities of students and the
needs of a schooling system overly aligned to external curriculum and
assessment benchmarks. A constructive redirection of education policy
will focus on the value of educative teaching dispositions which extend
beyond the purely practical and towards a framework of ‘human flour-
ishing’ (Fielding, 2000, p. 413). This means respecting the knowledge
base of teaching, incorporating the knowledge teachers have of their
subject and how to teach it. It also preferences a person-centred educa-
tion policy approach that recognises the moral and ethical endeavour of
education instead of the current economic ‘ends–means’ imperatives of
contemporary policy.
(p. 16)
The two different ambitions, education for private good and education for
public good, should not be grasped in a dualistic sense, but rather illuminate
different demands on teachers and consequently different definitions of being
excellent and successful. In relation to these strategies, in research worldwide,
the teaching profession has been approached as either solely universal and
technical or also included practice oriented and reflective dimensions (see for
Introduction 5
instance, Ball & Cohen, 1999; Colnerud & Granström, 2002; Frelin, 2010;
Schön, 1986). The technical and universal teacher regards all kind of inter-
pretations in education as subjective and therefore unsuitable for guidance in
educational matters. Contrary to interpretations and processes of understand-
ing, the focus is on evidence-based methods that are seen as efficient for all
without regard for context. The notion of excellence lies in the teacher’s ability
to know the latest statistical studies within various fields of relevance for their
profession and to carry out exams where the students score high. This way of
approaching the teacher professional was particularly strong in many countries
during the 1960s and 1970s under the influence of psychology (Thiessen,
2000).
The practice-oriented approach to teacher professionalism shifts focus from
the teacher being a technician to the teacher being a reflective practitioner
(Elbaz, 1983; Schön, 1986). From this stance, there is an awareness that teach-
ers do not stop making judgments in-between fixed methods, the problem is
that these judgments are not grounded in research but based on common sense
that tend to be misleading. From this way of reasoning, it becomes important
to stimulate teachers ability to interpret the educational (learning) environment
with the help of the in-depth knowledge theory can provide with (e.g., Kelchter-
mans, 2009; Ball & Cohen, 1999; Clark & Peterson, 1986; Elbaz, 1983, 1991).
While the reflective practitioner takes her or his beginning in teachers’ capability
for systematic and well-grounded reasoning in relation to practice, this does not
mean that statistical evidence should be ignored (Thiessen, 2000).
Professional development trajectories and identities

Assumptions of development have in part relied on modernist “industrious
frameworks” of “progress” that is associated with a teleological understand-
ing of “growth” or “betterment.” Such framings of “teacher development”
suffer from a simplistic interpretation of a concept suited for organizations
and replicating it for humans’ sociocognitive domain. Clearly, identity work
among humans is dynamic and complex (Kelchtermans, 2009; Akkerman &
Meijer, 2011; Avalos, 2011; Garner & Kaplan, 2019; Karaman, 2010). As
Beijard (2019) reminds us,
learning or developing a teacher identity is imbued with and fuelled by

many aspects that are primarily personal, such as one’s own biography,
aspirations, learning history, and beliefs about education. Add to this
the hopes, dreams, and ideals that students bring with them to teacher
education.
(p. 3)
Reducing such experiential trajectories to linear narratives of progress leads to

reductive framings for teacher development. For instance, teacher development
approaches that propose to continuously pour new knowledge (that is up-to-
date) to teachers’ minds (often within the scope of professional development
seminars) assume an ongoing need for transmitting knowledge and that such
transmissions would contribute to teacher development. In contrast with the
transmissionist understandings of teacher development, there has also been
a strong interest in self-directed reflective processes undertaken by teachers
(Zeichner & Liston, 2014). As Lieberman and Miller noted, “By teacher devel-
opment, we mean continuous inquiry into practice…We see the teacher as a
“reflective practitioner,” someone who has a tacit knowledge base and who then
builds on that knowledge base through ongoing inquiry and analysis, contin-
ually rethinking and re-evaluating values and practices.” (Lieberman & Miller,
1990, p. 107, cited in Neufeld, 2009, p. 111)4.
Currently the responsibilities of teachers have increased drastically.
Cochran-Smith (2011) captures this upsurge of the everyday work-load
through the following quotation:
In today’s world, policy makers, politicians, educational leaders, the

general public, and parents expect a great deal from teachers. Unlike our
grandmothers’ generation, we want teachers who know subject matter
and know how to teach it to all students to world-class standards. We
want teachers to be responsible for students’ improvement on high-stakes
tests, which in many states determines whether students will graduate
and may determine teachers’ salaries and future job status. We want
teachers to be adept at all sorts of technology, to differentiate curriculum
and instruction for students with special needs and disabilities, and to be
thoroughly knowledgeable about multiple cultures. We expect teachers
to teach students who do not speak English as a first language—without
sacrificing attention to content and, in many cases, without long-term
special programs. And the expectations for today’s teachers don’t stop
there. In many instances, we expect teachers to work long hours at
school and at home, doing lesson preparation and grading over the
weekends, completing additional coursework during the summers, and
spending their own money for classroom resources. We expect teachers
to participate in ongoing professional development and training for the
implementation of new classroom strategies, curriculum materials, testing
programs, assessments, and other new mandates from district, state, and
federal regulatory agencies. We also expect teachers to communicate and
collaborate with students, parents, guardians, caregivers, social workers,
psychologists, specialist teachers, medical personnel, speech therapists,
parole officers, supervisors, administrators, mentors, and community
groups. We expect teachers to be effective members of the school’s
professional staff—working to prevent bullying, drug and alcohol use,
pregnancy, and suicide. In addition to all these expectations, we want
teachers who like children and can relate to today’s youth.
(Cochran-Smith, 2011, p. 12)
While teachers are positioned in a complex web of professional respon-

sibilities rendering it more or less impossible for teachers to be perfect,
Introduction 7
a highly simplified critique of teacher education in media has been mas-
sive over the years in many countries (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Cochran
et al., 2017; Edling, 2020; Edling, 2014; Edling & Liljestrand, 2019;
Labaree, 2004). The critique is generally characterized by a dualistic
argumentation of the bad teacher (education) on the one side and the
good teacher (education) on the other, without taking into account the
complexities teachers and teacher educations are forced to handle. These
media images of teacher education can be understood as a question of
structural violence that brands teachers into a position of permanent
failures and hence makes it difficult to discuss educational issues in a
more nuanced manner. Even though it is important to be aware that
there are differences between media reports’ orientations these tenden-
cies are relatively strong and need to be taken seriously. There are also
differences between countries. In Sweden, for example, media tends to
write about teachers as victims of a poor teacher education rendering
teacher education and educational researchers to be illustrated as the
villains in the drama. In other countries like Britain and Australia, teach-
ers are subjected to severe teacher bashing (Edling, 2014). The crises of
(teacher) education is in a sense permanent and influenced by various
ideologies and worldviews, that exist simultaneously and create frictions
(e.g., Paraskeva, 2011).
In research on teacher education, successful teaching and good teaching is
associated with quality in teaching. In this regard, Fenstermacher and Rich-
ardson (2005) noted:
By successful teaching we mean that the learner actually acquires, to

some reasonable and acceptable level of proficiency, what the teacher is
engaged in teaching. As we have noted, however, learning is more likely
to occur when good teaching is joined with the other three conditions
(willingness and effort, social surround, and opportunity). Thus for the
teacher to be successful—that is, to bring about learning—and do so in
a manner that accords with the standards for good teaching, the addi-
tional three conditions for learning should be in place. When they are,
then all conditions for quality teaching have been met.
(p. 191)
The processes involved in confirming or developing such qualities in teacherhood

are complex (Clandinin & Husu, 2017). Indicators such as student achievement
outcomes or institutional teacher evaluations provide partial depictions utilized
in teacher evaluation (Tarhan et al., 2019). To explore cases of different teach-
ers, it is also important to analyze “representations of teachers’ understanding of
their own professional identity” (Beijaard et al., 2000, p. 750). The link between
the formation of teacher identities and professional learning patterns has become
a key area of emphasis in the field of teacher education (Vermunt et al., 2017).
Internationally, this can be observed in various forms such as professional learn-
ing communities or through individuals’ professional learning efforts.
Studying narratives of teachers
In the communicative practice of everyday life, persons do not only en-
counter one another in the attitude of participants; they also give nar-
rative presentations of events that take place in the context of their life-
world. Narration is a specialized form of constative speech that serves
to describe sociocultural events and objects. Actors base their narrative
presentations on a lay concept of the “world,” in the sense of the every-
day world or lifeworld, which defines the totality of states of affairs that
can be reported in true stories.
(Habermas, 1987, p. 136)
Drawing on a large amount of data indicates that excellent education and

hence the excellent teacher takes form in a web of relations that influence
each other rather than being isolated phenomenon. This web of relations
are at times named as learning environment (Allodi, 2010), school/class-
room culture (Hattie, 2012), and learning context (Håkansson & Sund-
berg, 2012). While large meta-studies of education and teacher profession
are important, they can only say something about education from a distance.
At the same time, education is always more than a distant and abstract phe-
nomenon offered by helicopter views, since it is unavoidably linked to the
complexities of everyday life, where teachers’ perception (seeing) plays a
paramount role (Edling, 2016; Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020, Elmgren
& Henriksson, 2016). Teachers tend to see what they have knowledge
about and what they do not know about they tend to overlook (Edling,
2016). This phenomena makes it interesting to shed light on what experi-
enced and “good” teachers see.
Teacher educators in different contexts considered using “storytelling
about teaching as an intervention or vehicle for critical reflection by prospec-
tive, practicing, and retired teachers and administrators.” (Gomez, Walker,
& Page, 2000, p. 732). Narratives of teachers can help explore the situated
identities, practices, and professional learning of teachers (Clandinin & Con-
nelly, 1996; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Lyons & Laboskey, 2002; Li &
Craig 2019; Craig, 2019). As Hatch and Wisniewski (1995) stated, “Narra-
tive knowledge is organized as stories, and this knowledge is best expressed
in storied narrative forms. The processes of doing narrative inquiry involve
sharing narrative knowledge through the telling of stories: the products are
the stories of self we choose to tell.” (p. 126).
In one such study exploring how the professional development and
identity of an exemplary teacher can be explored within the narratives of
experience through a series of in-depth interviews and ethnographic obser-
vations, several stories helped inquire into the professional growth journey
of a particular teacher whose professional identity could be interpreted by
the following reflection:
Introduction 9
I do not give in. Even if I experience a struggle, I would not let go of
the issue in my mind. I make an effort and I definitely get results. Things
considered “can’t be done,” eventually become ‘can be done’. And in
the end, despite the resistance, there is appreciation of the outcomes. …
If an issue is very important for the child, I absolutely would not quit
pursuing it. Because I would have a mission to accomplish, I would pur-
sue it. I always get results based on such efforts…
(Eda5, Interview 2, 2014)
These were the remarks of Eda6 during one interview as part of the study
exploring her life story and narratives of experience as an English language
teacher who had regularly been identified as successful in her school district
(Karaman, 2016; 2017). Eda was identified as one of the most dedicated
teachers in her school district. The researcher first met her in 2009 when he
was seeking cooperating teachers who would be willing to work with student
teachers he was supervising in his teacher education program. Eda has since
then she worked with several cohorts of student teachers7.
While discussing her teaching philosophy, Eda began by reflecting on her
identity and categorized it under two main headings: “professional identity
as a teacher” and “identity as an English teacher.” Specifically, with regard
to her identity as an English language teacher, Eda underscored the need
to question her role. She began with: “Who am I?, What am I doing here?,
What is my purpose?,” and responded with “to teach.” To address this cen-
tral purpose, for Eda, situational decision-making and motivating particular
groups of students are essential. In this context, a teacher’s autonomy and
professional “freedom” emerge as fundamental needs for Eda. In a typical
class, for Eda, in order to consider herself successful, each desk would func-
tion as a unique workshop where students would work on mini-projects.
These efforts would then be shared on “the class stage” with the peers.
Over the years, in different settings, as teacher educators, we continued to
reflect on the various trajectories teachers pursued in their professional learn-
ing and identity construction. The following particular questions emerged as
areas of focus for this book: What stories do teachers tell about their profes-
sional learning journeys and identities? How do teachers situate their profes-
sional growth in different contexts? In what contexts are teachers’ narratives
of successful teaching emerging? How do teachers and teacher educators
describe their understanding of successful teaching?
Conclusion
Recounting narratives of experience has been the major way throughout
recorded history that humans have made sense of their experience.
(Seidman, 2006, p. 8)
How does one become a “successful teacher”? How do practicing teachers
construct their professional identities? How should teachers organize their
professional learning processes? Mainly grounded in accountability dis-
courses, global professional competence frameworks are often presented
in the form of performance indicators and itemized descriptors. Such
depictions are constrained in the ways professional identity and profes-
sional learning possibilities are framed.
The studies in this volume diverge from this approach with their orien-
tations toward studying the particular toward a deeper understanding of
situated professional identities. In this research volume, we aim to explore
how teachers from different sociocultural contexts can be studied toward a
more nuanced understanding of professional identity construction. Integrat-
ing varied epistemological lenses, the researchers in this volume highlight
cognitive, affective, and emancipatory dimensions emerging from inquiries
into narratives of practicing teachers. The studies included in this volume
are from eight countries: Australia, Brazil, Ireland, Japan, Portugal, Sweden,
Turkey, and United States. Within narrative inquiries emerging from these
contexts, it is hoped that various teacher identities can be explored with suf-
ficient contextual depth.
The studies in this book are not prescriptive. Teachers’ professional
learning narratives and identities from a number of countries are included
in this book. The rationale for inclusion of chapters from multiple
countries is to provide a diversified set of cases that can help teachers,
teacher educators, educational leaders, and educational researchers
worldwide. While the authors do not claim to represent “countries”
with simplistic generalizations, each chapter offers an in-depth profile of
teachers’ professional learning narratives and identities emerging from
a unique sociocultural context. In a sense, readers will have access to
analyses of teachers’ phronesis—"wisdom of practice” in Aristotelian terms
(Halverson, 2004). Within such diversity, each chapter share the unified
theme of the book with their focus of presenting an in-depth analysis of
professional learning narratives and identities of successful teachers with
the aim of contributing to teacher education and teachers’ professional
development worldwide.
In terms of its conceptual framework, the authors rely on interpretive,
critical, and social constructivist frameworks. Epistemologically, the main
means of inquiry rely on narrative inquiry, autoethnography, and qualitative
case study methods. In addition to the in-depth analyses of interview data,
each chapter author also gives space to both theory and practice. While
the discussions directly address practical needs in teacher education/
development, there is also an emphasis on the relevant conceptual framework
in each chapter. To align with the overall theme of this volume, each chapter
includes a conceptual frame, a conceptualization of “successful” teacher
emerging from the inquiry, and a description of the research method.
This volume opens with a brief review which introduces the key themes
related to professional identities and narratives of “successful teachers.”
Introduction 11
In Chapter 1, Remaining a student of teaching forever: Critical reflexive
insights from a lifetime of multiple teacher identities in the Republic of
Ireland, Geraldine Mooney Simmie brings a conceptual and reflexive
inquiry involving insights of her evolving identity as a teacher in Ireland
and how this has shaped her understanding that being a teacher involves
becoming, in the words of Dewey, a student of teaching forever. Her
insights chart teaching as a practice of emancipation enacted as a messy
narrative of discursive struggles, joys, and contradictions. In a pre-
Covid-19 world, the Cartesian logic under-writing the Global Education
Reform Movement (GERM) reduced the search for a personal ethics of
self to a morality of obedience by codes and laws for a universalist teacher
identity. Mooney Simmie offers an alternative theorization of a politics of
principled resistance in the search for an emancipatory ethics in teacher
education and to assure education's social responsibility for a just global
world.
The challenges with a teacher professionalism based on universal-
ist standpoints is also problematized in Chapter 2: From Success/Fail-
ure Binaries to Teaching for Justice: Conceptualizing Education as Access,
Responsibility, Dignity, and Transparency. Walter Gershon argues that the
measurement of educational success reifies universalist, linear, sequential
conceptualizations of education that require the continuing maintenance
of educational actors as failures. Without those measured as failures, there
can be no successes, normalizing systemic injustices in ways that most
often explain them as individual deficiencies. Instead, the author pro-
poses understandings of access, responsibility, and dignity, with additional
need for transparency by those in position of power over others. When
combined, these possibilities can create contexts where a) there is access
to what people need and b) with responsibility to communities and one
another in ways that c) those with the least amount of power feel and
believe themselves to have been treated in ways that were dignified and in
which they can maintain their sense of dignity.
Whereas Chapter 2 problematizes the binary construction between a
successful and non-successful teacher, Chapter 3, Teacher narratives as
counter-narratives of successful teaching, by Maria Alfredo Moreira, Rosa
Maria Moraes Anunciato, and Maria Aparecida P. Viana explores the dis-
courses of teacher education and successful teaching with a focus on two
particular contexts: Brazil and Portugal. Teacher narratives are a powerful
source for understanding teachers’ thinking and the way they construct
professional knowledge, as they reveal how they try to make sense of edu-
cational aims, curriculum development, teaching practices, and of learning
processes and outcomes. In this text, professional learning narratives are
used both as a teacher development strategy and as heuristic devices for
reading teacher work and addressing critical questions related to teaching
and learning in public schools, within post-graduate programs in Brazil
and Portugal, from 2013 to 2018. Using data from 45 teacher narratives
and five semi-structured interviews to the teachers who wrote narratives,
they identify conceptualizations of successful teaching, while discussing
the conditions that facilitate it. The analysis highlights the benefits of nar-
rative writing in promoting critical reflection on teacher work, but also
the constraints and difficulties. These teachers’ texts arise as counter-nar-
ratives to the grand neoliberal narratives that populate teacher education
and teacher work, decontextualizing them and stripping them of their
historicity.
In Chapter 4 “If I can do it at this school, you can put me anywhere,”
the Brazilian and Portuguese context is exchanged by an Australian one.
Lynette Longaretti and Dianne Toe “offer a unique account of pro-
fessional teacher identities emerging from Australia and from graduate
teachers who have been prepared to work in disadvantaged schools.” In
this chapter, they explore three case studies of new graduate teachers who
participated in the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged
Schools (NETDS) Program at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia.
Longaretti and Toe examine their perspectives as successful graduate
teachers teaching in challenging school communities and the factors that
shape them to be confident teachers with an optimistic outlook. The
three case studies have been drawn from data collected from the first two
cohorts of NETDS graduates at Deakin University. They were employed
in three diverse schools in Victoria, Australia. The case studies offer a
unique account of professional teacher identities emerging from Australia
and from graduate teachers who have been prepared to work in disadvan-
taged schools. Each case builds a picture of the qualities of a successful
graduate teacher and provides valuable insight into how the NETDS pro-
gram has provided them with a strong foundation through professional
development.
Professional development is also the focus of Chapter 5, Professional
development of EFL teachers through reflective practice in a supportive
community of practice where Chitose Asaoka explores the experiences of
two in-service English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Japan and
delineates the process of their becoming successful teachers even in an
isolated environment. It also examines how they built a mutually sup-
portive community of practice, and how they shared and re-constructed
their expertise through interacting with each other. The results show that
participation in an online collaborative community of practice enabled
them to reflect on and adjust their teaching practices. In both cases, the
role of the diagonal mentor, somebody with similar professional experi-
ences, was considered to be profoundly important. The results also imply
the building of collaborative relationships with peer teachers within and
beyond their work contexts can support the development of profession-
alism in teachers.
One dimension of teacher development involves teacher’s identity
work. In Chapter 6, Looking back with pride—looking forward in hope:
The narratives of a transformative teacher, Fatma Gümüşok explores
professional identity of a transformative language teacher within a
Introduction 13
Turkish public school context. More specifically, she aims to present
the life story of a teacher who endeavored to contribute to her com-
munity by touching upon multiple social-environmental problems.
Since achieving transformational goals in teaching is an arduous jour-
ney, the account of an accomplished teacher deserves to be recognized.
Therefore, Gümüşok conducts three interviews with the participant
by collecting her lived experiences from the very early student life to
her current teaching and school life practices. The inductively analyzed
interview findings displayed that having a similar background with stu-
dents, carrying leadership qualities, and living a self-transformational
experience enhanced her transformative efforts. Having a strong sense
of work ethics and believing in the vital importance of dialogue facil-
itated the improvement of this transformative teacher’s school life.
The study reveals that being transformative is multi-dimensional, emo-
tion-laden, and socially rooted.
Adding the flow of everyday teacher practice to the notion of
teacher’s professional identity, Chapter 7, Understanding a Teacher’s
Professional Identity through Pedagogical Rhythm with Sören Högberg
employs the concept of pedagogical rhythm to explore the professional
identity of a primary school teacher in Sweden. In this chapter, Högberg
interprets the narrative of Hannah, a primary teacher who works at a
working-class Swedish primary school with pupils aged 12–13. During
the years, Hannah has developed a strong professional identity, which
is characterized as an endeavor to create close relationships with her
students. Her overall ambition is to create a community held together
by a shared morality where her pupils take their schoolwork seriously.
To Hannah, her students’ positive attitude and willingness to learn are
of much more importance than their achievement levels. Her narrative
gives us an important insight into the teaching profession developed
in a certain context. Indeed, Hannah’s professional identity, presented
from a perspective labeled as the moral dimension of teaching, focuses
on the relationship between pedagogical and ethical intentions emerged
in educational settings. The result, captured through observations and
interviews, shows a close connection between professional identity and
educational context.
In Chapter 8, Revisiting Selves through a ‘Success’ Perspective: An
Autoethnographic Quest of a Language Teacher across Intercultural Spaces,
Tugay Elmas explores his journey of becoming a “successful teacher”
through the lens of interculturality and intercultural education. Through
this autoethnographic inquiry, Elmas invites readers into his personal
journey of how the challenges, struggles, and tensions emerging from his
intercultural experiences in different socio-cultural contexts, in England
as “an immigrant,” in Germany as “an Erasmus student,” in the United
States as “a language teacher,” shaped his personal and cultural identi-
ties and contributed to his ongoing professional learning as a language
teacher. By critically weaving in and out of various concepts and notions,
Elmas explores how the complex interplay between the wider social-cul-
tural trajectories and his lived experiences plays a crucial role in his cultural
and linguistic learning, the forms of participation within different com-
munities, and identity negotiations.
In Chapter 9, Path towards the Construction of a Professional Identity: A
Narrative Inquiry into a Language Teacher’s Experiences Pınar Yeni Palabıyık
investigates the path towards the construction of a professional identity within
a narrative inquiry into a language teacher’s experiences in a school context
in Turkey. The influence of various roles experienced throughout teaching
career on the development of multiple identities and the successful resolution
of these identities in a single identity was reported from a life-story perspec-
tive. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to reveal the professional
identity formation. A shift from a technicist to a professional teacher was
explored.
Whereas the various chapters explore contextual teacher identities and
developments, Chapter 10, ‘Successful Teaching’: Neoliberal Influences and
Emerging Counter-Narratives, problematizes the ways in which learners of
neoliberal age are directed toward acquiring knowledge and skill-sets that
must be standardized, tracked, and assessed. Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi and A.
Cendel Karaman argue that to enact such a constrained paradigm of edu-
cation, governments worldwide have also implemented reforms in teacher
preparation and development. Due to the perceptions of “best-practices” or
“successful teaching” emerging from these reforms, teachers often self-regu-
late to work toward particular types of professional practice based on trends
and standards generated by global and domestic institutions with varied
interests and visions for public education which often do not situate educat-
ing for democracy and social justice as core priorities. Under such neoliberal
influences, “successful teachers” may not find sufficient resources to critically
reflect on global inequities and meaningfully integrate ways of tackling them
in their teaching. In this chapter, adopting a critical lens, they discuss the
construction of “successful teaching” in neoliberal times and offer examples
of counter-narratives that emerged from other studies in this book. At a
time when teacher voice and agency continue to be devalued in neoliberal
discourses, this chapter offers a critically oriented conceptual voice to this
volume that explores narratives of teachers’ professional learning and iden-
tities emerging from unique and usually challenging sociocultural contexts.
The book ends with a brief conclusion where some major themes of the
book chapters are highlighted and discussed.
Notes
1 Initial conceptions of this book emerged a decade ago, in 2011. Based on our
numerous field observations during student teaching observations and
conversations with school teachers over the years (Silvia in Sweden and Cendel
in Turkey and the U.S.) and further discussions with colleagues in research
conferences pointed to the need to bring to fore analyses of situated practices,
Introduction 15
professional learning patterns, and identities of school teachers that are identified
as successful teachers in their particular school contexts. In 2014, in a doctoral
seminar on teacher education, Cendel had conducted and led a series of case
studies exploring the narratives of successful teachers (See Gümüşok, 2021 and
Yeni Palabıyık, 2021 in this volume). In subsequent years, we have had numerous
conversations at conferences such as European Educational Research Association
(ECER) and American Educational Research Association (AERA) exploring the
need to deepen inquiry on how teachers in different contexts construct their
teacher identities through various complex unique trajectories situated in their
life stories. Teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers often
expressed the need to critically reflect on how, for example, the instrumentalist
reason that could be seen in the common public discourses on teachers’ roles
and success criteria characterized by an emphasis on standardization and
performance-based accountability frameworks.
2 https://www.right-to-education.org/page/united-nations-instruments [April
21 2020]
3 http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/new-methodology-shows-
258-million-children-adolescents-and-youth-are-out-school.pdf [April 21 2020]
4 Influenced by Mead’s social psychology of action, this perspective situates the
teacher as scientific researcher who reflects and inquires (Neufeld, 2009).
5 A pseudonym.
6 She has worked at her current high school for the last 10 years. For much of her
25 years of teaching, she would arrive at school an hour earlier than opening
hours. Recalling her own experience as a high school student, Eda recalled how
her literature teacher constantly sat during lessons and decided not to sit in her
classes. “I have never sat on a chair while teaching. I have never had a medical
leave as a teacher,” she exclaimed. For Eda, dedication involves a deep respect for
her work.
7 Over the years, the researcher noticed how Eda had qualities that distinguished
her. For instance, on most visits to their school, the researcher would run into
her either in the school lobby or teachers’ lounge. In each instance, she would
be surrounded by either a group of students she taught or she would be tutor-
ing a student. In addition, she conveyed an extraordinary degree of enthusiasm
for her work as a teacher.
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1 Remaining a student of
teaching forever
Critical reflexive insights from a lifetime of
multiple teacher identities in the Republic
of Ireland
Geraldine Mooney Simmie
Introduction
I begin this narrative inquiry of what it means in contemporary times to have
a successful teacher identity, which I understand as multiple and evolving and
gleaned over 40 years teaching in higher education and secondary schools.
John Dewey reminds us that teaching is about remaining a student of teaching
forever. This is something that resonates with me as I make sense of a life jour-
ney of searching for a personal ethics of self as a teacher, passing on the known
(and partial) canon of knowledge, the values, and virtues of becoming a person
in a just society and all the while making space for something new to emerge,
for daring to transgress (hooks, 1994) as an activist professional, a public intel-
lectual, problem-poser, and troublemaker from understandings of successful
teaching as pedagogical, philosophical, and political acts (Freire, 1972).
I posit that successful teaching and teacher identities are connected to moral
and political philosophy because they are imbued with intentionality and are
not neutral, either in the direction of freedom and liberation or for domestica-
tion and colonization. For this reason, teaching always carries inherent dangers
of symbolic violence especially prevalent in a pre-Covid-19 world of education
policy that reduced to a narrow politics of reflection for a universalist market-led
teacher identity (Brady, 2016, 2019). Lawn & Ozga (1981) argued that pro-
fessionalism is an ideological weapon reducing teacher agency and autonomy in
order to fulfill the main objectives of the state at any given moment in time. A
question running throughout this chapter is how we might avoid the dangers of
a debased teacher identity through a new politics of principled resistance for a
post-Covid-19 world (Freire, 1972; Thomas & Vavrus, 2019).
My identities as a teacher, educational researcher, and teacher educator
are identities that have evolved over a lifetime and are positioned in critical
sociology of education where I draw from critical, feminist, and post-colo-
nial perspectives to understand, interrupt, and challenge my ethics of self,
my practices, and policy reform constructs in Teacher Professional Learning
(e.g., mentoring, learning, leadership, teacher design teams, border-cross-
ing partnerships, communities of practice, etc.). My research studies are
concerned with the critical, social, and heuristic purposes of education and
Remaining a student of teaching forever 21
identification of gaps in the rhetoric of policy and the lived reality of practices.
My policy analyses reveal the hand of the powerful in Ireland and elsewhere
in the contemporary reduction of teaching to a tight, hard, and strong clin-
ical practice in the last decade (Mooney Simmie, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2020).
Good teaching is understood by me as a relational “moral and political
endeavor” for a collective non-identical practice situated in culture and con-
text. This is a very different understanding from current mainstream thinking
in Ireland and elsewhere (Sant, 2019). In public policy, teaching is presented
as a “moral and apolitical endeavor” in the academy of teacher education. A
logic of essentialist thought abstracts education from multiple ways of know-
ing and from the deeply embedded roots of culture and heritage, the particu-
larity of experience and context, the affective and the feminine, the political
and the existential.
Instead the Enlightenment view of the rational thinker, frames research
problems in education in (de)contextualized ways away from the messiness
of the lived reality of practice settings. These research designs seek to atom-
ize problems and can offer helpful solutions that are at best only ever par-
tial solutions to wider systemic issues. They often fail to include education's
social responsibility as a public good outside of concern for the competi-
tive individual Macrine (2016). In such research designs, poverty and social
injustice in the intersectionality of social class, race, gender, religion, and
ethnicity are reframed as problems of special concern for the individual and/
or their disadvantaged local community (Petersen & Millei, 2016).
Teaching as a moral and political practice, a collective while non-identical
practice (Santoro & Rocha, 2015), requires not only interrogation of self
and practice but also necessitates critical mediation with the wider world
(Freire, 1972/2018). It is this commitment to critical mediation with the
wider world—not as an add-on but as a central concern of education to
interpret the world and to proactively change it—that sets critical theory
apart from other ways of viewing education, teaching, and teacher identities.
The field of Critical Pedagogy with emancipatory roots in moral and polit-
ical philosophies, ongoing struggles for a just global world, is constantly
evolving and keeping pace with rapid and unprecedented changes of globali-
zation and technologization in higher education and schooling (Macrine,
2020). Teaching is understood as a relational and intellectual praxis involv-
ing rich interplays between theory, practice, experience, policy, and research
(Mooney Simmie, de Paor, Liston & O'Shea, 2017; Mooney Simmie, Moles
& O'Grady, 2019). This is a very different understanding from mainstream
neoliberal/elite discourses of education that Sant (2019) describes and are
discussed in the following section. This latter policy imperative compels
teachers to deconstruct their existing identities and replace them with a new
universalist identity, doing it to themselves for primacy of the markets (Lon-
ergan et al., 2012; Mooney Simmie & Moles, 2011, 2019).
I will structure the chapter as follows. First, I outline the methodology for
the study and show how Gee's (2000) four perspectives of identity provide a
useful lens to analyze my multiple and evolving identities over a lifetime as a
22 Geraldine Mooney Simmie
successful teacher in Ireland. Second, I question the purposes of education,
teaching, and teacher identities in contemporary times and make the case
in this literature review that critical questions concerning purpose set the
scene for under-writing the interpretive system of what is meant in the first
instance by teacher identities. While I understand teachers have agency and
relative autonomy and are not totally positioned as docile bodies and victims
of oppressive structures, nonetheless there are oppressive ways in which a
neoliberal/elite imaginary is currently acting downward on teacher identities
that urgently need to be revealed, interrupted, and changed. Third, I share
some critical reflexive insights from my fields of practice as a teacher, research
development officer, and more recently as a teacher educator in a university
setting. Finally, I conclude with a reflection on the problem under study and
offer an alternative theorization as a politics of principled resistance for the
educability of every child and better connectivity between education, teacher
identities, reform, social justice, ethics, democracy, and a just global world.
Methodology
The methodology aims to share identities I bring to the role of teaching in
Ireland, a role in which I have a felt sense of success while remaining open
to discursive struggles and joys, willingness to question my practices on my
own and with critical friends, to engage with a vast literature and research,
to consider questions of existential freedom, and to critically mediate prac-
tices with the wider world and social justice. It is this notion of a continual
discursive struggle and clash between inner and outer work and between
my experiences, practices, access to critical theory, and research that I want
to bring to the fore in this chapter as I show how they inform my emerging
sense of multiple identities Pillow (2003).
Gee (2000) writes about the use of identity as an analytic lens for research
in education and at a time when a market-led view of education is domi-
nant in a post-truth viral modernity (Macrine, 2020; Peters et al., 2020). Gee
(2000) explains how “one cannot have an identity of any sort without some
interpretive system under-writing the recognition of that identity” (p.107).
He suggests four strands to grasp a deeper understanding of identity within
contemporary education: the nature perspective (N-identities); institutional
perspective (I-identities); discursive perspective (D-identities), and affinity
perspective (A-identities). N-identities are bestowed by nature (e.g., genes,
neurological), I-identities by institutions (e.g., formal positions, regulatory
bodies), D-identities by discourse and dialogue (e.g., recognition as expert),
and A-identities by social affinity groupings (e.g., specialist groups).
In this chapter, I call on these four perspectives as they are under-written
in a policy backdrop of neoliberal/elite policy discourses (Sant, 2019). I
explain my teacher identities as a successful teacher, by self, others, insti-
tutions, and the wider society. I will also show how teacher identities are
laden with the potential for real and symbolic violence when under-written
by a universal bio-psycho-neuro-socio-cultural model of self (Self) that is
abstracted from deep-rooted connectivity to particular social and political
contexts and without unconditional responsibility for others (Others).
The domestication and colonization of education by the primacy of the
economy in a pre-Covid-19 world reframed human development—teacher
professional learning and teacher identity—as a universalist notion of an ideal
individual abstracted from context (social class, gender, race, religion), and from
an invisible pedagogy of the immaterial Bettez (2015). The interpretive system
underpinning higher education and schooling in a pre-Covid-19 world was a
market-led mainstream view of human capital theory held in place by neolib-
erals, neoconservatives, and a growing Alt-Right nationalism (Macrine, 2020).
A neoliberal/elite governance ideology celebrates competitive individual-
ism and the supremacy of a strong economy underpinned by human capital
theory (Tan, 2014). Human Capital Theory takes the primacy of the econ-
omy as its starting point and argues that the human being is a utility driven
animal out to maximize their own economic benefit and capable of being
bent in any direction that will bring the greatest financial reward. While
there are numerous efforts to unseat this reductionist view of education and
teaching the theory continues to gain traction as a “good enough” theory
by policymakers, politicians, and researchers alike as it is found to be most
successful in predicting behavior.
The Covid-19 pandemic offers a global interruption to this discourse and
provides an opportunity for a change in direction in public policy in educa-
tion: either a continuation of human capital theory this time “on steroids”
for a more intense focus on the competitive individual or new affordances for
a more expansive societal view. It is to this critical question of the purposes
of education, teacher identities, and teacher professional learning that I now
turn in the following literature review.
Education as a field of radical possibility

A good place to start any discussion about successful teacher identity and
professional learning is to ask what is the purpose of the successful teacher
and, a related question, what is the purpose of education? What is the purpose
of education nowadays in a policy world awash with a terminology of learn-
ing that suggests all that is worth talking about is a narrow and undefined
construct called “teaching and learning” rather than “education” (Biesta,
2012). My understanding since I qualified as a teacher is that education
is a field of study that is multidisciplinary and crosses boundaries between
the foundational disciplines, e.g., history, philosophy, sociology, and psy-
chology of education. Bernstein (2000) talks about vertical and horizontal
knowledge forms, about hierarchies of knowledge (science) and hierarchies
of knowers (humanities and the arts) and about the weak framing that allows
the field of education be at once relational, pedagogical, philosophical, and
political. The field of education has historically attracted a high number of
competing interests and there have always and ever been discursive struggles
for the soul of the curriculum.
Education is not a discipline and it is decidedly not a discipline in the hard
sciences. Although there is evidence nowadays that teaching and teacher
education are increasingly pushed in the direction of the hard sciences,
toward a medical model of clinical practice that is based on an overreliance
on data, metrics, and evidence. Only that which is counted, counts (Lynch,
2015) as the ideal human is defined using a bio-psycho-neuro-socio-cultural
model embedded in the social psychology of education. Education is thereby
reduced to the science of behavior change for a new social psychology of
education that claims universal answers.
It makes sense to aim for some universal understandings and to require
teachers to use counter-intuitive views of practice (Butler, Mooney Simmie &
O’Grady, 2015; Galvin, Mooney Simmie & O’Grady, 2015; O’Grady, Mooney
Simmie & Kennedy, 2014). However, this becomes an issue when research find-
ings are narrowly interpreted by policymakers, when they lack nuance in relation
to limitations (e.g., decontextualized nature; short time scale) or when used as
exhaustive listings of standards, codes, and competences that are presented as
the complete picture (Osberg & Biesta, 2020). A neoliberal/elite imaginary is
used to silence the dynamic nature and messiness of human interaction in teach-
ing and to eschew the feminine, aesthetic, political, the particular, cultural, and
contextual. Instead, good teaching as a messy narrative of discursive struggles
and change as presented in this chapter holds the tensions, contradictions, and
joys inherent in universalist-particularist subjectivities. The purpose of educa-
tion and teaching then go beyond the qualification and socialization purposes
to include the existential and emancipatory (Mooney Simmie & Moles, 2019;
Mooney Simmie, Moles & O’Grady, 2019).
Successful teacher identity in the academy of teacher education is cur-
rently governed by a flawed universalist notion that is fully described by
a narrow scientism, a toolkit of predetermined attitudes, skills, knowl-
edge, and competences Fielding (2007). A universality teacher identity is
presented as a flexible adaptable entrepreneur focused on achieving and
reporting on their individual best and investing over a lifetime of learn-
ing in pursuit of credentials and fidelity to outcomes already known in
advance. Ball (2003) shows how the soul of the teacher in the UK was
displaced by these “terrors of performativity.” Similarly, Santoro (2017)
shows how the inner moral commitment of experienced teachers in the
US has been suppressed amid growing despair at a new performativity of
“what works” and how this leads to the ethical suppression of teachers’
voices (Zipin & Brennan, 2003).
Performativity in teacher education in Ireland

In Ireland, while several studies find similar performativity issues educa-
tion policymakers refer to a discourse of “exceptionalism,” underlining that
bad policies in education happen elsewhere (Mooney Simmie et al., 2020).
National pride as a country with a long Christian (largely Catholic) tradition
in schooling underwrites teacher identities in Ireland as moral and apolitical
practices, nowadays under-written using a new system of teacher obedience
with externally imposed codes, rules, and new sets of laws (Teaching Coun-
cil, 2016). This outside-in approach to teacher professionalism is new and is
only introduced by the newly appointed Teaching Council in the last dec-
ade (the council itself only became a statutory body in 2006). Nowadays,
a hard, tight, and strong system of rules, roles, responsibilities, codes, and
sets of laws as a new system of juridification applies in all policies in teacher
education. Moreover, eschewing politics from teaching keeps this discourse
of “exceptionalism” in play, despite evidence to the contrary (Lynch, 2015;
Mooney Simmie, Moles & O'Grady, 2019).
Foucault
counterposes moralities orientated towards ethics...(where there is a)

strong dynamic element in so far as there exists a relative autonomy
between a system of laws and the individual's ethical behaviour. Rather
than conformity towards the law, the emphasis is on the formation of the
relationship with the self and on the methods and techniques through
which the relationship is worked out.......(in this case) the individual
is relatively free to interpret the spirit of the law in his/her own style,
rather than conform to the exact letter of the law.
(McNay, 1992, p.53)
Teachers in Ireland across Europe and the OECD are increasingly depicted
in policy terms as acting with increased autonomy and agency for member-
ship of a creative professional class engaged in self-study for primacy of the
markets.With this new tight and strong focus on externally enforced moral
codes and sets of laws in teacher education, it is hard to see the spaces and
affordances for teacher identities for authentic agency, autonomy, and activ-
ism for the primacy of an emancipatory ethics (Brady, 2016, 2019; Mooney
Simmie & Moles, 2019). While teacher regulation and accountability make
sense, it is the “cruel optimism” inherent in the above reductionist global
reform system of universalist identity that I am taking issue with here.
The discourse of “exceptionalism” in teacher identities in Ireland remains
powerful enough to silence contrarian views and dissent. Reforms remain
largely unquestioned and I-identities, D-identities, and A-identities become
more about how to praise and to faithfully implement reforms rather than
questioning their underpinning rationale (Mc Kenna & Mooney Simmie,
2017; Mooney Simmie, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2020). Contrarian views are
not only unwelcome within a cultural hegemony of “consensualism” but
any teacher/educator raising concerns becomes pathologized using systems
of N-identities: identified as somehow exhibiting a psychic deficit, such as
teacher anxiety and stress levels, lack of resilience or simply lack of moral
character and laziness, and/or overall unwillingness to change. Non-recog-
nition protects the interests of the powerful from any criticism that a neo-
liberal/elite imaginary is at play in education policy and, at the same time,
secures the ethical suppression of teachers’ voices through clinical under-
standings of a universalist teacher identity (Brady, 2016, 2019 ; Edling &
Mooney Simmie, 2017, 2020; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2016, 2019).
Why teacher identities need the political

Freire’s (1972/2018) work in Critical Pedagogy speaks to the pedagogy of
the oppressed and to an understanding that education is under-written by
politics. To ignore politics in education is to run the risk that what will become
accepted as the new field of learning will lie on a procrustean bed of pre-de-
termined competence, codes, and standards for fidelity with a predetermined
practice, using processes of constant comparison (e.g., ideal teacher learner).
This procrustean bed of named skills and dispositions advances a uni-
versal pedagogy of learning and teacher identity where one size fits all. In
the mythical story of Procrusteus in Ancient Greece, he invited guests for
an overnight stay in his hostelry. Later each night he fit each guest to his
designer bed for a good night’s sleep. Those who were too long for the bed
had their heads cut off and those who were too short had their body pulled
until they were the right fit. The metaphor offers a critique of any universalist
pedagogy that claims it knows everything about teaching and learning. A
universalist pedagogy acts as a well-planned “Riverdance” of techniques—
learning outcomes, peer learning, assessment for learning, reciprocal learn-
ing, feedback, self-directed learning, peer observation, systematic planning,
self-evaluation—allowing teachers arrive at mass reproduction of an ideal
desired student, for outcomes with a calculable market-led dividend for a
future of economic prosperity.
Claiming to be educated needs to say something about what kind of soci-
ety one wants to live in, to build, and to develop. It needs to say something
about how people not only vote and become civic minded but just how
active people are in defining with others the democratic society they want
now and into the future (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020; Mooney Simmie
& Lang, 2018, 2020). Freedom is a treasured concept but it is not the same
as a free for all. Free speech is a democratic right but not when used in an
irresponsible way to stir up hatred of minorities. Democracy contains para-
doxes and dilemmas and calls on people to be engaged in negotiation and
willing to give up privileges for the public good.
Democratic spirit is upstream of any reductionist understanding that it is
sufficient to teach about and for democracy in schools and higher education. It
is not enough for civic participation to be understood as pre-determined atti-
tudes, skills, and knowledge. Democratic spirit calls for teacher activism and
proactive discursive struggles for seeking out the soul of the self and for the
public interest values of a democratic society. It separates an “us” and “them”
as two political camps: the “us” are those who agree to share power and dis-
tribute resources for a vibrant and decent democratic society and a just global
world and “them” are those who do not agree. Political camps are not rigid,
it is possible for people to be persuaded to change allegiance. A pedagogy of
hope in teacher identities suggests that activist work in education is worth-
while, a heightened wide-awakeness of what we can achieve with we work in
solidarity for the common good. It is a pedagogy of hope, joy, and agonistics
that I have experienced at first hand in the field of practice as a teacher and
teacher educator. It is to this field of practice that I now turn.
My critical insights from the field of practice

My 40-year timeline as a teacher and teacher educator separates into three
parts: the first 15 years as a teacher in secondary schools, the middle 10 years
supporting teachers’ Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in schools
on the west coast of Ireland, and the last15 years as an educational researcher
and teacher educator in a university setting. It is only in the last decade, since
completion of my PhD study in education in Trinity College Dublin (Mooney
Simmie, 2009) that I acquired the opportunity to delve deeply into the vast lit-
erature and find my voice in the academy in the cultural politics of education.
Teacher in a secondary school

I was a secondary school teacher of young people for 15 years in Galway city.
I taught physics, science, and mathematics during the day, astronomy on a
voluntary basis at lunchtime, and in the evenings I worked with interested
students (about ten students every year) on research projects in preparation
for entry into a national Young Scientist Competition. The school was a vol-
untary secondary school, under the trusteeship of a Catholic religious order,
a midsize urban school with a mixed intake, many middle-class parents with
ambition for university progression, and a local catchment of young people
from socially deprived areas. The school had an atmosphere of care and com-
munity and offered a rich menu of extracurricular activities.
An outstanding feature of the school was its commitment to social justice
and to critical consciousness. I liked to keep up-to-date with my subject area
and to share in solidarity with other teachers for improvement in working
conditions, in particular for access to resources to teach in new and inter-
esting ways. I was an active member of the voluntary Irish Science Teachers
Association (ISTA) and the secondary teacher’s union, the Association for
Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI).
During that time, I wrote three books in chemistry and junior science
for secondary school students, published by Folens Publishers and School
and College Publishing in Dublin. I worked on a part-time basis with the
Science Education Department of the National University of Ireland, NUI
Galway where I made and presented three chemistry and science videos for
teachers and students, used in lower and upper secondary schools. While I
thoroughly enjoyed my “calling” to teaching and was driven by an inner
commitment to the vocation of teaching, it was not always straightforward
and there were obstacles and constraints I encountered along the way and
there were many reflexive blind spots yet to identify.
I always had a great interest in politics, in issues of social justice and equal-
ity of condition, and I always seized opportunities in school and elsewhere
to have a voice in debates. This interest arose from my background, as a girl
coming from a large family and a poor background who was spurred on in
secondary school by some of my teachers to aim high and to continue to
progress my love of science and mathematics to university level. This was
at a time in Ireland when most girls did not select higher mathematics, few
studied chemistry, and fewer female voices were heard in the public forum.
At home and in school, I was encouraged to debate about politics and to
question the type of society and world worth aiming for.
While teaching, I worked on a voluntary basis for some years in the early
1990s with a politician at his weekly clinic in Galway, a politician who later
was to become the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins (Mooney Sim-
mie, 2012). It was an exciting time for Irish women as the country had just
elected our first woman President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.
Having a voice in the public forum and having a voice in the schooling and
education systems were not always one and the same thing. At the school
setting, there were occasions where I struggled with feelings of not being
included. I chaired staff meetings for a time at a young age and was a mem-
ber of a senior advisory group to the school principal. However, I often had
a felt sense of lack of recognition (D-identity) at staff meetings, it was an elite
and gendered space reserved for certain members, mostly male members of
staff to voice their concerns and opinions. The majority of female staff did
not participate at staff meetings preferring instead to talk outside the public
forum (Baxter, 2006). It was going to be much later, and after I started my
doctoral studies and read more deeply into the cultural politics of Ireland
that I gained an understanding of the “consensualist” dynamics at play in
schooling. Teaching was framed at that time and continues to date to be
framed as a moral and apolitical endeavor. I did not question this framing
for many years. I was not wide-awake to the multiple ways life in schools and
reforms, such as the recent Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)
reproduce inequality and society, power, and privilege (Apple, 2012, 2013;
McLaren, 2015).
However, from the first day I started teaching I understood my role
was not only to pass on culture and tradition and the existing (partial and
evolving) canon of specialist knowledge to the next generation but also the
importance of education as a practice of freedom and liberation, opening
spaces for all student voices to be heard, for daring to transgress and for
acting as a problem-poser and trouble-maker for a just democratic society
(hooks, 1994).
As a teacher working inside schooling as a reproductive system of strat-
ification, I see many teacher identity contradictions in my role and have
more recently learned how to articulate this and how to critically interro-
gate my complicit role in schooling as a transaction of domestication and
colonization. Critical feminist postcolonial perspectives can hold in tension
and contradiction masculinist and feminist perspectives, student-teacher
contradictions, universalist-particularist perspectives, problem-solving and
problem-posing perspectives, and dilemma-management as well as under-
standing there are also some unsolvable dilemmas for teaching as a public
good (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020).
Regional support officer to schools

For ten years, I worked as a regional support officer in schools in the west of
Ireland, in 13 counties, supporting the professional development of experi-
enced teachers. I was on secondment as a member of a national Transition
Year Support Service and Second Level Support Service under the guidance of
the inspectorate of the Department of Education and Skills (DES). I worked
with many committed teachers and school principals and was generally
appalled at the lack of resources I found in many schools. My work was
concerned with facilitating new pedagogies of active learning and involved
opening dialogue with teachers and staffs, supporting and challenging teach-
ers to interrogate routinized practices.
Toward the end of this time, I returned to university to complete my PhD
in education policy as a comparative mixed-methods study between Ireland
and Norway in the science and math policy cycle at upper secondary educa-
tion (Mooney Simmie, 2009). I continue to be attracted to Nordic coun-
tries as they are renowned for social democratic policies and practices. I also
learned about the “dangers” in policy borrowing from different countries
and the serious mistakes made over the years by policymakers, especially in
times of economic crisis.
I gained a deep insight into the policy research literature showing how
mainstream policy seeks to frame policy as a linear rational cycle of imple-
mentation. Instead, the research work of Stephen J. Ball and other edu-
cationalists made more sense, their view of the teacher as a translator and
interpreter involved in a complex intellectual and relational endeavor of
policy enactment that is creative, critical, and situated in the messiness of
context and culture (Mooney Simmie, 2007; Mooney Simmie, Moles and
O’Grady, 2019).
At the start of the 2000s in Ireland, the construct of the teacher as a
professional was being advanced, and later the teacher as an extended pro-
fessional taking part in partnerships for improvement in teacher profes-
sional learning. Teacher learning for new learner-centered pedagogies of
active learning through a multitude of policy directives (e.g., coaching,
mentoring, induction, partnership, school-university partnership, leader-
ship) was later to become central to my research specialism as an educational
researcher (Galvin & Mooney Simmie, 2017; Young, O’Neill & Mooney
Simmie, 2015). I gained first-hand experience that teachers worked inside
the cultural politics of schools, the values, codes, signals, and symbols often
quietly under-written in their society. Pedagogical, political, and philosoph-
ical questions of the purposes of Teacher Learning and who benefits started
to shape my research.
Educational researcher at the university
In the last 15 years at the School of Education, University of Limerick as
a Senior Lecturer and educational researcher in Policy Studies I work with
faculty, nationally and internationally, and with postgraduate doctoral and
masters students in seeking to teach, supervise, understand, and critically
interpret the policy framing and practices of teacher professional learning
across the continuum of teacher education (e.g., pre-service, induction, and
in-career teachers). Critical interpretivist studies offer affordances to see
behind the political legitimation of policies to the hidden curriculum of who
benefits, to delve deeper into the politics and economics behind contempo-
rary policy imperatives on teacher identities and subjectivities and to reveal
deficits (Creswell & Creswell, 2018).
One deficit discourse in education policy in Ireland and elsewhere is the
framing of teacher identities using a universalist politics of reflection, as a
repertoire of I-identities (institutionally constituted through the Teaching
Council), D-identities (discursively allocated from recognition of various
levels of expertise), and A-identities (affinity groupings of teachers on social
media platforms) for a practice of self-study and interrogation of practices
but with no mediation to the wider capitalist world. Nowadays, reform pol-
icies claim to be equity-proofed and to arise from research evidence only,
untainted by ideology, and all that is required is their faithful implementation
by an obedient teaching force. Steiner-Kramsi et al. (2019) have debunked
this myth in a recent study showing that (political) policy-making in educa-
tion is far from the neutral and objective practices of a pure science. Another
deficit discourse opened for scrutiny is the Enlightenment view of the ideal
human, in operation for the last 500 years, a rational thinker disembodied
from affectivity and from D-identities that recognize existential freedom and
emancipatory possibility for all (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020; Mooney
Simmie & Moles, 2019; Osberg & Biesta, 2020).
During the last decade, I was recognized and invited (D-identities) to
partake in public policy debates on education in national television and
local radio programs, and to work as a public intellectual and activist in the
media. While I appreciate the researcher task of finding out “what works,”
my research work continues to be more drawn toward the critical, social,
and heuristic purposes of education. Gaining understandings of my D, I,
N, and A identities with positioning by self, others, institutions, the public,
and affinity groups evolved through research collaborations in Ireland with
faculty and postgraduate students (Mooney Simmie & Moles, 2011, 2019;
O’Grady et al., 2014)—with international faculty on teacher education and
democracy (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2017, 2020; Mooney Simmie &
Edling, 2016, 2019; Mooney Simmie & Lang, 2018, 2020), and member-
ship of international projects: the Story Project with Professor Silvia Edling
at the University of Gavle, Sweden; and the Paulo Freire Democratic Project
with Professor Peter McLaren at Chapman University, California. It was fur-
ther enhanced by my coordination and working in transnational partnership
in four European Comenius teacher education projects, EUDIST, GIMMS,
DLIS, and CROSSNET reported in conferences, papers, and textbooks
(Mooney Simmie & Lang, 2020).
Conclusion
My insights presented here chart a rather messy narrative of change, discursive
struggles, joys, and contradictions in my journey as a teacher, teacher edu-
cator, and educational researcher over a lifetime in Ireland. I have explained
why I position myself as an emancipatory teacher, researcher, academic, and
activist. I have tried to explain why policies about a universalist teacher identity
in a pre-Covid-19 world often appears as a chimera offered by governments as
corporatized fabrications, nudging me to critically question why now and who
benefits? This question is of importance given that one cannot have an identity
of any sort without an interpretive system under-writing it (Gee, 2000).
My critique of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) reveals
that transnational governance ideology, as a neoliberal/elite imaginary, is softly
sculpting and reshaping teacher identities using a bio-psycho-neuro-socio-cul-
tural view that eschews the particular, cultural, social, and political (Ball, 2003;
Mooney Simmie, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2020; Osberg & Biesta, 2020). The phi-
losopher Gert Biesta argues that democracy is made not by living well with peo-
ple who are like us but living well with people who are not like us (Biesta, 2013)
and by understanding that the social psychology paradigm while useful and nec-
essary is not the complete story of education and teacher education (Osberg &
Biesta, 2020). The critical theorist Peter McLaren explains our propensity for
“mimetic rivalry” and the urgent need to embrace our shadow side in order to
move humanity to a higher consciousness for a revolutionary pedagogy of hope
and possibility for a just global world (McLaren, 2015). Santoro (2017) explains
how commonplace it is for a teacher to experience moral madness in a profession
nowadays where policymakers portray teacher learning as neutral and objective
clinical practices for an over-reliance on prediction, fidelity, and metrics.
Interrogation of my teacher identities in this chapter confirms my commit-
ment to work with an ethics of self and with others to re-imagine the pur-
poses of schooling and higher education; to make space for critical reflexivity
and existential freedom; to critically mediate teaching and teacher learning
with a future post-Covid-19 world; to include the critical for emancipation
and a vibrant notion of democracy; to dare to transgress and interrupt for a
principled politics of resistance for individual and social transformation.
We have a long history of failure of reforms in schools. Once a reform fails
and another economic crisis looms government, policymakers and politicians
quickly move to the next new policy reform ensemble and the cycle starts
over. A chimera of listening is constructed using contrived forms of consul-
tation. However, nothing of significance will change in schooling and higher
education for a just global world, until there is policy commitment by all
policy actors to give the radical openness at the heart of education its right-
ful place, for an inner (soul) journey for existential freedom coupled with an
outward journey of critical mediation with the wider world for emancipation
for all. A significant question remains: How will all policy actors in a post-
Covid-19 world, including teachers, work together for education as a public
good, for a new politics of principled resistance in the direction of social jus-
tice for a just global world and a sustainable future for the planet?
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2 From success/failure binaries
to teaching for justice
Conceptualizing education as access,
responsibility, dignity, and transparency
Walter S. Gershon
Introduction
Education in the United States and in the Global North more generally is
constructed around a set of pre-established biases. These conceits are tightly
intertwined with modernist notions that include universalist constructions of
knowledge, binary frames of understanding, ironic naming of singular cor-
rect answers, and the success of comparatively few fed by a necessity of the
failure of many (e.g., Love, 2019; McDermott & Aron, 1978; Rist, 1973;
Woodson, 1933).
The concern is not that there are somehow too few models about how one
might imagine education otherwise, for there continue to be strong possible
pedagogical choices that center justice and care rather than forms of success
(e.g., Grande, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris & Alim, 2017). For what
we do in and through schooling is more than being trapped in our own pat-
terns of habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). This is the case regardless of
our awareness of such tendencies for this is how what is “normal” and what is
“valued” function: the metaphorical water in which we all swim, so prevalent
as to be overlooked.
Conceptualizing education as measurable processes through which teach-
ers and students can be understood as successful is one such example. Edu-
cators’ belief in the potential of student success and their own successes as
determined by their students’ successes strongly contributes to educators’
ongoing, intentional, concerted efforts that normalize and perpetuate the
very systemic inequities teachers believe themselves to be combatting (e.g.,
Au, 2008; Gershon, 2017a; Taubman, 2009).
This, then, is the focus of this chapter. Rather than success, it first attends
to modes of inquiry, how did I arrive at the conclusions I have reached,
and their practical applications? The chapter then details ongoing concerns
with constructions of teacher success and conceptualizations of educational
successes more generally. Finally, this chapter articulates possible pathways
for understanding how teachers might otherwise consider and enact more
socially just educational approaches, for teachers-as-learners, and in everyday
educational practice alike.
Teaching for justice: Beyond success/failure binaries 37
Success, failure, and measurement
Successful/failure binaries are central to many understandings about practi-
cal endeavors, from fishing to assembling furniture to learning, for example.
Answers can indeed be correct and incorrect, games won and lost. However,
educational systems predicated on notions of success and failure that insist
on forms of measurement are at least doubly harmful and deeply unjust. As
but one example, truly standardized assessments both a) require a 50% fail-
ure rate for anyone to be considered successful and b) insist that learning can
be measured. Where the first half of this claim is likely rather immediately
sensible, the latter claim, against educational measurement, may feel a bit
farfetched. How can learning not be measureable?
This claim about the immeasurability of learning rests on three central edu-
cational understandings (e.g., Dewey, 1929; Gershon, 2017; Woodson, 1933).
First, it is nearly impossible to note the moment a person learns something. Did
the idea become clear at one moment or the next, during or after class, in school
or over the weekend? Second, teaching and learning are separate yet interrelated
relations and experiences. As I’ve noted elsewhere, a fantastic educator can teach
a concept that a student is not yet ready to grasp regardless of that teacher’s
expertise (e.g., introducing students to chemical bonds). Conversely, a student
can learn important information in spite of really poor pedagogy.
Third, it is almost always the case that one can apply excellent pathways
in problem solving (all kinds) toward correct answers and be incorrect.
This is because one can work procedurally without any knowledge about
why something functions the way that it does and arrive correct answers.
In sum, measuring learning is not measuring learning at all but instead a
combination of both measuring differences between often singular prescribed
processes and products and the ability to reproduce the expected answers.
Further, the product of students’ work is measured not only against their
own previous work but also against their peers’. Or, as I’ve noted elsewhere
(Gershon, 2017b), schooling has always been a neoliberal project, turning
children into numbers, most often in the form of points and letter grades,
and those numbers correlated with others students. Improving from not
grasping a concept at all to getting the hang of how to use those ideas or
moving from understanding 10% of something to understanding half of it is
still measured as failure.
From this perspective, constructions of successful teaching are even more
deeply concerning. To begin, all forms of successful teaching are predicated
on some form of student success and all forms of student success, from stand-
ardized assessments to student work in collectively agreed upon portfolios
and their evaluations, are ultimately about measuring students against pre-
scribed curricular ends. All forms of teacher success also require collapsing
significant differences between teaching and learning described above, adher-
ing to the common mistake in education, and teacher education specifically,
that teaching makes people learn and learning comes from strong teaching.
38 Walter S. Gershon
What makes these understandings particularly insidious is that such framing
creates contexts where educators’ careful, hard work contributes to the very
ongoing injustices many teachers seek to interrupt. Teachers who work hard
at helping students at systems that require their failure so that students at
other schools might succeed are at once truly helping their students learn
and working against their students and themselves. As long as teachers insist
that they or their students might be successful, they are perpetuating a system
that demands student and teacher failure. The point is not that teachers or
students cannot do well in school or in life. The point is that linear systems
based on measuring success or failure according to universally applied norms
and values, maintain dominant groups as dominant and normalize their
success and others’ failures in ways where focus on the act of measurement
obscures its biased purposes.
Conceptualizing education in this fashion means largely ignoring stu-
dents’ understandings and experiences, their interests and desires as well as
their strengths and weaknesses. To be clear, students do indeed need to learn
things they likely neither wish to know and/or are not particularly strong at
understanding. This does not mean, however, that teaching requires quan-
titative measurement or measurement against one’s peers to grasp student
growth. There are important differences between understanding the kinds
of information a young person should be able to understand, their ability to
clearly and transparently share those understandings, and constructing those
understandings in relation to one’s peers.
That these ideas might sound radical is a sign of how deeply we as educators
have become in our modes of education rather than their impossibility. As
but one rather renown counter-example, consider the kinds of student-
inquiry-driven experiential education espoused by John Dewey from the
middle of his career onwards, in works such as Experience and Education
(Dewey, 1938). Again, the point is not that students should somehow not
be responsible for their learning or that their growth in their learning should
be somehow unattended. Rather, what is at issue here is that growth of
knowledge should be reduced to that which can be measurable.
My own early educational experiences provide a practical example of how
education might otherwise be in the United States. I attended a progressive
elementary school in the mid-1970s. There were no grades provided in this
experience. Instead, teachers had satisfactory/not criteria and provided sub-
stantive feedback each grading period in the form of a couple pages detailing
what the teacher perceived I was doing well and areas of my work that needed
improvement. My parents and I then met with my teacher to review those
notes and come to an understanding of not only areas of strength and those in
need of improvement, behavioral as well as academic, but also to come to an
understanding and agreement of the teacher’s assessment. Parents tended to
sit beside or behind the student so that the conversation was between student
and teacher with parents present to hear the conversation and participate as
they saw fit. I did this at least twice a year, memory is a bit of a fuzzy thing,
from second through fourth grades, seven through ten years old.
This, too, is part of an ongoing struggle that is to some degree missed in con-
versations about educational inequities in US schooling, for example. Culturally
Sustaining Pedagogies (Paris, 2013; Paris & Alim, 2017) provide significant tra-
jectories for approaching teaching Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other students
of color and continually marginalized students with dignity, respect, awareness,
and care, from individual to culture and back again. There is also a definite
argument to be made that the following particular point lies outside of an ongo-
ing CSP project, to open pathways for socially just pedagogical possibilities that
resonate and support students’ sociocultural norms, values, and understandings.
Yet, CSP does not appear to directly call for the removal of notions of success, its
ties to a necessity of failure, or a schooling in which all students can learn without
being compared to one another or against some kind of norm or value.
There is also no small amount of danger in positioning socially just educa-
tional practices outside notions of success and failure. For, as much as forms
of measurement carry embedded biases that cause sociocultural differences
for BIPOC to be recast as academic deficits (Valencia, 2010), without such
norms and values, on what might educators focus to better ensure that their
pedagogies are just or hear how they are unjust and require further change?
Modes of inquiry: Autoethnography

As much as this stuns me to note it aloud, I am coming to the end of my 28th
academic year of teaching, even longer if one counts teaching critical and
creative thought to gifted and talented middle- and high-school students
while serving as a camp counselor at Maryland Board of Education sponsored
summer camps. As a kind of generalist’s generalist, I have taught three years
of high school at an alternative high school in the Pacific Northwest, English
as a Second Language to all ages in Japan and in the States, a yearlong sub at
a middle school, and three years of upper grade elementary school in barrio
in the San Fernando Valley (fourth and fifth grades). I also taught courses
in technology for credentialing in California and served as a curriculum
director before becoming a professor where I have taught undergraduate
and graduate courses for the past 14 years. During those years, I consistently
conducted research with students and teachers in the city contexts in which
I taught as a P12 educator.
The courses I now teach bring together my ongoing time with stu-
dents and teachers in schools and other educational ecologies, such as an
afterschool music program in the greater Toronto area and students con-
ceptions of the community spaces and places they value and feel valued.
With the exception of a few places I taught in Japan, until my arrival in
Northeast Ohio, all my teaching was in city schools with city students and
my research has continued in urban contexts to this day.
Prior to my time as a graduate student, my processes were always strongly
informed by ideas about teaching gained from critical educational traditions
such as multicultural education and critical pedagogies as they emerged and
evolved through the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Freire, 2000; hooks, 1994).
However, my teaching was most influenced by the critical educators with
whom I worked that included my in-laws and partner, all of whom are teach-
ers. This combination created a pedagogical approach where I worked to
find ways to ensure that curricula reflected students’ everyday experiences
and interests, students had room to think on their own and freedom to be
themselves provided those choices did not negatively impact other students,
and they learned the test taking skills often provided high status, wealthy
students in test prep courses. Rather than constantly practice skills that
would better ensure success on standardized assessments, I spent dedicated
time teaching test taking skills, ways to negotiate standardized assessments
regardless of content and, conversely, specifically related to academic con-
tent—that one need not do calculations when shapes are to scale, the bigger
shape is indeed bigger, for example.
My approach to research has been much more intentionally autoethnographic
over the past decade and a half (e.g., Behar, 1993; Holman Jones, Adams
& Ellis, 2013; Huges & Pennington, 2017). This is no small part because,
after being hired by a rather progressive committee and department chair, my
everyday experiences shifted underfoot as the department eased its way back
to its more traditional roots over time. In light of the ongoing differences
between preferences, practices, and policies—as well as differences between
rhetoric and practice and accompanying regional interactional differences
where my urban-ness and non-Midwestern-ness were often treated as
deficits—I began to use research tools in order to better gain perspectives on
the university teaching ecologies in which I found myself. This documentation
included conversations with students and colleagues across my own campus
as well as with others across the nation and globe. In short, the tools for
autoethnographic studies doubled as checks and balances on my own thinking
about how to teach social justice to future high-school teachers and teacher
educators, the job I was hired to do.
As is common across ever-growing conceptualizations of what a strong
autoethnography entails, my process centered my person in experience and
understandings in ways that were systematically brought into conversations
about those experiences. My voice, though central, was not weighted above
the information I received in talking with others, the documentation I gath-
ered, or how my work as an educator was enacted (for a rather transparent
example of parts of this process, see Gershon, Bilinovich, and Peel, 2010;
Gershon, Peel & Bilinovich, 2009). Instead, these sets of understandings
were placed alongside one another so that I could better understand my own
teaching practices and scholarship in relation to the contexts I now lived.
Where the previous section attended to questions of measurement and
learning, the following section documents how ongoing modernisms found
in either/or binaries and assumptions about the universality of knowledge,
teaching, and learning combine to make teacher success all but impossi-
ble. In its stead, I argue that teaching for justice should be about access,
responsibility, dignity, and transparence, the topic of the penultimate sec-
tion below.
On the (im)possibility of teacher success: Modernism,
binaries, and universal understandings
Notions of success in education as they are maintained today are in many ways
a more recent development, emerging out of a nascent standardization move-
ment in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This movement called for deepening
“the professionalization” of teachers and teaching repletes with changes in
language, content, and pedagogy. Ever interested in getting ahead on the next
school game and lead by language arts colleagues, education began to move
toward literacies, discreetly measurable skills that could also be utilized as build-
ing blocks toward the development of increasingly complex understandings.
Efforts to professionalize the field saw the widescale adoption of business
language and patterns applied to schooling (e.g., McNeil, 2000; Powell, Far-
rar & Cohen, 1985). Teachers were to enact “best practices” in order that
teaching become increasingly efficient and effective. As Herbert Kliebard
(1975) and William Schubert (1986) have made abundantly clear, there has
long been a tendency in US education for “reforms” that mistake classrooms
for factories where streamlining everyday processes simultaneously increases
productivity and profits.
However, young people are not machines and should not be objects for
sale. The consideration and application of complex understandings as univer-
sally applicable best practices that are improved by increasing measurement
and streamlining classroom interactions is, at best, a deep error. In much the
same way that educational systems in the United States have longstanding
connections to eugenics (e.g., Gershon, 2020; Winfield, 2007), US education
has always segregated knowledge in ways that make failures for less wealthy
and more melanated students and successes for more wealthy, Anglo students
sensible (e.g., Cooper, 1892; Delpit, 2013; Rist, 1973; Woodson, 1933).
As difficult as such claims may be to hear, teacher education is not driven
by Dewey or Montessori or Reggio Emilia or bell hooks or Bettina Love,
though it truly should be. Instead, even programs that are indeed infused
with social justice are most often later subsumed under state and federal
guidelines that continue to follow a model set forth by Franklin Bobbitt
(1918) at the turn of the last century1. Bobbitt’s The Curriculum calls for
the measurement of students by quantifiable goals and objectives, scientif-
ically supported practices that are effective and efficient, and lesson plan-
ning that encompasses and reflects these ideas. These are, in turn, amplified
by Ralph Tyler (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum, Madeline Hunter’s
(2004) patterns of lesson planning and Wiggins and McTighe’s (2005)
backwards lesson design.
As Kliebard (1975) noted in his critique of Tyler, what one is supposed to
teach, the ideas and ideals, the content, is not addressed in any of these ped-
agogical practices. Also missing are the sociocultural norms and values that
are foundational to such practices. Instead, these works and contemporary
education at the turn of the millennium in the United States focus on how
teachers should best enact these understandings for students.
Eugenics, efficiency, and segregation
There are at least the following two concerns about this ongoing pattern of
US teacher education. First, Franklin Bobbitt was an unabashed eugenicist.
This is not in doubt as Bobbitt (1909) is the author of Practical Eugenics, a
work that is in many ways fulfilled in The Curriculum, nine years later (for
more on this point, see Gershon, 2017b, 2020).
Second, as with Kliebard’s critique of Tyler, the content students should
learn and the ideals that contextualize that content is largely absent in curric-
ulum theorizing of those in favor of measurable efficiency Kliebard called the
social efficiency group. As is usually the case with the social efficiency group,
sociocultural norms and values that undergird pedagogical actions are taken
for granted as being shared and universal, another way of normalizing cur-
ricular choices. Because knowledge is universally conceptualized, there is an
accompanying understanding that all knowledge can be broken down into
discreet building blocks and teaching is a question of how to assemble those
blocks in order to construct prescribed models.
Perhaps the strongest critique of social efficiency over the past 20 years
resides in the curricula and assessments of standardized measurement that
are strong determinants in students’ grades and attached to teachers’ salaries.
School districts across the US have spent millions of dollars on curricula specif-
ically designed to help students gain the knowledge needed to pass their assess-
ments, almost to the exclusion of all other information (e.g., Gershon, 2017a).
However, in spite of such curricula, test taking practice, and the like, the
strongest indicator for student success on their annual assessments remains
their zip code (US postal codes): The wealthier the school, the higher the
scores. Long histories of intentionally segregated housing, racist practices
such as redlining where people of African descent, as well as Asian and Latinx
populations over time, were allowed only to live in the least desirable areas.
Wealthy Anglo students constantly outscore less wealthy Anglo students all of
whom, in turn, outscore students of color. If standardized assessments were
not biased, then students of color would be spread more evenly across all
standard deviations from the norm. If social efficiency is truly effective and
efficient, then either the tests are invalid or the system is not working, or both.
Further exacerbating matters, US schools now are more segregated than
they were before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case that desegre-
gated schools over half a century ago (Rosiek & Kinslow, 2016). Additional
evidence includes that Black boys are disproportionately placed in special
education and are three times as likely to be kicked out of preschool. Latinx
and Indigenous boys and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous girls are also more
likely to be suspended, punished, or pushed out of schooling entirely (e.g.,
Morris, 2016). In sum, there is ample, ongoing evidence that not only is
schooling historically biased in ways that overwhelmingly favor Anglo, mid-
dle class, boys while disenfranchising children of color and poor to working
class students, but that these tendencies also continue unabated today (e.g.,
Lipman, 2003; Page, 1991; Rooks, 2017; Woodson, 1933).
Systems and being acquired by success/failure binaries
As Harve Varenne and Ray McDermott (1998) in Successful Failure: The School
America Builds, the US educational system is organized in ways that contin-
ually recreate patterns of success that are predicated and necessitate patterns
of failure. These, in turn, create sociocultural categories that require constant
maintenance, successes require others to be average or failures. In Varenne and
McDermott’s framing, people are acquired by sociocultural categories.
From this position, special education is a category that acquires students
rather than students who have an inherent “disability.” There are assessments
that need to be used, teachers who need a job, curricula that require users.
The point is not that students do not learn differently or that there are not
students who require educational modes. Rather, Varenne and McDermott
contend that those who learn differently are not solely those in special edu-
cation and, on the other hand, those differences are not disabilities. Placed
alongside educational scholarship that notes how behavioral differences from
implied norms and values become academic disabilities, the notion that stu-
dents are acquired by sociocultural categories (success/failure, academic/
vocational track), while clearly unjust, is rendered even more sensible.
Educational modernisms: Universal, linear, and sequential

This argument has, in many ways, now arrived back to where this section
began, an argument about how universalities in theory and their application
in everyday practices are problematic in education. Before continuing, how-
ever, it is important to underscore that there are indeed ideas that are more
universal that are significant to hold in mind.
The idea that children should be treated with respect and care in educa-
tional ecologies is one such example. How that care should be expressed
in action is particular, contextualized by nested layers of sociocultural
norms and values and individual student needs and preferences. Care for
an extrovert is different than care for a more introverted student; care
for a first-generation Latinx student is different than care for an African
American student; care for a student with autism is different than care
for a student with dyslexia. And yet, as there is always at least as great a
difference for individuals within a group as between groups—one is likely
to have something in common with someone who grew up a literal world
away as one is to have with one’s own sibling and the inverse.
This said, it is universal ideas of linear, sequential processes and development
and their application, often supported by psychological theories, which
maintain ongoing educational injustices in the United States. Not only do
they conflate teaching with learning but are predicated on understandings that
all knowledge imparted through schooling can be measurable, maintaining a
system where that is the case. This measurement is how it becomes systemically
sensible for teachers to be measured by students’ scores on annual assessments
and accountable, another measurement of relations. Universal notions of
transferability of ideas and that the measurability of knowledge is one of the
central defining characteristics of its value (only measureable knowledge is
worth knowing) are foundational to conceptualizing education as either skills
or best practices, without the need for asking what is lost in reduction to
discreetly measurable skills or for whom those practices are best.
Most insidiously, modernist universalities blame individual children, their
communities, or their families for what are longstanding systemic sociocul-
tural inequities and injustices. Where students’ differences from perceived
norms and values are continually assessed as deficits, their work is adjudi-
cated as if giving everyone the same information in the same fashion is either
fair or just (for more on this point, see Apple, 1990; Freire, 1970; Gershon,
2017a; Rist, 1973). Instead, providing the same information to all students
is the academic equivalent of giving everyone a free ten points and then eval-
uating a course semester grade—the action changes the perception of the
event but neither its conditions nor its outcome. So too is applying the same
standards of success whether in student grades or teachers’ abilities based on
conflated notions of students’ academic or social performance.
Ongoing educational modernisms place teachers in an ethical bind in at
least the following three key ways. First, they establish an educational system
that requires losers so that some may be judged successful. The criteria for
success has long been about socioeconomic and sociocultural advantages
that are maintained by often unspoken dominant norms and values of the
hidden curriculum (Apple, 1990; Jackson, 1968). The further retrenchment
of everyday classroom education in schools across the nation only serves to
more deeply exacerbate racial, class-based, gender, and other such systemic
injustices within and between schools and school districts (Au, 2008;
Gershon, 2017; Rosiek & Kinslow, 2016; Taubman, 2009). Making matters
even more pressurized, schools and districts are now publicly graded based on
composite student test scores, doubling down on the foundational conflation
of teaching and learning. Such grades are often strong determinants in
housing prices, ever-deepening student disenfranchisement, and advantage
along well-established class and racial lines—postal code has become an even
more dependable predictor of test scores, for example.
Second, these understandings create a context in which teachers must
expend much of their educational time and effort working to help students
score well on standardized measurements and in general. This is because not
helping students to score well on an assessment that is already stacked against
them increases the likelihood that their prescribed failure will be a self-ful-
filling prophecy. The inverse is also true. Teachers of students in high status
neighborhoods are equally pressured in the opposite direction: their students
are assumed to much more than pass and any dip in scores is a teachers’ fault
(another issue with conflating teaching and learning).
For example, a friend of mine is an outstanding science teacher and had
the highest scores in his city district, at the arts rather than the STEM mag-
net, no less. The following year, one special education student in his class
scored higher than the student had the previous year. The combination of
that students’ score and classes’ overall composite scores created a context
where the teacher’s scores went down in percentage from the previous year.
This drop in percentage placed this teacher’s teaching in the “needs improve-
ment category.” However, for a second year in a row, this teacher again had
the highest test scores in their district.
Regardless of where one’s students fall on a success/failure binary or
resulting continuum (i.e., from success to failure), practical self-preserva-
tionist ideas aside2, there is a strong ethical argument for teachers to help
students score well on their standardized assessments as students’ scores are
a key determinant in their future lives and possibilities.
Finally, teachers are simultaneously encouraged to apply 1) best practices,
be effective and efficient, and ensure that the curricular and pedagogical
choices are properly prescribed and 2) attend to each students’ individual
needs as learners. Teachers are judged according to universal measures,
whether their local administrator’s ability to do a “two minute walk through”
and assess their conformity to that principal’s interpretation of standards,
nevermind that they are not presented as interpretations but as factual and,
yes, universal, or students’ scores on annual assessments, nevermind that
teaching and learning are separate events.
Sameness as justice
Accordingly, teachers are told they must apply the same pedagogical practices
to deliver the same curricula, a move that conflates sameness with justice.
There is a significance to notions of sameness as justice in schooling, that
students in wealthy areas are not given a superior curriculum (e.g., Anyon,
198?) or grades from a city school weighted differently than grades from a
suburban school by college admissions officers (e.g., Varenne & McDer-
mott, 1998), for example.
However, this notion of sameness-as-justice is precisely how injustices and
inequities are masked and perpetuated through schooling. For example, every
school in the large urban school district receives the same monies for students,
an instance of sameness as actual justice, ensuring that wealthier neighbor-
hoods do not receive greater funding than more poor and working class neigh-
borhoods. Yet families and schools are not barred from asking for other kinds
of fees to the school for “maintenance” or special events. As but one clear and
stark example, I know of multiple schools in some of the nation’s most wealthy
areas, also in city school districts, where it is not unusual for families to give
schools an extra $5000 per student (child). Parents in these neighborhoods
would pay much more per child for private schools in the area, have the money
to spare, feel positive about further supporting public schools and ensuring
that they are giving to a communal pot rather than just fees for their child, and
can write it all off as a tax reduction because it is a “gift” to a public school.
These actual monies along with disparities in time between working poor and
middle-class parents, cultural capital of knowing how to negotiate schools and
school systems, and myriad other disparities such as immigration status, the
ability to afford childcare so older siblings are not babysitting while trying to
do homework, and healthcare. For a sense of how deep these inequities run in
the United States, that letters home to parents need to be in the parents’ home
language was something that needed to become federal legislation before it
became common practice.
Yet, somehow, teachers are supposed to individuate and differentiate aca-
demic content and pedagogical approaches in ways that overcome deep soci-
ocultural systemic divisions. That these divisions are known longstanding,
and insurmountable for a host of reasons, not least of which is that these
inequities are part and parcel of the educational systems in which they teach.
When teachers place blame for the impossibilities of their being viewed as
success on communities, families, and students, they are both missing the
concerns and part of the problem. They are not incorrect for noting that
teachers are asked to do is impossible. They are, however, very wrong in
blaming children, their families, or their communities for why such differ-
ences are insurmountable: these are systemic inequities that cannot be fixed
only through individual efforts, including their own.
Understandings of teacher success are therefore necessarily unjust, mask-
ing perpetuating inequities and ongoing disenfranchisement rather than
serving to interrupt those patterns of injustice. Teacher success is predicated
on student success, sociocultural conditions that engender student success,
and require other teachers to be unsuccessful or, more bluntly, to be var-
ying degrees of failures as educators. Even more importantly, combining
constructions of student and teacher success creates an educational ecology
where the better one teaches the more one hurts children. In other words,
when teaching in a system that requires many teachers and students to fail
for any teacher or student to be considered successful, the more effective and
efficient one is, the greater one’s participation in that system, and the more
one hurts children in schools.
This is a particularly treacherous pattern. It creates a system where
teachers and students are indeed further punished for lack of participation
in the very tools that already require the majority3 of students’ failure so
that other students might succeed. Part of what makes this pattern so
difficult is that those working with students who are generally predicted
to be successful are simultaneously working to ensure that other students
who are generally predicted to fail will most often do so. Conversely,
those working with students predicted to fail are working to do so in
order that other students might be successful. Those who “should” be
successful but fail or those who “should” fail but are successful are not
lessons from which we might learn as educators but, instead, in many
ways, are statistical expectations of outliers that do not interrupt overar-
ching trends. In sum, keeping to its eugenics and modernist roots, public
education in the United States remains an intentionally unequal system
where the failure of many is necessary for the success of few. Or, to use
the terminology utilized by McDermott and Aron over 40 years ago, and
language made again popular by arguably the worst president in American
history (and this is saying something), a system designed to create educa-
tional winners and losers.
This is also the crux of the argument presented in the next section: there
is no way to reconceptualize or otherwise reimagine anything that might be
called “teacher success” or “student success” without teachers or students
who fail. As such failure is anathema to any form of educational justice, for
it is almost always those who are the most vulnerable or innovative who fail,
four alternate pathways for educational justice are suggested. Unlike binaries
of success and failure, these four aspects for conceptualizing and enacting
justice—access, responsibility, dignity, and transparency—deepen when used
in conjunction and do not require failures of any sort to be realized.
Conclusion: Teaching for justice—access, responsibility, dignity,

transparency
Education is indeed systemically bleak. However, that things are designed in
a particular fashion does not mean that local actors cannot use their available
agency to push back, interrupt, resist, reject, or otherwise subvert domi-
nant systemic tendencies. Or, as Ortner (2006) notes, just because there
is no outside of power (Foucault, 1995) does not mean that one cannot
always enact one’s available agency in some fashion. Teachers and students,
although certainly ensconced in multiple systems that blame individuals for
systemic issues in unequal ways, can nonetheless work to utilize resources in
contemporary ecologies of US schooling. While these everyday classroom
choices may not interrupt oppressions or injustices outside a classroom or
even to all students within a class, they can and do positively impact young
people’s lives and do make a difference over time (e.g., Ladson-Billings,
1995; Love, 2019; hooks, 1989; Paris, 2013). Where sociocultural norms
form strong tendencies, there are ways to lessen or otherwise circumvent
such directionalities—there is a culture of power and those who don’t have
as much can be taught what it is and how to use it to their advantage even as
systems operate against them (Delpit, 1995).
What is often missing in talk about how particular teaching practices can
be leveraged in ways that can help classrooms, and schools in some cases,
become more socially just spaces. As teachers are rarely in the position that
administrators maintain, and therefore tend not to have the ability to fully
subvert top-down practices to engender more just practices, possibilities for
justice tend to focus on classrooms. This is not to say that individual teachers
cannot influence policies or practices at school and levels in P12 spaces or
college or university levels in higher education. Rather, it is to note both that
systems work to maintain themselves and those that hold positions central
to that maintenance will most often side with the maintenance of those pro-
cesses regardless of the language or understandings utilized to do so, even,
or especially, discussions of social justice such as those found in nearly every
department of teacher education in the United States. Yet, as but one exam-
ple, most schools and departments of education still conceptualize academic
content as separate from justice and justice as additive, like Black History
Month or attending to non-Christian holidays, events that are tacked on
rather than embedded within everyday education.
There is also often a lack of discussion about how teachers who do justice
work put themselves and their careers at risk. It may be ethically correct for
people in their sociocultural roles to move against the systems that create
mandatory free education for US children and work to maintain these sys-
tems regardless of the damage they inflict on successive generations. How-
ever, though these lines are at best false, what is ethically correct in one’s
professional life is not necessarily also ethically correct for one’s personal life.
Losing one’s teaching job is not only a loss in the sense that there is a strong
chance that the teacher who replaces your classroom has a strong certainty
of being less socially just, for this is often the reason why one’s job is lost in
the first place, forms of noncompliance with unjust local (school, district)
demands and practices. Losing your job also can make a person destitute.
Therefore, the following ideas and possibilities should be enacted in ways
that do not overly place educators’ jobs in jeopardy.
There are arguments that an orientation toward justice necessarily places
an educator in danger of losing her job and being blackballed from working
at other school districts (being blackballed is far too common in places like
Northeast Ohio where each small municipality also has its own school district).
This, however, is not my take on such matters as teaching is often a path-
way single-parents who are often women, and education is a majority women
profession (more elementary schools than high schools, elementary schools
are overwhelmingly staffed by women) and negatively gendered female (e.g.,
Hendry, 2011; Martin, 1993). Negatively judging those who elect to keep
their jobs when literally cannot afford to lose them is both shortsighted and
unethical. Along similar lines of argument, what is proposed here are catego-
ries for conceptualizing socially just practices outside success/failure and other
educational modernisms, not directives of how one should teach or what one
must do. These are not ideas to be rendered into yet another round of stand-
ards for the teaching profession, found in most state’s boards of education
parameters for teachers and/or processes of teacher certification.
Seemingly endless processes of teaching for justice have been offered over
the past 100 years (e.g., Ayers, Quinn & Stovall, 2008; Cooper, 1892; Freire,
1970; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Love, 2019; Paris & Alim, 2017; Woodson,
1933). Rather than propose yet another set of understandings about what
justice might be and how it can operate in practice, justice here speaks to
aspects of access, care, and transparency toward liberation present across
educational ecologies and central to all discussions of justice in education
including my own (e.g., Gershon, 2012a, 2012b).
A lack of access to resources of all kinds is a central mode of injustice.
This is distinct from forms of unwanted altruisms or actions done for oth-
ers that are motivated in no small part for the gains one receives for those
actions. Unlike many forms of such work, in one’s role as an educator, it is
important that a teacher not only provide access to ideas and processes in
general but that they also remain attentive and open to the kinds of access
requested by students, their families, and communities. Actively seeking
out the kinds of access desired that one can facilitate or provide is therefore
also central to this process. Such seeking, however, is a delicate balance
between remaining open to such possibilities, actively letting others know
where one stands and one’s openness to hearing such information, and
working to not impress one’s views on others in ways that turn trajectories
of access into further oppressions.
One such mode for attending to how one’s acts intended to be caring,
thoughtful, or helpful is to closely attend to others’ dignity, especially those
who have less power in schools, primarily students. There are important dif-
ferences between understandings of respect and dignity. Where respect is what
one believes one gives others as well as what one is owed from others, dignity is
how one feels when one is respected. As such, it requires attention to another’s
feelings, have your actions allowed them to move in ways that are dignified to
that person, and others to attend in similar fashion to you, did our interaction
leave you feeling dignified. Moments of tension, ongoing dislike or preference
of a person or their attributes, and solving disputes, are undignified things
but can be negotiated so that, while everyone involved may not get what they
desire or believe is just, they can nonetheless walk away with their dignity
intact (as opposed to questions of ego or pride for example).
It is for these reasons that responsibility is central to ethical, just teach-
ing theories and practices. Responsibility is again different than dignity and
respect in that one is responsible to a person outside of one’s self and also
responsible to one’s self just as others are responsibly interacting with you.
Responsibility is the definition of the relationship between all actors in edu-
cational ecologies teachers should strive toward. Not being accountable,
the measurable actions that tick particular boxes of relation but responsible
for and to others’ and one’s own educational ways of beingknowingdoing
(Gershon, 2017, p. 2)—the inseparability in that to be someone is to know
something both of which are actions in constant states of doing. One is
responsible toward getting others access to ideas, material goods, and future
possibilities in ways that grant them dignity and for one to retain one’s own.
Èdouard Glissant (1997) argues for an opacity of one’s self from oth-
ers as a fundamental right. One has the right to have feelings and ideas
that are kept to themselves. Forms of oppression and violence demand
forms of transparency from those with less power, violating their rights
and their possibilities of self, alone, and in relation to others. Further, if
demanding transparency from those under one’s is an oppressive act, then
superordinates, acts of transparency by those who have greater power in
particular contexts, like teachers in classrooms, can be an act of justice.
Letting students know what you are thinking, the reasons behind your
understandings, how you feel, and what you feel about specific things
regardless of how mundane they might first appear. Part of the way teach-
ers can engender the kinds of dignity and access they seek to provide is
by being transparent about the steps taken toward each and how others,
especially students, are active participants in those processes, as are their
families and communities.
These aspects of strong teaching may seem somewhat similar to the kinds of
modernist universalisms critiqued in the previous chapter. However, they are
markedly different in important ways. For example, although one can work
to provide access to resources, ideas, and future possibilities for students and
their families, this is not applying the same prescribed set of criteria across a
wide variety of contexts. Instead, questions of access are strongly determined
by students and communities. Here is one possible throughline for conceptu-
alizing how one could respectfully work with community understandings and
practices: give possible examples of kinds of access one can provide; step back
to let community, family, or student needs dictate kinds and areas of access to
be provided, improved, or maintained; and letting students, families, and com-
munities openly and readily (transparently) hear what you thought you heard
them ask and how you might move toward those ends.
When combined, access, dignity, responsibility, and transparency are often
iterations of showing up, being there with and for students, and reaching
out, taking the first often-vulnerable step in interactions and relationships.
These readily observable actions are not only clear expressions of teacher
care and intentions but also something students, families, and communities
already use, implicitly if not explicitly, in their personal understandings of
teachers. Do they regularly and consistently show up and reach out to stu-
dents, their families, and communities?
In sum, it is well past time that teachers eschew longstanding practices that
require student and teacher failure, the error of universal application and adju-
dication, and mistaking sameness as the sole feature of justice. It never has been
enough to provide the same education to all students and that such sameness
is taken as a step forward speaks to the paucity of how education is concep-
tualized and delivered rather than deep moves of justice. Instead, a focus on
access, dignity, responsibility, and transparency provide a strong foundation
for more socially just educational ideas and practices, as well as the means for
considering the degree to which education is justly theorized and practiced.
Notes
1 There are indeed a few universities that truly proclaim and enact socially just
curricular and pedagogical practices. However, these programs are also subject
to state accreditation processes both in order to continue programs that pro-
duce future teachers and must also teach future teachers about how to be an
educator in systems where they and students will be measured and held account-
able to those numbers rather than to question of access, caring, or dignity.
2 In the United States, increase in students’ test scores positively impacts teachers
whose possibilities for growth and salaries are often tied to overall test scores.
3 Unfortunately, this is not hyperbole but statistics. Students who score 59% or
below on an assessment (whether expressed in percentile or given a numerical
value) fail according to both numerical and grading modes of evaluation (60%<
is a D; <60% is failing). If most students do not fail, then a test is either internally
invalid, does not measure what it says it measures, or falsely weighted.
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3 Teacher narratives as counter-
narratives of successful teaching
Maria Alfredo Moreira, Rosa Maria Moraes
Anunciato and Maria Aparecida P. Viana
Introduction
This chapter addresses current discourses of teacher education and successful
teaching in an international context, with a focus on two Lusophone countries:
Portugal and Brazil. It is our contention that these discourses produce a
hegemonic narrative of quality and excellence that slyly enters the realm of
common sense and is seldom questioned and critiqued. There is a prevalence
of neoliberal, conservative, and neocolonial discourses in teacher education that
have failed to counteract the severe consequences of how differential power
relations that arise from social inequalities affect democratic and inclusive school
education for all children. The dominance of a Western-centered, patriarchal,
and conservative epistemic matrix (Darder, 2015; Paraskeva, 2016; Santomé,
2017), allied with a managerial instrumentality, does not serve an educational
project that ensures that all children succeed in completing compulsory
schooling and thus have a fairer chance at a more dignified life. In spite of the
(grand) narrative of democracy in the so-called developed world, the fact is that
children from socioeconomic and sociocultural disadvantaged backgrounds,
ethnic or linguistic minorities or with a migrant background still do not achieve
the same academic results in mainstream schools (OECD, 2011). Thus, what
does successful teaching mean at the dawn of a new decade of the 21st century?
This chapter will analyze how successful teaching has been associated with
grand narratives originating from neoliberal perspectives on teacher education.
We will explore issues that are relevant to the teachers’ daily work in schools
and in the classroom, challenging the status quo by advancing alternative
forms of doing alternative teacher education (Paraskeva & Moreira, 2020) and
teacher education research. Our vision for teacher professionalism counteracts
hegemonic forces that place the blame for the “problems” of public schooling
as the sole responsibility of teachers (and clearly on the teacher education/
teacher development programs that “train these teachers for the education
market”). Our vision (and, hopefully, our practice as well) recognizes teach-
ers as intellectuals that need both technical and practical skills, clinical experi-
ence in schools, but also the development of a critical socio-political awareness
about the implications and impact of their work in schools and their students’
lives (Freire, 1975; Nóvoa, 2019; Santomé, 2017; Zeichner, 2011, 2018).
Teacher narratives as counter-narratives 55
As Cochran-Smith (2001) contends, “one important role of the col-
lege/university is to help prepare teachers to challenge the inequities
that are deeply embedded in systems of schooling and society.” (p. 3). To
that end, teachers and university educators should engage in the task of
learning to teach “against the grain,” jointly developing a critique of and
challenging existing practices, and engaging in inquiry-based teaching
“intended to alter the life chances of children.” (p. 3). In this chapter,
professional learning narratives are used to that end, as a teacher devel-
opment strategy within post-graduate programs in Brazil and Portugal, as
they help teachers explicate and analyze their daily work in schools, and
the conditions that impact on that work. Using data from narratives pro-
duced by Brazilian and Portuguese teachers, and semi-structured inter-
views with some of the teachers that produced them, we characterize the
meaning of successful teaching for these teachers. We highlight the ben-
efits, but also the constraints and difficulties in using narrative formats as
heuristic devices for reading teachers’ professional world and addressing
critical questions related to successful teaching in public schools.
Deconstructing “grand” narratives of successful teaching

Throughout the Western world, the teaching profession is losing its allure.
It is unattractive for bright young people and presents high levels of attri-
tion (Korthagen, 2004; OECD, 2018; Schleicher, 2014). Very few countries
manage to recruit the most qualified where they are most needed: to work
in remote and poor urban areas, places where teachers are the least qualified
and least experienced, a situation that contributes to aggravate the academic
disparities between well-off students and those coming from more disadvan-
taged backgrounds (OECD, 2018; Schleicher, 2014).
One of the prevailing (neoliberal) narrative attributes the reasons for
educational inequalities to incompetent teachers and to teacher education
institutions that fail in preparing competent teachers. Educational inequalities
will be eradicated if society “gets rid” of the bad teachers (those who are less
capable and/or less bright), along with bad teacher preparation programs
in higher education. Still according to this narrative, schools only need
“good enough teachers” (Zeichner, 2011). To teach in socially deprived
areas where there is a great lack of teachers, teachers only need to know how
to effectively deliver instruction and can be “trained” in cheap, fast-track
programs, preferably private and on-line to reduce public investment (Diniz-
Pereira, 2019; Karaman & Çiftçi, 2019; Peña-Sandoval & Silva-Peña, 2019;
Zeichner, 2018). To teach these students, teacher education does not need
much; to prepare a teacher one only needs to apply standardized protocols
for teaching a subject, for managing the classroom and for teaching to the
test, fostering a culture of meritocracy and competitiveness that is neither
seriously challenged nor debated (Darder, 2015; Santomé, 2017). This
culture still rests on the assumption that “aristocracy of talent” is equated
with “aristocracy of birth” (Young, 1961, p. 48), as one thing is for children
56 Maria Alfredo Moreira et al.
from working classes to enter “prestige” schools, another very different thing
is to remain there, as merit has been often disguised as nepotism (p. 92).
Under neoliberal policies, teachers have been disqualified, poorly prepared,
teachers’ work made precarious, unions attacked, and the public cause
“attached to a respirator” (Paraskeva, 2018, p. 21). As Darling-Hammond
(2017) contends, this narrative purposefully neglects the accumulated
evidence that shows that teacher education is a highly demanding endeavor
and that individuals who enter teacher education programs are not less
intelligent or capable than any others.
We recognize, with Zeichner (2019a) that any explanation based solely
on the prevalence of neoliberal policies and reforms is over-simplistic to
provide a sound picture of the impact of global educational and economic
factors on teacher education. Narratives of standardization and meritocracy
have taken over the narrative of democracy and inclusion. These narratives
have colonized the pedagogical imaginary in a way that renders invisible
the educational effects of social, economic, and racial inequalities; teachers’
thinking is high jacked by neoliberal purposes: to prepare students for the
“job market,” to develop the “right” competences and teach the “right”
content, to address problems in a positivist manner, to compare students
and assess them in an “objective way,” teach by behavioral objectives,
sciences, and learning theory in a way that will leave no room for subjec-
tivity, differentiation, sound professional judgement, or life and inspira-
tion (Darder, 2015; Moreira, 2017; Paraskeva, 2016; Santomé, 2017).
The impact of neoliberal educational reforms in schools and in teacher
education aims at dis-intellectualizing teachers and erasing teacher agency
(Zeichner, 2019b). When teaching is reduced to rote and drill test practices
and to teaching to the test, so that students and schools will look good in
(inter)national benchmarks picture, schools do a great job in miseducating
students, as there is no time for critical and creative work (Darder, 2015).
In Portugal, from an early beginning, many teachers are groomed into
regarding students as numbers; into following a prescribed curriculum with
a given textbook without questioning its very existence and relevance; into
applying undifferentiated assessment formulae to students; into accepting
that not all students are expected to succeed, as some students are “nat-
urally” more capable of succeeding than others (Moreira, 2017). In Bra-
zil, the picture is no different. Few access high-quality teacher preparation
programs that take place in public higher education institutions, as most
are prepared through online, fast-track programs of questionable quality
(Diniz-Pereira, 2019). Teacher education has become a social problem,
inasmuch as it is cast by discontinued policies and lack of social discussion
on its value in a democratic society (Gatti et al., 2019). The result is lack
of professional autonomy and insufficient preparation for critical analysis
of their work and informed decision-making. There is a need to develop
appropriate teacher preparation and teacher education that rests on a con-
ception of professionalism that is socially valued, going beyond the mere
vocation and good will (Masetto & Gaeta, 2019).
Successful teaching, pedagogy, and teacher education
As successful teachers are those whose students get high scores in stand-
ardized tests, the focus of the neoliberal (grand) narrative is on teaching,
on how to promote teaching behavior and teaching procedures that will
yield the intended academic results. As Loughran (2013) argues, Lortie’s
apprenticeship of observation as a major shaping force for conceptualizing
teaching has had as a consequence viewing teaching as relatively straightfor-
ward, easy, and simple: you just need to master a set of routines that help
to ensure the delivery of information in class and all students will learn. It
is important to conceptualize teaching as being problematic, as, contrary to
neoliberal assumptions, it depends on teachers making informed decisions
and negotiating them with students in historically and culturally situated
contexts. Teaching is dynamic, demanding, and responsive to the varied
learning demands inherent in the situation. In order to become a teacher,
much more is needed than just acquire the knowledge-base of the subjects
and becoming technically skilled; it involves taking responsibility for one’s
practice, participate and collaborate with students, peers, leaderships, and
parents, and take political commitments. Several types of knowledge are
built along professional trajectories, starting from academic and scientific
knowledge acquired in teacher preparation, later in pedagogical practice, and
interactions with peers in the socialization processes that take place in schools
when they become learning communities (Mizukami, 2005). Teachers also
need to become inquirers of their own practice, so that they may carry on
deliberate, autonomous, and self-initiated learning (Mizukami, 2005). In
addition, one has to take into account the influence of the macro, micro, and
meso environments, as Korthagen (2004) reminds:
a ‘good teacher’ will not always show ‘good teaching’: although some-
one may have excellent competencies, the right beliefs, and an inspira-
tional self and mission, the level of the environment may put serious
limits on the teacher's behaviour. (p. 87)
In globalized, mobile societies, teachers need to develop a cultural diversity

knowledge base that will advance a social justice agenda (Noffke & Zeich-
ner, 2006). It includes knowledge of the student populations, sociolinguis-
tic and socio-political awareness, but also valuing linguistic and cultural
diversity, and inclination to advocate for their students and their families;
a knowledge that is materialized in the ability to design and implement
curriculum proposals and instructional strategies situationally appropriate
to this diversity (Darling-Hammond, 2017; Santomé, 2017).
In sum, teacher education should support the development of teachers’ pro-
fessional capital (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012): “the systematic development
and integration of three kinds of capital—human, social, and decisional—into
the teaching profession” (p. xv), a kind of capital that sees the teacher as some-
one whose professional action is part of a collective endeavor at the service of a
common good. As Zeichner (2018) puts it, we need to engage in a “struggle
for the soul of teacher education,” a struggle that will redirect the current
debates over teaching education to what really matters:
debates about the meaning of children, families, communities, teach-

ers, the processes of teaching and learning, the ways that classrooms are
managed, public schooling, and the place of teachers in the communities
in which they work. Teacher education in this sense is a process of shap-
ing the souls of teachers with regard to these issues. (p. 15)
It is our contention in this chapter that teacher narratives, when devel-

oped in a critical framework, will do exactly that: turning the debate
over teacher education into a debate on the soul of what it means to be
a (successful) teacher.
The place of/for teacher narratives

We believe one cannot study teaching practice and pedagogy without includ-
ing the study of teachers’ thinking and their voices. Narratives are a powerful
source for understanding teachers’ thinking and the way they construct profes-
sional knowledge, when they reveal how they try to make sense of educational
aims, curriculum development, teaching practices, and of learning processes
and outcomes (Clandinin, 2006). As Connelly and Clandinin (2006) note,
humans, individually and socially, lead storied lives. (…) People shape
their daily lives by stories of who they and others are and as they inter-
pret their past in terms of these stories. Story, in the current idiom, is a
portal through which a person enters the world and by which his or her
experience of the world is interpreted and made personally meaningful.
(p. 477)
In our work as teacher educators, teachers’ stories on their students, their

lives and work, their emotions and perceptions, are counter narratives to
the neoliberal grand narratives that often populate educational research and
upon which its legitimacy rests. Teachers develop a language of practice,
engage in practical knowledge construction through inquiry when they are
involved in narrative inquiry on their professional action. Their texts on their
experiences bring forward their perceptions and analyses of what is either
liberating or constraining in the teachers' work and in their daily lives. They
highlight the difficulties and dilemmas they experience when they find them-
selves engaged in disempowering and subtractive forms of education that
fail to seriously address structural inequalities such as racism, poverty, and
widespread discrimination (cf. Darder, 2015; Santomé, 2011, 2017).
When producing narratives of their professional lives, teachers reveal their
educational priorities and question the status quo, by inquiring on current
practices and visions of teachers’ work that hinder their understanding of
difference, of solidarity and of liberating practices (Freire, 1975). When
developed in an environment that integrates other conceptual contribu-
tions through readings and tasks, narrative writing deepens reflection on
lived experience, and supports confrontation and transformational endeavors
(Moreira, 2016; Moreira & Ribeiro, 2009).
In research, narrative inquiry creates a space for developing voice, shaping
power relations and raising alternatives to traditional practices, deterritorial-
izing teacher education and challenging positivist, techno-rational dominant
hegemonies in educational research (Paraskeva, 2011, 2016). By telling their
single stories in a welcoming setting that brings these stories together, teach-
ers create a multiplicity of stories that both inspire and educate themselves
and others who read them.
In teacher research, narrative inquiry constitutes a political, epistemological,
and methodological response to the single story of neopositivism and to the
method of fetish in teacher education (cf. Bartolomé, 1994). When they write,
teachers are not concerned about objectivity, neutrality, or distance; quite the
opposite—they are concerned about moral and ethical commitments. Their
privileged focus on the analysis of classroom practices bears testimony to
what Zeichner & Diniz-Pereira (2005) contend: that teachers do not need
to leave their classrooms in order to connect their inquiry and reflections to
wider struggles for educational equality and social justice; critical dimensions
of the teaching job are embedded in micro-realities of teachers’ daily lives as
their decisions affect the daily lives and the future of their students. Writing
narratives of (professional) experience opens up possibilities for professional
development, as teachers speak-hear and write-read about their vicarious
experiences, construct settings (characters and actions) for their narratives
to take place, while reflecting on the meaning their experiences take in the
process of becoming teachers (Ferrarotti, 2014; Josso, 2010).
When teachers narrate their work in a teacher education context, there is
no longer a separation between (academic) theory and (professional) practice,
but the emergence of creative freedom and possibility for authorship (Viana,
2019). But this transformative space only occurs when teacher narratives take
place in teacher education and schooling practices inscribed in democratic val-
ues that involve teachers themselves as key actors (Vieira, 2014).
Midwifery in action: Giving birth to the

concept of successful teaching
Paradigmatically, narrative inquiry arises from an epistemological stance
that is situated somewhere between postmodernist subjectivity and prag-
matism, as the narrative inquirer overtly recognizes and validates the sub-
jectivity of experience and of epistemology (cf. van Manen, 1990). As
accounts of practice from an insider perspective, teacher narratives can
be a powerful source for understanding teachers’ thinking and the way
they construct professional knowledge. Because teachers’ analyses deviate
from Western, neopositivist, and colonial rationalities, giving prominence
to emotions, feelings, subjective and immersed views of school and class-
room events, teacher narratives have historically been perceived, by the
canon setters as biased, subjective, or unreliable, in sum, not fit for rigor-
ous academic research (Paraskeva, 2011).
According to Connelly and Clandinin (2006),
[n]arrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and

foremost a way of thinking about experience. Narrative inquiry as a
methodology entails a view of the phenomena. To use narrative inquiry
methodology is to adopt a particular view of experience as phenomena
under study. (p. 477)
Narrative (and biographic) inquiry constitutes a branch of interpretive

research; as its object is spoken or written discourse, the perspectives for
analysis are hermeneutic (Bolívar, 2012) and phenomenological (Flick,
2009; van Manen, 1990). The option for a phenomenological approach
of qualitative nature is justified by the primary goal of collecting data on
biographical experiences, bringing the researchers closer to the partici-
pants’ perspectives, to their personal theories and to the local, temporary,
and situational context (Flick, 2009). The phenomenological approach
allows to focus on the meaning constructed by teachers on what con-
stitutes successful teaching and on how their life and work experiences
mould these representations. Using an interpretive and hermeneutic per-
spective allows us to interpret singularities and parts of stories that are
both different and similar, integrating them into a unified whole that
sheds light at the same phenomenon (Bolívar, 2012).
Teachers’ narratives are historically and socially situated, located
within a space and a time affected by both personal and social condi-
tions. As Bolívar (2012) recalls, the specificity of narrative inquiry rests
in a new way of perceiving the relationship between the researcher and
the research theme and participants: it requires more egalitarian research
relationships, so that participants create their own stories, instead of cre-
ating them for the researcher.
For the purposes of this chapter, we use teacher narratives that were
developed in teacher development programs, in Brazil and in Portugal,
at a post-graduate level. These narratives were produced by female peda-
gogy and language teachers of both basic and secondary education work-
ing in public schools, in the school years of 2013–141 (14 participants, 6
Portuguese and 8 Brazilian2), 2016–18 (31 participants, 22 Brazilian and
11 Portuguese)3. As part of the Education programs, they were enrolled
in, the learning and assessment tasks involved, besides narrative writing,
readings and tasks that required the analysis of teaching activities and
contexts, as well as planning or experimentation of teaching proposals.
We also use interviews that were carried out between October 2018 and
January 2019. We invited the teachers who participated in the post-grad-
uate programs to be interviewed—five agreed (four Portuguese and one
Brazilian). Interviews aimed at characterizing the impact of narrative writing
on teacher professional development, as well as identify constraints and dif-
ficulties of the process.
Both types of text were subjected to theoretical thematic analysis that
is explicitly aimed at a detailed decomposition of some aspect of the data
that is driven by the researcher’s theoretical or analytic interest in the area
(Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 84). The aim was identifying the themes and
ideas, repeated patterns of the meaning of “successful teaching” in the
narratives “that have always been there”: how could we, as analysts, give
birth to a concept that has always been lying latent, but which we never
looked for? What is/are the meaning(s) of “successful teaching” for these
teachers that arise from using a renewed analysis, from different theoretical
lenses, of their lived experience? And what conditions seem to facilitate it?
Latent thematic analysis was used as a method for identifying, analyzing,
and reporting patterns (themes) within an entire data set that can respond
to our theoretical framework, acknowledging the ways individuals make
meaning of their experience in dialogue with the ways the broader social
context impinges on those meanings (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We sought
to identify and examine the underlying ideas, assumptions, and concep-
tualizations that could be theorized as shaping or informing the concept
of successful teaching in the data. Going back to the complete data set
required several (re)readings, movements of coming and going between
the texts, travelling across them, as we sought to thematize, textualize,
refining, and resignifying themes and sub-themes or categories (Viana,
2019). The result is presented in Figure 3.1.
Facilitating context
Continuous
personal and
professional
investment Successful teaching
A collaborative
culture (peers,
families)
Assessment at
Learning with Responding to Inclusion of all Contextualised
the service of
students each student students curriculum
learning
Structured
reflection over
time
Figure 3.1: Results of latent thematic analysis of teacher narratives on successful

teaching
Counter-narratives of successful teaching
In their narratives, teachers reveal how neoliberalism works at school,
in teacher education, in society in general, in order to constrain their
work as teachers and their students’ learning and limit the possibilities
for a progressive and transformative education. As we (re)read their
texts, it becomes self-evident the ever-pervasive presence of ideological,
material, and political constraints in teachers’ and students’ lives, how
they operate to constrain their autonomy and how they determine
instructional decisions. It also becomes evident how the themes that
emerge are connected to themes in the texts and tasks that were discussed
in the professional development programs that invite them to revisit
their conceptions, beliefs, values, ethical and political commitments (cf.
Moreira, 2016; Oliveira & Moreira, 2014).
Learning with students and responding to each

of them with the purpose of inclusion of all
To these teachers, being a successful teacher in poverty-stricken contexts
where many children are left behind and abandoned by the school, in sev-
eral ways prohibited of inhabiting it (Freire, 1997, p. 10), is not about
obtaining good results in standardized tests. They are more concerned
with how to reach every single student, how to respond to their individual
needs, so they stay in school and increase their chances of a more dignified
life.
The subject and learning for all students are worries that accompany me
for my entire life in this career. Each class is unique and each student is
an individual, so every year we have to get ready for a new reality. 4
(Brazilian teacher Ines, narrative 2016)
[In order to plan a semester] one has to attend to every single student’s
needs, as well as follow the programmatic content. However, it is not
always possible to teach all content in a way that all students learn. Each
week we have to ask ourselves: what am I going to teach? What for? How
can I do this in a way that will cater for every single student’s needs?
(Brazilian teacher Alessandra, narrative 2017)
In this process, special needs students require special attention and special skills
from the teacher, so that all students are included and have an opportunity to
learn. In their narratives, teachers question the existence of standards that have
to be reached by all, as if all students have the same skills and opportunities in
schools (cf. Santomé, 2011).
I have a student with special learning needs and other six under review
for suspicion of special needs. However, regardless of the need for these
formal reports, one has to think of the class as a whole. We have to find
out what these students know, what their difficulties are, so we can plan
our teaching.
(Brazilian teacher Vitoria, narrative 2016)
Based on the reality lived with the ‘Acceleration classes’5, I realized the
need to act based on a diagnostic of teaching and learning. (…) I knew
each student had their own learning mode and that in the teaching and
learning moment I would develop skills, sociability, sensitivity, patience,
tolerance, perseverance, ability to learn how to teach…
(Brazilian teacher Cláudia, narrative 2017)
Contextualized curriculum and assessment at the service of advancing

learning
A dogmatic schooling that rests on taboos such as assessment, subject mat-
ter, hours of attendance, textbooks, and on knowledge being transmitted
(Paraskeva, 2016) is also problematized by the teachers. The narrative of
equal learning for all based on meritocracy is problematized (cf. Darder,
2015; Young, 1961), especially in classes with special needs students and in
vocational training courses that have students from working classes that are
workers themselves.
We used to talk about citizen rights and duties, in an environment and

with people with very few rights, with a history of exclusion, heavy-duty
workers who had their hands deformed by years of hardship with the hoe
that prevented them from using the pencil properly. (…) What was the
most important for them was to learn how to read and write their name
and surname. As each student would make their badge with their name
on, it was of utmost importance to know the letters in their names – it was
gratifying watching them learn how to learn.
Today, as a teacher, I try to avoid the irrational and harmful assessment

errors that victimised me, even though the schools keep implementing
oppressive and punitive assessment models and practices that aim at
classifying with the purpose of selecting students. Standards are just
accepted and legitimised by society. (…) I force myself never to forget
that students need systematic guidance and assessment of their work
that will stimulate and motivate them to improve their learning, going
as far as they can, either by recognising their progress and success, or by
helping them to overcome their failures.
(Portuguese teacher Emília, narrative 2013)
Continuous personal and professional investment
While unveiling their representations of successful teaching, teacher narra-
tives also disclose the contextual requirements. In order to do a democratic
and transformative work, teachers confront themselves with a wide diversity
of student needs and the need to compensate for the imbalance created by
huge social and economic inequalities that requires personal commitments
that go beyond professional responsibilities.
The school did not have a photocopying machine, and so we designed

all activities in stencil and we would use a mimeograph for producing
materials for 3 classes (…) All these difficulties we have been through,
with the lack of material and the lack of leadership, only strengthened
the teachers’ group.
(Brazilian teacher Gabriela, narrative 2016)
A collaborative culture among peers and with families

Successful teaching requires building up and sustaining the professional cap-
ital of teachers (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012), a context where a collaborative
culture is fostered, not just among teachers, but also with the students’ fam-
ilies and communities.
In schools, teamwork should prevail, so that students’ learning can be

advanced. We have to understand that a student is not under the single
responsibility of this or that teacher, but also of the school and the fam-
ily’s. Thus, effective education of a student and significant learning of
curricular content is dependent upon a good partnership among these
social actors. To ‘put the blame’, or better still, to make one social
actor – the teacher – the sole ‘responsible’ for failure in the student
learning is convenient for the ‘social system’.
(Brazilian teacher Ana Maria, narrative 2016)
To be a teacher means to have a different challenge every year. Our job

demands a lot of reflection on practice and whenever we find an ob-
stacle, we have to think of the best way to overcome it. If we have [peer]
support, that task is less painful.
(Brazilian teacher Vitoria, narrative 2016)
Collaboration is paramount for creating a safe space where teachers are

accepted by the group and share their difficulties, shortcomings, and failures.
Only in a space like this they can grow and accept their limitations, learn
from their own errors, overcome them, and become stronger in the pro-
cess. The participation in a collaborative group can enable favorable condi-
tions for the development of critical thought, reflection, and transformative
learning, through the intense interaction with different perspectives on the
same subject, associated with the need to produce and justify one’s own
views (Anunciato, 2019; Moreira & Ribeiro, 2009).
Exchanging experiences [with Brazilian teachers] helped reflecting and

getting to know different contexts and problems (…) With practice, writ-
ing became easier. The shame of addressing awkward moments, disclos-
ing embarrassing situations, not just about student-teacher interactions,
but also about the failure of certain methodologies and strategies, of not
knowing how to motivate students… admitting that our practice has not
been really appropriate to the context/ classroom environment…
(Portuguese teacher Emília, interview, 2018)
Structured reflection over time fueled by writing

Successful teachers engage in continuous collegial dialogue, reveal their
political commitments, and integrate the reflection on their work into their
action. In order to do this, as Freire (1975) posits, teachers have to regard
dialogue and critical awareness embedded in their (professional) culture.
This presupposes the identification of potentialities, limits, and constraints
of their action and how these can be overcome, so that praxis may become
liberating and empowering, without losing their humanity and their love for
their students (Freire, 1975).
With time we become more experienced about the content to be taught,

students’ behaviour or situation. The context in which these occur
always shows us something, we only need to be sensitive and attentive.
Each year we have to reinvent ourselves.
(Brazilian teacher Ines, narrative 2016)
In order to make transformation happen, I could not move forward

without reflecting and analysing my teaching practice. The material was
ready-made but in practice transformation occurred in each moment,
with each single student…
In the interviews, teachers highlight the heuristic power of narrative writing

in structuring and deepening reflection on their work. In that meta-analysis
of practice through writing, language also becomes an object of reflection,
enhancing the space for reflective dialogue with oneself, for confrontation
with one’s limits for thinking and for action, a required step in the route for
transformation (cf. Smyth, 1989).
What have I learned with narrative writing? Honestly, I reflected, I did

an exercise of thinking: what did I do today? What can I do in order to
improve? I think about things, I set a dialogue with myself, what I have
to change so I won’t repeat it next time. We ask ourselves: how far is our
work becoming better? I often do it in my practice, but I hadn’t thought
of it under theoretical lenses. Thus, new strategies, new ways of being in
the classroom emerge.
(Portuguese teacher Emília, interview 2018)
As you write, you set a dialogue with yourself, your writing talks to you.
In that writing exercise, you identify routines that were never thought
upon, why they became routines, and why they were never changed.
(…) Then you start identifying in your discourse given expressions, jar-
gon, those words that often carry bias and prejudice, a limited view of
reality. The exercise of narrative writing is like a timeline going through
your mind.
(Brazilian teacher Carolina, interview 2018)
Conclusion: Deterritorializing teacher education and successful

teaching
As evidenced, successful teaching for these teachers has a very different mean-
ing from that associated with the grand neoliberal narratives of meritocracy
and marketization. Even though writing from different geographical and
socio-historical contexts (Portugal and Brazil), when invited to write about
their work, teachers produce similar counter-narratives that evidence the extent
of the damage created by transnational powerful influences on teachers’ work
and students’ learning in public schools (Moreira, 2016; Santomé, 2017).
Their views of success are very much dependent upon reflective analysis of
contextualized situations. Successful teachers show interest in their students,
listen to and learn from them, value their role as curriculum decision-mak-
ers, step in to ensure their students have good quality resources, adapt con-
tent and strategies to individual students’ needs, and develop assessment
as and for learning. Notwithstanding the seduction of neoliberalism and its
influence on the macro policies at national and international levels, teachers’
work is not held hostage: it is situated, (re)contextualized, as teachers look
back at their lives and the stories they tell, dialogue with them, and, in the
process, transform themselves and their work contexts.
In the current scenario where teaching is devalued, teachers use narratives to
realize they have a history that embraces a socio-historical context of oppres-
sion—both Portugal and Brazil experienced dictatorship not very long ago.
For those working in public schools, quality education is found in practices
and attitudes that promote learning in all students. In high needs schools,
they diagnose living conditions and learning opportunities in their social and
family contexts, analyze available curriculum resources, and advocate for their
students in what comes to schooling, healthcare, food, and safety. This con-
text, along with critical teacher professional development practices, helps them
prioritize empowerment aims, both for teacher and learner development, in
a schooling system (still) very much characterized by inequality, poverty, and
exclusion. In sum, they advance a social justice agenda as a crucial component
of successful teaching (cf. Noffke & Zeichner, 2006; Santomé, 2017; Zeich-
ner, 2011). Successful teaching is thus nothing other than recovering the soul
of teaching (cf. Zeichner, 2018): being deeply connected with each individual
student and their families and developing actual public service for a greater
educational good.
One cannot define educational success without listening to the voices of
teachers and observing their practice in local contexts. Teacher narratives
were used in this text to evidence how they can be a form of practical knowl-
edge construction through critical reflective inquiry, while highlighting the
teachers’ struggles to make instructional decisions that democratically serve
their students. This struggle entails taking an ethical standpoint as well as a
political one and requires a collective endeavor. Writing about one’s own self
in professional situations with a view to narrate about practices reveals lived
experiences of teachers’ work that show knowledge, beliefs, challenges, and
barriers, but that also make visible motivations, commitments, understand-
ings of the social meaning of the teaching profession.
However, it is surely not enough to state the imminently good will of
the teacher education practices just because we resort to narrative writing
(Moreira, 2016). Narrative inquiry needs to be subjected to a critical exam
of the issues of voice in the texts produced, bringing it into scrutiny and
discussing it in a shared space. In the interviews, teachers identify constraints
that have been recurrently found in the literature (Moreira & Ribeiro, 2009;
Oliveira, 2011): writing requires time and long-term commitment, along
with habits for structured reflection that seldom pre-exist after a long day’s
(exhausting) work, as well as willingness to disclose shortcomings and diffi-
culties that expose one’s frailties and limitations. In order to overcome them,
teachers need spaces and times for reflection that will sustain the work of
professional development communities.
Even though we recognize limitations in the contextualized nature of
the research undertaken and in the fact that it took place in the protected
professional development spaces provided by the universities, what can be
regarded as exceptional in a large and diverse country as Brazil is, the fact
is that the study shows the value that partnerships between universities and
schools have in creating a developmental “third space” where all participants
get together and have an opportunity for growth (cf. Nóvoa, 2019). There is
a need to amplify the scope of the study, into wider teaching and professional
development networks and other teacher preparation and teacher education
programs, with a follow-up and monitoring of teaching practice in schools.
Acknowledgements
The first author would like to acknowledge the funding of the work by CIEd –
Research Centre on Education, Institute of Education, University of Minho,
projects UIDB/01661/2020 and UIDP/01661/2020, through national
funds of FCT/MCTES-PT. The second author acknowledges the support
of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), given to the project:
Brazilian and Portuguese teachers in an online group: Education narratives
(Process number: 2013/12954-9) and the support of the National Council
for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), given to the project
Intergenerational dialogue on preservice training: Establishing a continuum
of teacher education (Process number: 404133/20169). The third author
would also like to thank the support of the CNPq given to the project
Reflexive narratives of special needs teachers (Process number 2019/125658).
Notes
1 Academic years have different calendars in Portugal and Brazil. In Portugal they
start in September/October and finish in July; in Brazil they start in February
and end in December. In this text we refer to the Portuguese calendar, joining
two years in the case of Brazil.
2 This was a joint program, carried out by the Federal University of São Carlos and
the University of Minho, that involved the first two authors as teacher educators
(for more details on the program, see Anunciato, 2019; Oliveira & Moreira, 2014).
3 The classes in Portugal had students from other nationalities, but only
Portuguese and Brazilian were selected.
4 All testimonials were translated from the Portuguese language. Teachers’ names
are fictitious.
5 Classes set up by the Brazilian Ministry of Education with the aim of recovering
students that lag behind.
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4 “If I can do it at this school,
you can put me anywhere”
Case studies from Australian graduate
teachers in diverse and challenging schools
Lynette Longaretti and Dianne Toe
Introduction
This chapter presents three case studies of new graduate teachers who work
in socially disadvantaged schools in Victoria, Australia. They had partic-
ipated in the National Exceptional Teaching for Disadvantaged Schools
(NETDS) Program at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, as Primary
teacher undergraduates. These new teachers embody concepts of excellence
and success, unpacked through their own stories of new beginnings in the
profession. The notion of teaching success is complex. Teaching has been
described as both an art and a science by Marzano (2007). Quality, effi-
cacy, and expertise in teaching have been measured by various scales (e.g.,
Tschannen-Moran, Hoy & Hoy, 1998), legislated for in teaching standards
(e.g., the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, AITSL, 2014), and
identified as the biggest source of variance in student outcomes (Hattie,
2003). There is no universal definition of a successful teacher. Many aca-
demics agree that successful teachers have a deep knowledge of their subject
matter, engage their students, provide clear goals and feedback to monitor
learning, and build strong relationships with their students (Hattie, 2003;
Marzano, 2007; Stronge, 2018). In addition, the disposition of a successful
teacher is one of commitment and passion for their work (Hattie, 2003).
Success can be assessed using external evidence such as student outcomes,
more qualitatively through the views of stakeholders including students, par-
ents, and school councils or, alternatively, assessed subjectively via personal
teacher perspectives. Two recurring features emerge from these various per-
spectives. Successful teachers have deep content and pedagogical knowledge
and they are skilled at forming relationships with their students (Hattie,
2003; Marzano, 2007; Sawyer, Callow, Munns & Zammit, 2013; Stronge,
2018). In this chapter, we explore the concept of a successful teacher as told
through the stories of three well prepared Australian teacher graduates work-
ing in disadvantaged school settings.
Australia is a well-developed nation with strong links to other western
countries and a proud Indigenous heritage. This sparsely populated country
of 25.5 million people has developed a complex education system. Education
is funded through an intricate mix of Australian and State government funds
Case studies from Australian graduate teachers 73
which flow to both public schools and private schools. Private schools com-
prise approximately 35 percent of all enrollments (Keating, Preston, Burke,
Van Heertum, & Arnove, 2013). In 2007, a Labor government was elected
with a strong agenda for educational reform, initiating the “education rev-
olution,” and a range of new policies including the introduction of a set of
Australian Professional Standards for Teachers (Australian Institute for Teach-
ing and School Leadership, AITSL, 2014), the development of the Australian
Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) to support a new
Australian curriculum (ACARA, 2012) and a new public online database for
all Australian schools, the My School website (ACARA, 2010).
The My School website provided the public with access to data about
schools, including a numerical Index of Community Socio-Educational
Advantage (ICSEA); a measure of each school’s level of educational advan-
tage based on direct measures of parent occupation, parent education,
geographical remoteness, and numbers of Aboriginal students and non-Eng-
lish-speaking backgrounds. The ICSEA average is 1000, with educationally
disadvantaged schools defined as those with ICSEA below 1000 (Lampert &
Burnett, 2014). Public availability of this data has highlighted the “uneven
playing field” of Australian schools in a way not previously possible (Bonner
& Shepard, 2016). The inequities in the Australian education system and its
impact on student learning outcomes have become a major focus of debate
around schooling (Bonner & Shepard, 2016).
The impact of poverty on education in Australia is linked to student learn-
ing outcomes. Recent results from The Organization for Economic Coop-
eration and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) indicate a decline in the educational outcomes of students,
with the gap between students in disadvantaged schools and privileged schools
widening (Lamb, Jackson, Walstab & Huo, 2015; Thomson, De Bortoli, &
Buckley, 2013). According to Hattie (2003, 2012), teachers can mitigate this
achievement gap. Yet, research shows that the quality and effectiveness of
teachers in disadvantaged schools is often lower than in middle class school
settings (Burnett & Lampert, 2011; Goldhaber, Lavery & Theobald, 2015).
The Gonski report (Review of Funding of Schooling, 2011) outlined a
significant gap between Australia’s highest and lowest performing students.
Gonski explicitly called for a new Australian education funding model, tying
funding to educational need. The report has encountered various amend-
ments with few tangible outcomes for children in vulnerable communities.
The Bracks Report (Department of Education and Training, Victoria, 2015),
sought a fairer funding architecture so “education funding be directed to
where it will achieve the biggest impact for students with the greatest needs”
(p. 4) and “encouraging high performing teachers to work in disadvantaged
schools through new incentives” (p. 5).
In Australia, research has identified how high performing or successful
teachers work in disadvantaged schools. The Fair Go Project, (Sawyer, Callow,
Munns & Zammit, 2013) studied the attributes and pedagogies of exemplary
teachers in disadvantaged communities in the western suburbs of Sydney and
74 Lynette Longaretti and Dianne Toe
identified two main features; content and pedagogical knowledge and relation-
ship building. Sawyer and his colleagues describe High Cognitive classrooms
where higher order thinking was valued and teachers engaged in sustained
conversations about learning itself and High Operative where teachers prior-
itized learning over behavior. Other researchers also emphasize the importance
of teacher pedagogical skills in disadvantaged schools (Darling-Hammond,
2015; Hayes, 2016). The second key feature of teachers who make a differ-
ence for students in vulnerable communities relates to relationship building
with students, families, and colleagues. In High Affective classrooms (Sawyer
et al., 2013), teachers build a sense of community and create classroom envi-
ronments where students are able to take risks. Day and Hong (2016) describe
teaching in low SES schools as emotional work. “Sustained engagement…
requires authentic caring relationships in which teachers are able to draw upon
continuing reserves of emotional energy on a daily basis” (p.116). Success-
ful teaching and learning require cognitive, social, and emotional investment
(Laursen & Nielsen, 2016). These findings in disadvantaged schools align with
the definition of successful teaching adopted in this chapter; teachers with 1)
deep content and pedagogical knowledge and 2) skilled relationship building.
Other research into successful teaching practices in disadvantaged schools
highlights how teachers take a long-term view of learning; high expecta-
tions of student achievement; explicit and clear instruction, critical think-
ing, and problem-solving skills; and connections to students’ life experiences
(Cochran-Smith, Ell, Grudnoff, Haigh & Hill, 2016). For beginning teach-
ers in disadvantaged schools, a supportive environment, strong school leader-
ship, and appropriate professional learning are important (Cochran-Smith et
al., 2016; Longaretti & Toe, 2017). These principles underpin the National
Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) Program which
focus on social justice and a sociocultural understanding of educational dis-
advantage. This chapter investigates how participation in professional learn-
ing (the NETDS Program) in their undergraduate teaching degree impacts
on three graduate teachers, shaping their disposition as a successful teacher,
through the narrative of three shared case studies.
The National Exceptional Teachers for Disadvantaged Schools

(NETDS) program
The NETDS Program was developed at Queensland University of Technology
in 2008 and has been previously described in some detail (Burnett & Lampert,
2019; Lampert & Burnett, 2014). The program aims to orient high perform-
ing preservice teachers to teaching in disadvantaged schools. The NETDS
body of work examines how this specialized teaching program facilitates grad-
uate teacher skills and attributes. Lampert and Burnett (2015) identified how
an understanding of poverty and disadvantage, resilience, critical reflection,
and teaching efficacy can be developed to achieve quality teaching and learn-
ing. The essence of a successful teacher who can sustain work in a disadvan-
taged community is captured by Scholes and his colleagues (2017),
Teachers are often motivated by a sense of the potential of education
for social good – they want to make a difference. In order to develop
quality educators who will stay and continue to enhance the profession,
they need to be equipped with more than good will; they need analytical
capacities they can apply in the range of changing and challenging situa-
tions in which they find themselves, their colleagues, their communities
and their students. (p.36)
These “analytical capacities” align with “deep content and pedagogical

knowledge” suggesting that successful teachers in disadvantaged school set-
tings can apply an intellectual lens to their teaching and carefully differenti-
ate learning for their students.
The NETDS Program is premised on two key factors: 1) exceptional
future teachers can be better prepared to understand issues of social jus-
tice and encouraged to teach in disadvantaged schools, 2) successful teach-
ers within disadvantaged schools need a deep understanding of the impact
of poverty on families, young people, and their academic outcomes. The
NETDS Program was developed around the following set of principles (Bur-
nett & Lampert, 2016, p.85).
• selection of participants based on high academic achievement

• development of close partnerships between schools and the university
with multiple school placements in disadvantaged schools
• an emphasis on reflection
• a strong community of practice with both face-to-face and social
networking.
The NETDS program at Deakin University commenced in 2015. Preservice

teachers (PSTs) were selected based on high grades at the end of year two in
their four-year Bachelor of Education degree and invited to participate in the
program in their final years of study. The PSTs complete seminars together to
interrogate disadvantage, enriching one of their core units of study, and prepar-
ing them for their placements in disadvantaged schools. The program develops
their skills as reflective practitioners through journal keeping and regular oppor-
tunities to reflect with their NETDS peers. Additional mentoring is provided on
school placement visits from the program coordinators (Lampert & Burnett,
2014). After each school placement, PSTs come together to reflect on their
experiences, learning new ways of thinking about students and families.
Methodology
Three case studies of individual NETDS graduates from the Deakin Univer-
sity program are shared here. The data were collected using two individual
open-ended interviews that took place mid-year and the end of their first year
of teaching as part of a research project designed to explore the experiences
of the first two cohorts of Deakin University NETDS graduates1. Over 80
percent of these NETDS graduates were employed in disadvantaged schools.
We adopted an innovative visual methodology, building on the concept of
metaphor to describe a teacher’s journey (Stofflett, 1996; Thomas & Beau-
champ, 2011). Each graduate was asked to bring an artifact that represented
their teaching journey. At interview, they explained how the artifact was rele-
vant to their current perspectives on teaching. These artifacts have been used
as a lens to understand each NETDS graduate’s professional identity. These
case studies were selected from the stories told by the 24 study participants
to explore the impact of the NETDS program and their effectiveness as new
teachers working in challenging school communities.
The role of the researcher

In this qualitative study, we adopted the role of insider-researcher, choosing
to study a group to which we belong (Dwyer & Buckle, 2009). Bonner and
Tolhurst (2002) identified three advantages of being an insider-researcher:
(a) having a greater understanding of the culture being studied; (b) not
altering the flow of social interaction unnaturally; and (c) having an estab-
lished intimacy which promotes both the telling and the judging of truth.
The co-authors of this chapter coordinate the NETDS program at Deakin
University. As insider-researchers, we worked closely with the graduates
by undertaking all interviews and focus groups. We deliberately chose this
approach in order to ensure each graduate felt very comfortable about dis-
cussing their experiences in schools, building on the community of practice
developed in the NETDS program as a preservice teacher. As researchers,
we were part of the process of the development of each teacher’s disposition
and we do not claim to be independent observers in the interview process.
Our focus was to support each teacher to “tell their own story.” We have
been mindful of the risks of researcher bias, using preestablished questions in
interviews and independent transcribers to capture the stories of each partic-
ipant in the project. Our goal was to provide a safe place for discussion and
ask questions that would encourage each teacher to be candid.
Case study selection

Using the “multiple” case study approach (Stake, 2006), this study explored
the effectiveness of graduate teachers working in challenging school com-
munities. We selected three cases studies from the 24 sets of interviews using
Seawright and Gerring’s (2008) Diversity strategy. We selected the case
studies to reflect a) the geographical diversity of disadvantaged schools in
Australia and b) the “success criteria” as identified in the literature, particu-
larly those that exemplified deep content and pedagogical knowledge and
skilled relationship building (Day and Hong, 2016; Sawyer et al., 2013). We
mapped the 24 participants across geographical locations and selected three
participants who presented as successful, high performing graduate teachers
working in disadvantaged schools based on the diversity of their location.
We share three graduate teacher case studies in diverse primary school
settings across Victoria, Australia. They provide rich accounts of the per-
spectives of new teachers working in challenging school communities. Key
research questions were used to frame the case studies. The main question
How effective do graduates of the Deakin NETDS program feel as new gradu-
ate teachers? is further unpacked through three sub-questions:
i) How do they represent their current teacher identity though selection of

an artifact?
ii) How does their school community and context impact on their sense of
efficacy?
iii) How has the NETDS program prepared them for their new role as a
teacher?
Melissa—“tune into the signs”

Melissa is a new graduate of the NETDS program and Bachelor of Educa-
tion (Primary) degree. Her coeducational state-run Department of Education
school is situated in the highest urban growth area in Australia with approxi-
mately 2000 students (very large in Australia) students from Foundation (age
5 years) to Year 9 (age 14–15 years). In some year levels, there are 12–14
classes, and lunchtime and recess are staggered to provide outdoor space for
the students. The school is culturally diverse with new arrivals and refugee
families and economically disadvantaged with an ICSEA of 990-1000. Melissa
completed her final placement as a preservice teacher at the school.
At our first meeting mid school year, Melissa presents with an upbeat and
confident attitude. She shares the artifact she has chosen to represent her
teaching journey so far, one of her student portfolios. She explains how the
portfolio is used to showcase each student’s year of work, containing student
learning reflections and assisting teachers to assess key progression points.
This choice highlights her strong focus on student learning outcomes and
shows how she uses data to track student progress.
Melissa explains that
the reason why I’ve chosen to bring this is because I feel like it’s not only
a showcase of the students learning, but a showcase of my learning and
my progression as a teacher, and how I’ve developed my approaches.
The main outcome is for the students to improve, so I feel like my prac-
tices need to improve.
This choice of artifact conveys strong messages about how Melissa conceptu-
alizes teaching and learning. She places student growth at the center of her
work, articulating her goal to be the improvement of her teaching practice to
ensure every student experiences learning growth. Reflecting on the begin-
ning of the year in her new school she explains that:
It was extremely daunting, because we were given finished, completed

portfolios (from the previous year).
This is a neat analogy for her transformation from preservice teacher to

beginning teacher, surrounded by fully formed, capable teachers and need-
ing to embark on that teacher journey. As she unpacks that process, she
reveals her strong self-efficacy, metacognition, and resilience.
It’s a bit overwhelming to begin with. But I progressed through it. It

was embedded into the curriculum so it’s something that we do, it’s an
authentic task, so we grab that task, we analyse it, we have a look at the
strengths, areas of need, and basically we just put it into writing.
Melissa reinforces her “can do” approach by stating that she “came in quite
confident” and is feeling “really competent in my abilities”. She has not
reached this point alone. Her highly supportive school community has an
excellent framework for mentoring and teacher support. The school provides
coaching in “an area of your choice” as well as extra time for graduates to
reflect on their current needs for professional development. The impact of
this support has been profound. She describes the process.
English, mathematics or you could have an instructional coach, who

basically looks at your teaching methods and they review that also. So,
every term you’re approached by a new coach and they ask you what
would you like coaching for? Then they come, they observe a couple
of lessons, give you feedback, then you observe them, you reteach their
lesson. So, it’s really effective.
Melissa works in a school that leaves nothing to chance. They believe they
know what quality teaching and learning is and know how to prepare their new
teachers to deliver it. Not surprisingly, Melissa doesn’t question this approach
but appears to relish the support it provides. She can also reflect deeply on
challenging experiences, describing an incident with a student who was upset
and the steps she used to diffuse the situation and keep other students safe. She
realized that “it all depends on me in the end,” seeing it as a “wow” moment
where she took charge and “well this is what I’m doing, I’m teaching.”
Melissa articulates how she differentiates her teaching, catering for chil-
dren for whom English is an additional language and recently arrived ref-
ugees who have experienced significant trauma. She describes her careful
use of visual props, technological support, and visual checklists to scaffold
each learner as well as her open-door policy for parents and support for
family-school relationships. Her pride in her students’ learning is a recurring
theme in the interview, “their oral language is fantastic.”
Melissa reflects on her experiences in the NETDS program with insight.
She articulates how practical experiences in disadvantaged schools “prepared
me quite well for working with colleagues” because she “gained a lot of
interpersonal skills to be able communicate with a variety of people.” This
reflection is consistent with Melissa’s persona, she was a confident preservice
teacher who used her placement experiences to add skills and tools to her
teaching toolbox.
The NETDS program has “allowed her to see the implications of coming
from a low socio-economic background” and “tune into the signs of poverty.”
Her current context is “not so bad” and she clarifies that she saw many differ-
ent things on her placement that she might never need. In this sense, the pro-
gram has almost “overprepared” her for working in vulnerable communities.
This is not a criticism and she is grateful for all of the experiences, concluding
that it has built her “resilience as a teacher” and helped her “step back from
the emotion.” She speaks warmly of how the NETDS group supported her
learning on placement and in classes. The program has provided Melissa with
critical professional learning as a graduate ready preservice teacher and con-
tributing to the successful teacher we meet in this case study.
At her second interview, Melissa moves quickly to reflect on her learn-
ings. She acknowledges the emotional impact of her work and the value of
learning on colleagues. She now understands that her job is “quite difficult
emotionally, when you hear traumatic experiences that children are going
through” but “I’ve learned I can’t take that emotion home.” She explains
that she has had to “take the time to recognize that I’m not feeling OK and
I need to speak to someone, I need to talk to my colleagues.” She appears to
have reconciled that it is acceptable to reveal vulnerability to her colleagues
and that even the very best teachers cannot master every aspect of their work
in a highly diverse and challenging school community. This acknowledgment
appears to have further boosted her personal confidence and she shares her
personal goals for “being part of the leadership team in some way shape or
form.” At the end of her first year of teaching, Melissa has been reemployed
in her school for the next year. Reflecting on her original choice of artifact,
she concludes that it still captures the essence of her graduate teacher iden-
tity. “So, (the portfolio) is really positive. It encompasses the planning and
it's something to be proud of.
Max—“Short sharp and shiny”

Max is a mature graduate with a young family of his own and a confident per-
sonality. He has a one-year contract position (common for new teachers) in a
small coeducational state-run primary school situated on the fringe of a large
regional town in the state of Victoria. It has an ICSEA of 960-970. Max’s pri-
mary school is in a seaside location, popular with holiday makers who would
have little idea of the disadvantage present in the community. Low-cost rentals
attract families with limited resources. Consequently, the school is econom-
ically diverse, “we have professional families right through to families who
have been broken” and “a lot of children who live in out-of-home care.” Max
emphasizes the sense of community in his school “inside (our school) there is
a sense that every day is a new day.” Max comments on the whole staff focus
on building every student’s sense of resilience. Max observes that they have
“opened up a space for the students to say “I don’t need to run…. I have tools
to self-regulate my behavior and I can actually do this.”
Max represents his teaching journey through the artifact of his notebook,
used to consolidate his ideas and reflect on his teaching. “It’s sort of like a
reflection. So, after a lesson or in the middle of a lesson, just quickly crank it
open, write a point, or draw a quick little sketch or picture… It’s like a physi-
cal memory bank.” Max says he has become more reliant upon his notebook
throughout the year. He believes he can adopt daily habits which thwart
his aim to become a better teacher. He says “When I don’t use it, I find it
tough.” “Your ability to become a proficient teacher increases. The only way
that happens is when I use (the notebook)”. Max explains how the notebook
facilitates his development as a proficient teacher, through reflection and
personal evaluation. Without it, he fears he would “fall into bad habits” that
become “boring and education isn’t boring.” Max’s choice of artifact paints
a picture of a new teacher with high personal expectations. He doesn’t just
want to get through the day but look for ways to improve and stimulate
learning. Reflective practice is a key feature of the NETDS program. We give
every participant a notebook and encourage regular reflections. This has car-
ried over into Max’s daily practice as a graduate.
Throughout our conversations, Max provides strong evidence of his
success as a new graduate teacher with a central focus on differentiated
learning and student outcomes. He is a specialist teacher in science, phys-
ical education, and mathematics for Grade 3 and 4 students. He describes
a recent incursion with a science group who led a session on insects and
habitat. He had taught the group of students about it earlier in the year.
Max comments that “the kids smashed it out of the park. They were actu-
ally really surprised that they retained that information from Term 1 right
through to Term 3… So, it was a bit of a solid proud moment…yes... they
actually are learning something!”
When reflecting on effectiveness, he quickly moves to the concept of rela-
tionship building. He highlights his own capacity to connect with students
“building a foundation for rapport,” “generally having kids hovering around
your office” but he identifies its value for learning “I can capture some atten-
tion...give a good intro or a hook and get kids excited about what’s happen-
ing next.” He describes how he honed his skills while he was a preservice
teacher to create introductions to lessons that are “short, sharp, and shiny.”
Stepping back, we see how Max functions as a critical and reflective thinker,
carefully selecting his pedagogical tools for his diverse learners and con-
stantly raising expectations on his teaching. He places getting to know each
student firmly in the center of his work “making sure you anchor down some
artifacts from (each) individual” and acknowledging that “some students
can’t write-some find it hard to even articulate what they know,” but Max is
undaunted. He describes how the documentation of their learning might be
“a simple sit down and write some annotated conversations” or “just walk
past and take quick snap shot of what they have done.”
Max describes how his own effectiveness in the classroom is supported
by his school community. He describes some challenging behavior
between students and the way his school “tackled this together” sup-
ported by a “really good school council” who are not “just here to tick
boxes.” He feels well supported by the school community of parents who
can see how the staff “cherish our children and want to see the best out-
comes for (them).” Max brings his own skills to building this community.
He believes that the group assignments and assessment tasks he under-
took in his teacher education degree were foundational for building skills
to work with other teachers.
Max speaks frankly when reflecting on the NETDS program “it’s
because of the NETDS program that I secured the job. The opportunity
I had to work in schools that had challenges was priceless.” He reflects on
the NETDS Community of Practice model and the benefits of “the con-
versations that we’ve had in tutorials” where his peers have said “look I
had a student who was like this and this is what I did.” He describes these
shared experiences as “a little gem of knowledge you can take away. You
can read, but those personal experiences are always worth more.” Max
articulates that while he enjoyed the readings and intellectual engage-
ment with research it is turning “theory into doing that made the pro-
gram work for him, it is the “real life application of knowledge…will
trump it all.”
Max’s focus for the end of the year is on his own well-being and readi-
ness for the profession. He is acutely aware that many new graduates leave
teaching and find it “too hard.” He wants to focus on feeling good about
his profession. He describes how hard he works to stay well connected
with other teachers to share experiences and stories of their daily work.
He chats with his fellow graduate teachers from the NETDS program.
“We touch base and ask what are you doing at your school and how are
you managing this type of behavior” acknowledging that many of them
are working in similar communities and keen to share their evolving ped-
agogies. At the end of his first year as a graduate, he has a position for the
following year and appears firmly ensconced in his school community. His
graduate story is well captured by his choice of artifact, his notebook. Max
is a highly reflective new teacher, firmly focused on building relationships
and connecting with his school community. He is deeply aware of the team
work that makes learning successful, especially for learners in economically
diverse and vulnerable communities. He personifies the two key elements
of a successful teacher identified in this chapter in the way that he describes
his pedagogical knowledge and capacity for relationship building.
Anna—“Everyone in it together”
Anna is a new graduate from the NETDS program, teaching in a small rural
town 300 km from Melbourne on the Victoria/New South Wales (NSW) bor-
der. The co-educational state primary school is situated in a bush setting and ser-
vices the township and the surrounding farming district. The school, established
in 1880, has approximately 80 students and just six teachers, from Foundation
to year 6 with a 10% Indigenous population. It is economically disadvantaged
with an ICSEA of 940-950. Prior to teaching here, Anna had lived at home and
had only experienced teaching placements in urban settings. When we met mid-
year, Anna was excited to see us, keen to share her experiences and her school.
She reflected on her difficulty with selecting an artifact to represent her teaching
journey and then finding something “perfect” to share—her netball uniform.
Netball is popular team sport in Australia. For Anna, the significance of
the artifact lies in what it represents—belonging to a new community, being
social and as a stress release from her teaching. She explains,
I suppose being new to the town and everything, it was big. Netball was
a big part of my life back home, so to represent my social side… because
I had to meet a lot of people which has been great, and this netball club
have been really good for that. But it’s also my stress release from teach-
ing… When I play netball, when I train, I don’t have to think about the
classroom or anything. It keeps me sane.
The choice of artifact communicates a strong message about managing living

and teaching in a small rural community. By belonging to the sporting club,
Anna can sustain her health, well-being and connect to her new community.
In Australian rural communities, sporting clubs often act as the community,
“glue,” providing a sense of social cohesion. For Anna, it gave her a sense of
normality, an interest other than teaching. Anna explains, “[netball] makes
me get out. Otherwise it is easy to just sit there and be on your laptop and
work, even on weekends.” At her second interview, Anna reinforced the idea
of the importance of having something outside of teaching. Anna describes
the transition from preservice teacher to graduate teacher as rapid, supported
by good routine, planning ahead and being prepared.
Anna is very well supported by her colleagues, more experienced teachers,
and the school principal. Her positive attitude and initiative is noticed and
encouraged. In her small school, she is given many opportunities unlikely to
have been on offer in a larger school. She explains,
If you want to do something here, they’re so good, they just say ‘just
do it, just go, we’ll figure it out, we’ll cover’. Whereas in a bigger school
you just wouldn’t get some opportunities. That’s what I worry about if
I do go back to a bigger school, I might even miss all they are giving me.
People who have never been in a little school, couldn’t imagine all those
possibilities, they’d actually think the opposite.
This is a good example of the trust put in Anna’s abilities and the men-
toring she receives, so to develop her as a teacher. While there is no formal
coaching program for new teachers, other experienced teachers welcome the
opportunity to model teaching strategies in their classrooms. Anna explains,
“if you want to go and watch someone else [teach], just go.” The sense of
community is strong.
Anna is aware that in a small school, the workload must be shared and
that everyone “chips in and helps out,” and you have to “use your initiative.”
Anna’s confidence in contributing has increased. “In a small school, you have
to step up in some ways. I know I have a lot more to step up to, otherwise it’s
the same people doing the same things over and over.” In her second interview,
Anna explained how she continues to seek and receive opportunities, such as
“running the school gardening and cooking program.” When asked about the
approach of school leadership, Anna comments, “I suppose in a small school,
you all have to be leaders.. There isn’t a specific leader of your area. It’s kind of
everyone in it together and helping each other where you can.”
Anna feels effective in her ability to build relationships with her students,
parents, and the school community; she is deeply committed to them. To
enhance student learning, Anna works closely with the parents and grand-
parents who are involved in school programs. Community support is a sig-
nificant aspect of working in a disadvantaged rural school. She explains, “It
wouldn’t work if we didn’t have community involvement and those parents
coming to help. It’s really community based and oriented.”
She also reflects deeply on the needs of her students and experiences she
found challenging. Anna describes teaching a student who refuses to partici-
pate in anything. If pushed to work, he runs outside into the bush play area and
climbs a tree. “I’ve had to fish him down a couple of times.” Anna describes
how it has taken most of the year to develop his trust. “Just this morning he
started off not wanting to do writing, but he actually sat down and did it, and
when he finished he’s like “Oh!”. He’s proud of himself. You can see at the
end of the day when it’s been a good day of learning for him, because he just
sits there. He actually says he was ‘knackered’ (exhausted) the other day.”
Anna is modest in describing the impact she has had on this student and
the impact of her consistent high expectations, ensuring he felt included and
cared for. She sought advice from other teachers, worked with the student’s
mother, used individual interest-based topics for writing to help engage
him, and drew on her knowledge of trauma students, from the NETDS pro-
gram, to help teach him. The well-being of her students is paramount. Anna
reflected that it was those challenging experiences with students that ‘made
her teaching’. “At the end of the year, you see that they’re the ones you are
going to miss the most, and they miss you the most. Understanding every
child is different and helping them all in their own way.” Anna’s capacity to
reflect deeply on her pedagogy and its impact on student learning outcomes
highlights her capability as a successful new graduate.
When reflecting on the professional learning that she experienced in the
NETDS program, Anna describes her school placements as pivotal in her
preparation for teaching. “Being in low SES schools, seeing that diversity
and the difference…because some of those things happened here and I was
like, ‘oh I’ve seen that before. It’s not that much of a shock to me.” She
described a change in her thinking as a result of participating in the NETDS
program.
In second year I thought all schools were ‘easy breezy’ but then through
NETDS, I learnt about generational poverty and had opportunities to
work in schools with children who had experienced trauma. Some kids
just need the attention or the love. Some kids just need a hug some days.
This comment is consistent with Anna’s approach to her teaching. She is

driven to build positive relationships with her students, families, and the
community. To Anna, teaching is far more than the curriculum within the
classroom.
Anna speaks fondly of her experiences in the NETDS program and her
connections with other preservice teachers when sharing their school place-
ment experiences. “You realise you are not going through it alone. Being
able to share experiences …and just being able to accept other peoples’ expe-
riences and helping each other out with suggestions and strategies.” Her
persistent, proactive, and well-balanced attitude is something her principal
and other teachers identify in her. Anna was offered an ongoing teaching
position in her school, with her Principal stating, “I’ll have you forever!”
Conclusion
Melissa, Max, and Anna show us how the community of practice and the
professional learning experiences of the NETDS program have shaped
them into highly successful graduate teachers serving their disadvantaged
school communities with confidence and empathy. Their stories high-
light the diversity of educational settings in Australia and how disadvan-
tage and vulnerability play out across both urban and rural backdrops.
Three strong themes emerge from these three narratives, underpinning
the success of these graduates: 1) high expectations for themselves and
their students that is supported by a deep understanding of content and
pedagogy, 2) strong relationship building, and 3) supportive schools.
All three new teachers have set high expectations for themselves. This is
highlighted by Melissa in her choice of a student portfolio as her artifact
and by Ben’s reflective journal practices which he uses to set new goals,
never wanting to travel down the “easy road.” Anna’s modesty about her
achievements makes them no less impressive, with her deep commitment
to student learning and differentiation and her acknowledgment that the
students who challenge us are the ones who also “make us” as teachers.
Melissa, Max, and Anna all hold the highest expectations for their stu-
dents. They are firmly focused on student learning outcomes, able to
connect with individual students and intervene when students experience
extreme challenges. The way that each graduate is able to clearly artic-
ulate their pedagogy underscores their skills as successful new teachers
with deep pedagogical knowledge.
The second and perhaps the strongest message from these NETDS grad-
uates is their commitment to relationship building. Each teacher places their
relationships with their students and their families at the center of their teach-
ing. It is foundational to their evolving teacher identities. Although relation-
ship building is barely touched on in the Australian Professional Standards for
Teachers (AITSL, 2014), it is a solid focus of the NETDS program. Notable
researchers view it as vital for teaching success (Day & Hong, 2016; Hattie,
2003; Sawyer et al., 2013). Each case study demonstrates how relationship
building underpins their daily classroom practice. Anna speaks of her love for
her new rural community, immersed in the lives of her children and families
and connected with the community through sport. Max highlights his recip-
rocal relationship with parents, school council, and students, describing his
capacity to connect and engage his students as one of his greatest achieve-
ments. Melissa highlights her open-door policy with family and delight in
each students’ achievements.
A Community of Practice model (Lave & Wenger, 1991) underpins the
NETDS program. Melissa, Max, and Anna each comment on how much
they valued the opportunity to share and learn alongside their NETDS
peers. This model was reinforced within their new school communities. The
third theme underpinning the success and self-efficacy of these three teach-
ers relates to their experience of school support and teacher collegiality. No
teacher is an island and strong school communities help to make success-
ful new graduates. Each of our teachers describes their unique school cli-
mate and support framework which has realized their capacities as successful
teaching professionals. For Melissa, in her large urban school, this translates
as a strong leadership team and a supportive coaching program. For Anna,
her small rural school is full of opportunities to take on new roles, where the
workload is shared. Max’s experiences are similar to Anna’s, where challeng-
ing behavior is tackled together, engendering a sense of pride in the school
community and its collective power.
These three case studies tell the story of the Australian teaching con-
text through the lens of the NETDS program. These graduates shared a
journey by taking part in a program that appears to have prepared them
well for a successful start to their teaching careers in distinctly different
schools. Each teacher has articulated their high expectations for them-
selves and their students, the foundational nature of relationship build-
ing, and the value of school support and collegiality highlighting their
preparation to make a difference to the lives of their students. These
narratives cannot make big claims about the precursors for graduate
teacher success. These three teachers appear to have gained great ben-
efit as preservice teachers from participation in a supportive Commu-
nity of Practice within the NETDS professional learning program. This
model, currently embedded in six universities in Australia, lends itself to
replication in other countries who are keen to ensure that disadvantaged
students are taught by successful and effective new teachers. There is
also scope to extend the local learning from these three cases studies.
Although these new teachers appear to be capably supported in their
current school settings, there remains a question of sustainability. An
extension of the NETDS Community of Practice into the early years of
the teaching profession could significantly benefit graduates who work in
vulnerable and disadvantaged communities. Such a program could bridge
the gap between Initial Teacher Education and new careers, extending
the high levels of commitment and optimism observed in Melissa, Max,
and Anna and ensure that the students with the highest needs will receive
the best pedagogy (Australian Government, Department of Education,
Skills and Employment, 2018; Gonski et al. 2011; Munns et al. 2013)
from teachers who care deeply for their welfare.
Notes
1 This research was approved through the Research Ethics Unit at the Queensland
University of Technology as part of the large program of NETDS research
across NETDS university partners (HREC Number. 1400000348) and by the
Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee committee (No
2014-264).
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5 Professional development of
EFL teachers through reflective
practice in a supportive
community of practice
Chitose Asaoka
Introduction
Learning to teach is a dialogical process that integrates knowledge, experi-
ence, skills, and teaching behaviors; in this process, reflection is viewed as
the bridge that helps narrow the gap between theoretical knowledge and
personal experiences (McIntyre, 1993; Schön, 1983; Tsui, 2003). In order
for teachers to become successful, they must continue to reflect on their
teaching practices.
In the field of teacher education, no single model provides an appropriate
description of a successful teacher, however, even though various models
of successful teachers have previously been proposed (for example, Moore,
2004). In one such model, they are described as “competent craftpersons”
(Moore, 2004, p.75) who acquire and develop the discrete skills of teaching
to a particular standard. In this model, lists of teaching competencies and
standards prescribed by a program, school, or local and national government
often make the assessment criteria explicit to teachers. On the other hand,
many researchers argue that successful teaching should not be reduced to
finite lists of competencies; instead, it should focus more on “the importance
of reflection on what one does in the classroom” (Moore, 2004, p.4). In this
model, successful teachers are “reflective practitioners” who can reflect con-
structively on and, often as a result, improve their practice. In line with this
reflective model, Tsui (2003) states that the acquisition of knowledge bases
and skills required for successful teaching should not be the main focus,
but rather, a process by which teachers consciously theorize their practical
knowledge through reflection and transform their professional knowledge
into practical knowledge. In other words, teacher expertise is not a state of
theoretical learning, but rather “a constant and reciprocal process between
theory and practice” (Asaoka, 2019, p.26). Thus, merely acquiring certain
knowledge and demonstrating specific skills are not sufficient for being suc-
cessful teachers. This conceptualization promotes the view of a successful
teacher as “a flexible, lifelong learner, able to participate in ongoing change”
(Walkington, 2005, p.54) who can demonstrate more autonomy and flexi-
bility in planning, teaching, and critically reflecting on teaching.
90 Chitose Asaoka
Of course, this view does not necessarily imply that reflection always
brings about ideal results; there may be bad reflection (Moore, 2004) that
may reinforce wrong values or behaviors of teachers. Thus, teachers need to
learn to carry out thoughtful and constructive evaluations of their teaching.
Furthermore, in some educational contexts, particularly where qualities of
successful language teachers have not been specifically prescribed or the
importance of reflective practice is not highly emphasized, such as Japan
(Asaoka, 2019), teachers may feel isolated and compartmentalized during
the process of professional development, without their voices being heard
(Yamada & Hasegawa, 2010). Such teachers are often expected to conform to
social norms—the national curriculum, school policies, entrance examination
systems, and parental and students’ expectations (Asaoka, 2019). In other
words, many teachers struggle in an isolated journey with limited support in
reflecting on their practice and becoming a successful teacher, flexible, and
yet creative, and willing to participate in ongoing change.
This chapter attempts to examine the experiences of teachers who struggle
to develop their expertise and delineate the process of becoming successful
teachers even in an isolated environment. It particularly focuses on two Eng-
lish-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers in Japan who tried to develop their
expertise as they reflected on their work over a one-year period in a teacher
reflection group. Exploring the narratives of their struggles and inquiry will
inspire future teachers and will make a valuable contribution to the litera-
ture on teacher development within and beyond the context of Japan. This
chapter also discusses the importance of building collaborative and mutually
supportive communities of practice for professional learning. The following
research questions guide this chapter: (1) How do EFL teachers become
successful as teachers? and (2) How does the collaborative community of
practice influence the process of becoming successful teachers?
Collegiality in professional development

In addition to the discourse on reflective practitioners, at the center of
the current study’s theoretical framework is a sociocultural perspective on
elucidating teachers’ professional development. Sociocultural theory orig-
inates in Vygotsky’s contention that “human cognition originates in and
emerges out of participation in social activities” (Johnson & Golombek,
2011, p.1), rather than in the minds of individual human beings. This
notion implies that social interactions are central to the development of
new forms of teacher thinking. Many researchers (Johnson, 2009; Kelly
& Cherkowski, 2015; Patrick, Elliot, Hulme & McPhee, 2010) agree
and emphasize the importance of social relations with others in the pro-
cess of professional development. For instance, Johnson (2009) main-
tains that teachers are often mediated by a “temporary other” (p.25),
including peers. Patrick et al. (2010) also argue that informal elements
such as collegiality and good communication with colleagues should
not be underestimated in continuous professional development. Here,
Professional development of EFL teachers 91
collegiality includes less formal situations such as sharing experiences and
ideas, and discussing teaching practice in meetings and in the teachers’
rooms (Asaoka, 2019).
The lack of collegiality in professional development is, however, one of
many issues faced by teachers in their everyday practice, often resulting in
low job satisfaction and high stress for teachers (Hernández-Ramos, 2004).
Thus, creating a space and the means for their professional voice to be heard
are essential in becoming successful at teaching. As Lave and Wenger (1991)
argue, any form of learning is a social process that takes place within commu-
nities of practice. Wenger (1998) further argues that the essential aspects of
a community of practice include mutual engagement, joint enterprise, and a
shared repertoire. Consequently, when participating in a community of practice
for teachers, interaction with others is essential for the development of profes-
sional expertise (Johnson & Golombek, 2011). Williams and Ritter (2010)
also argue that shared and collaborative inquiries of practice will “increase
social support, foster a culture of reflection and help avoid solipsism” (p.83).
Moreover, recently virtual communities have been used more frequently
in professional development for teachers (Bullough & Pinnegar, 2001).
These virtual communities are considered as a space for “a new innovation or
knowledge pool,” given that the members of the community can share their
knowledge with one another more efficiently (Lin, Hung & Chen, 2009). For
example, Hernández-Ramos (2004) argues that weblogs and online discus-
sion forms were successfully used in promoting preservice teachers’ reflective
practice. He concludes that peer teachers can become “meaningful contribu-
tors to professional dialogues” (p.10) and that additional studies are urgently
needed to further investigate useful strategies for promoting peers as “sources
of information and knowledge” (p.12). Asaoka (2019) agrees that peers can
serve as co-meaning makers who provide constructive feedback. Although
these two studies were conducted in preservice teacher training, online dis-
cussion is also used in in-service teacher training as a valid and effective tool
for sharing a more “private” voice (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 2000, p.3).
Thus, this study focuses particularly on building an online community of prac-
tice for teachers and explores how teachers share and reconstruct their exper-
tise through interaction with one another in becoming successful teachers.
Research design
Methodology
This chapter employs narrative research as the methodology, telling the sto-
ries of individual teachers’ “lived and told experiences” (Creswell & Poth,
2018, p.68) in their everyday teaching practice. It especially examines the
practices of two EFL secondary schoolteachers in Japan (Kenta and Masato,
pseudonyms) who worked collaboratively on developing their expertise.
Initially, with ten other teachers, the two joined another research pro-
ject on continuous professional development and tried to develop a better
92 Chitose Asaoka
understanding of their teaching as self-studies. In the early phase of the pro-
ject, however, I found that participation in the project did not necessarily
promote the development of reflection or collegiality among the partici-
pants. Thus, using purposeful sampling (Creswell & Poth, 2018), the two
teachers, Masato and Kenta, were invited to join the current project.
Since the main aim of this study is to examine teachers’ lived experiences
and introspections of professional development over time (as well as to explore
their changing perspectives as EFL teachers), the methods used to collect and
analyze the data are based on the principles of qualitative inquiry (Brown &
Dowling, 1998; Cohen et al., 2002; Silverman, 2010). First of all, an online
journal forum was created (from April 2018 until January 2019), where
Masato and Kenta were asked to record what happened in their classrooms,
make note of their difficulties and challenges, and give comments and feedback
to each other. I also joined this community as a participant, taking the role of
a more experienced teacher and asking questions about and commenting on
their journal entries to promote a more constructive discussion. There were
no particular rules in terms of the topics, frequency, number of posts, or the
language, although both of them mainly used Japanese, their native language.
We also met twice in person to share their teaching experiences and feelings
about joining the online community of practice: the first focus group interview
(April 2018) and the second one (September 2018). I also interviewed them
individually in February 2019 to understand their feelings and experiences
about their professional growth over the year. I systematically read and reread
all of the qualitative data to identify the tensions that became apparent in their
daily practices and that were relevant to their professional development. In the
following sections, I used both journal postings and interviews to exemplify
how the participating teachers engaged in collegial discussions regarding their
professional development and to describe how their experiences within the
collaborative community of practice contributed to their becoming successful
teachers.
Participants and contextual background

Although teachers are expected to improve professional expertise continu-
ously, there are no set common goals agreed upon or established for what
makes a successful teacher in Japan. The Ministry of Education, Culture,
Sports, Science and Technology in Japan (hereafter MEXT, 2019) states that
the goal of initial teacher training is to grow the minimum necessary qualifi-
cations and abilities of course instruction and student counselling and guid-
ance. The Central Council on Education in Japan (2006) further states that
student teachers should aim for the following three goals before becoming
teachers: passion for teaching, professional expertise, and a well-rounded char-
acter. The term, “professional expertise,” is nevertheless not clearly defined by
the Council. Therefore, both teacher educators and student teachers in Japan
remain unsure about what to expect from initial teacher education, and what
is necessary for teachers to achieve and how to achieve successful teaching,
particularly in terms of subject matter teaching1, before they become teachers.
Upon entering the teaching profession, novice teachers in Japan are
required to undergo one year of induction training offered by each pre-
fecture’s board of education; however, during the training, experienced
teachers do not usually offer any explicit advice or guidance (Asaoka,
2019). This implies that novice teachers are encouraged to gain new ideas,
behaviors, norms, and skills appropriate within a professional culture by
observing and emulating experienced teachers, often criticized as the
“apprenticeship of observation” that merely promotes the implicit process
of apprenticeship (Lortie, 1975).
Kenta and Masato became teachers in such a context. At the onset of the
current study, both were not novice but not expert teachers yet, with a few
years of teaching experience. Both self-reported that they had had a high
reputation among their colleagues and students as devoted teachers. They
also self-evaluated themselves as being dedicated to professional develop-
ment, and they actively participated in various conferences and workshops
beyond the school curriculum, both as speakers and participants. However,
prior to this study, both were feeling isolated and frustrated without an envi-
ronment of an active professional community at their respective workplaces.
They reported they were well aware that developing expertise and becoming
a quality teacher are essential for the improvement of English language edu-
cation in Japan.
Masato and Kenta joined the initial teacher education program at the
higher education institute where I have been working as a teacher educator.
Therefore, I had known Masato for seven years and Kenta for six years at
the onset of the study. They had also known each other. Although Kenta
was one year junior to Masato, they took many courses together in the pro-
gram. Since becoming secondary school EFL teachers, both have also partic-
ipated in workshops and lectures on language pedagogy, though not always
together, that I occasionally hold at the university for teachers. This implies
that even prior to the study, they had regular communications with each
other and had built trustful relations over time.
When I decided to create an online forum for Masato and Kenta to
share their thoughts and to work together more closely as colleagues,
both of them were willing to participate in the project. I also joined the
forum as a participant and as a near peer mentor (Bulte, Betts, Garner
& Durning, 2007). This enabled me to participate in the research by
taking an emic approach (Asaoka, 2019), allowing in-depth investigation
due to the familiarity and trust between the participating teachers and
the researcher. However, this research was not perfectly emic, in that I
did not work as an actual colleague at their respective workplaces. None-
theless, joining the collaborative community of practice as a participant
allowed me to learn from their sincere thoughts and suggest ideas as a
peer whenever the need arose.
94 Chitose Asaoka
The trajectories of professional development over a year
Masato’s context
Masato was in his late twenties and in his sixth year of teaching at a public
high school when the study began in April 2018. Following in his parents’
footsteps, he entered the teaching profession immediately upon graduation
from the university. The first school at which he taught was a public all-
girls high school, where the majority of the students came from middle-class
families. He explained that the students’ career choices at this school were
diverse and not many of them were keen on getting into prestigious univer-
sities and studying for entrance exams. Thus, he was able to put into practice
his belief in a content-based approach, which he had already formed in the
initial teacher education program. However, he had to carefully consider the
levels of materials and activities that were suitable for his then students.
During Masato’s third year of teaching at this school, he had a chance to join
a summer intensive program for professional development planned by the edu-
cational board of the prefecture. The program was held at a community college
in Hawai’i, where he learned more recent theories in language pedagogy, as well
as second language acquisition, such as backward design principles and the Con-
tent and Language Integrated Learning approach. This experience made him
realize that he needed to further develop his expertise as a practitioner.
Masato’s initial struggle and teacher beliefs

After his fourth year of teaching, Masato was transferred to an all-boys high
school focused on preparing students to get into universities.2 It is a well-
known high school in a prefecture where almost all of the students go on
to college, and many enter prestigious national universities. When the study
began, it was his second year at this school, and he was teaching second-year
students. During the first focus group interview, he explained that his major
concern then was twofold: students’ mindset focused on entrance exams and
a lack of collegiality among colleagues.
The second-year students were divided into eight classes of forty in each
class, and three teachers (including Masato) were teaching them as a team.
Being the youngest of the three, Masato often had to conform to the school
norms. For example, when they had a discussion on whether they should
hire an assistant language teacher (ALT),3 they could not come to an agree-
ment and ended up not hiring any, which made him feel dissatisfied:
We should definitely hire one, and I said that to them, but one of the
teachers said we don’t need one. They think taking care of ALTs is trou-
blesome and insist that there are many negative aspects of hiring them.
What’s worse, they don’t know how to take full advantage of them.
[First FGI4, 04/01/2018]
Furthermore, in the same interview, Masato described the teachers there
as being very “conservative” because they clung to the traditional teaching
style of the grammar and translation method which, they said, had resulted
in good test scores and a high number of successful applicants. Therefore,
they did not feel the need to change their teaching styles. Although Masato
believed that teachers should bring out the full potential of individual stu-
dents by trying out various teaching approaches, as the youngest teacher of
the three, he had to get along with them. Thus, he usually held his tongue.
Instead, he explained that he wanted to try out various approaches first in
his own teaching, and then share the positive results (if any) with them that
might result in enhanced collegiality:
If I can develop new knowledge through reflective practice and share

it with my colleagues, then something new, such as a better teaching
method for this particular school setting, will emerge, which I really
want to share with my colleagues. [First FGI, 04/01/2018]
Masato also mentioned that, even without enough collegiality, teachers

could make a drastic shift in their perspectives mainly due to students’ atti-
tudes toward English language learning. Whatever teaching approaches he
took, whether it was the grammar-translation or content-based teaching
method, the most important thing for Masato was that the students would
develop their English abilities; his students were very motivated to study,
but oftentimes they did not understand the purpose of studying English.
They were studying English just because it was one of the subjects on the
university entrance exams. He believed that the most important thing was
to raise students as autonomous learners so that they would understand why
they needed to learn English, and could thus self-manage their learning.
According to Masato, the main role of a teacher was to support students’
self-management:
Earlier in my career, I used a teaching approach that I simply liked or that

my students seemed to enjoy and to be responsive. As you can often see
among novice teachers, I was one of such, likely to get caught up in the
heat of the moment and to play to the gallery. But the more I thought
of students’ learning from a longer-term perspective, the more I realised
that a successful teacher should make students aware of the importance of
learning how to learn. [First FGI, 04/01/2018, italics by the author]
In sum, at the beginning of the study, with a low level of collegiality in his
workplace, Masato struggled to develop his professional identity by focus-
ing on content-based instruction. He also strongly believed that teaching
students as autonomous learners was essential, and that the main role of a
teacher was to facilitate their learning and support their growth.
96 Chitose Asaoka
Kenta’s context
Kenta was also in his late twenties and in his third year of teaching at a private
high school at the onset of the study. Teaching had always been his aspiration;
however, upon graduation, he did not go into teaching immediately because
he felt the need to engage in further study in the field of second language
acquisition. Thus, he went on to graduate school in Japan. Toward the end of
the first year of his master’s program, Kenta was asked to fill in for a teacher
who had taken a short-term research leave. Thus, he taught at a public middle
school for three months as a part-time instructor, which was his very first teach-
ing job. After the teacher came back, Kenta had an opportunity to observe her
teaching. He then realized that he needed to gain more teaching experience to
become successful in teaching. Thus, in the second year, he decided to teach
part time at a private high school attached to a university. According to Kenta,
the students there were quite smart, and the majority went on to the univer-
sity without taking an entrance exam; therefore, he did not have to focus on
grammar teaching, but rather concentrated on how he could encourage them
to like English more, which he enjoyed very much.
After earning his master’s degree in TEFL, Kenta joined a private high school
attached to a college of music. There he thought he could focus on English lan-
guage teaching, and not on non-teaching duties such as guiding club activities5
because the students there were already busy practicing music. At this school,
there are two classes of 30 students in one grade, and the total number of faculty
at the high school is approximately ten (two full-time English teachers, including
Kenta). During the first focus group interview, Kenta expressed that teachers
there are very nice, and that he feels at home in that school. Many issues, such as
deciding on teaching materials, are left to each teacher’s discretion at this school,
as opposed to Masato who needs to use a government-authorized textbook.
Kenta’s initial concern and teacher beliefs

At the beginning of the study, Kenta found it difficult to handle the dichot-
omy that went on in the classroom. On one hand, some students were excel-
lent at playing music, but only music; they were told by their parents and
teachers to focus on practicing music; thus, these students did not take the
time to do other things, including learning English. On the other hand,
many students were hardworking in general; they could excel in music and
their studies at the same time. These students were of course very good at
English. Therefore, one concern he initially had was how he could accom-
modate the different levels of students’ competencies and motivation.
Kenta was also keen on teaching what he found interesting; he thought top-
ics and texts in government-authorized textbooks were always morally correct
and uninteresting. Thus, he ended up developing his own teaching materials:
I cannot teach well what I find uninteresting. Also, no matter how

interesting a reading text is, students have a preconceived idea about
textbook materials (that they are not interesting), so when I say we are
going to read a text in a textbook, they look unhappy. I don’t know
why, but they prefer to use the handouts that I develop. They are sort
of forced to buy a textbook with no choice. They read it because it is
there…. And (when I use my own materials), my students become more
motivated. Because I look happy when I teach by using my materials,
they understand I enjoy teaching them, which in turn motivates them.
[First FGI, 04/01/2018]
As the above quote shows, Kenta believed that the use of topics and con-
tents that he was interested in was of great importance. He mentioned that
he wanted to use something more “stimulating and culturally enriching”
[final interview, 02/12/2019] than bland content in typical high school
textbooks. If he is interested in what he teaches, he can then commit himself
to the quality of his teaching, which in turn will enhance students’ learning.
However, during the initial stage, he struggled with the choice of appropri-
ate materials and accommodating students’ different skill levels and interests.
Co-constructing meaning in a collaborative community of practice

As described so far, at the initial phase of the study, Masato and Kenta made
individual efforts in order to become a successful teacher. Their development
processes were influenced by various factors, such as the school culture, stu-
dents’ skill levels, teaching materials, and also their experiences beyond their
teaching contexts. In Masato’s case, his experience involved joining an over-
seas teacher training program, whereas Kenta’s case involved observing an
expert teacher at a middle school. Yet, they were still looking for a solution
to the lack of collegiality they experienced in their workplaces.
In the following section, I will illustrate the effects of building a collab-
orative community of practice among the three of us. The collaboration by
way of keeping a shared journal, as well as the focus group interviews, was
influential in that each one of us worked as an active listener for the others,
while they were reflecting on and reporting their teaching practice. When
receiving feedback, they also re-reflected on their thoughts and teaching
behaviors for further improvements.
The main characteristics of the collaborative and reflective process of their
professional development can be best described by what Kenta referred
to as being “a diagonal mentor.” According to Diagonal Mentoring™ by
Coach-Therapy (2017), it is a concept often used in psychology and busi-
ness fields, in which the relationship between one and one’s mentor with
relevant experience and expertise, neither vertical (e.g., an immediate boss
or supervisor) nor horizontal (e.g., classmates and peers), is valuable in pro-
fessional development. For example, during the first focus group interview,
while Masato was expressing his frustrations with the lack of collegiality
in his workplace, Kenta mentioned the role of a diagonal mentor. Masato
agreed with its importance and mentioned a science teacher who asked him
98 Chitose Asaoka
to jointly work and develop an exploratory learning element in a science
course with the use of ICT:
KENTA I read this in a book the other day, but one’s immediate boss cannot
necessarily be a good mentor. He exists somewhere else, more diago-
nally, and you interact with and learn a lot more from such a diagonal
mentor.
MASATO You’re right. It reminds me of a physics teacher who asked me to
team-teach his class in English. If he teaches in English by himself, what
he can do is simply to translate what he usually lectures into English,
so he decided to get me involved in lesson planning. By adding a per-
spective of an English language teacher, he was able to teach by asking
students to use basic vocabulary in lectures and interact with each other
in English, so a collaborative lesson preparation with him was a good
learning experience for me. [First FGI, 04/01/2018]
Although they were not yet sure then about their role as a diagonal mentor
for each other, this concept became very important in the process of their
professional development throughout this study.
Kenta’s case
What Kenta first found as a benefit of joining the collaborative community of
practice was keeping a record of his teaching, which clarified what worked well
and what did not in his class, which enabled him to decide on a better routine
in his teaching. As he stated in the first focus group interview, he liked to accu-
mulate routine tasks in a lesson, while he also recognized that creating routine
tasks limited his teaching. Thus, getting some feedback in the journal from
Masato and me helped him adopt a larger view. As an example of routine tasks,
in the first semester, Kenta explained that he used some texts that he found
interesting. With these texts, he experimented with various speaking tasks that
his students could do after reading them, such as a two-minute speaking task,
an oral summary task, and an interpreter training task. Among the three, he
particularly focused on the activity called the “oral summary”:
In this task, one student, or two students in a pair alternately, orally sum-
marises the content of the reading text. In summarising, they can look at
a list of important words and phrases I give, and when they do this in a
pair, they need to listen to the other carefully, which will result in good
learning. I feel this task is effective as students need to think about which
words to use and how to connect their sentences. [JE, 6/4/2018]
In the previous year, many students found this task challenging, so he

changed it early on in the school year of 2018 in two ways: modification
of the levels of the texts and addition of a keyword list that they could look
at while developing an oral summary. Since the students first read the text
in class, he thought it would work well as a post-reading task. However, he
soon noticed that the students’ utterances were not spontaneous; rather,
they were reproducing what they had learned. Particularly those at a lower
proficiency level tried to memorize the sentences in the text so that they
could make a summary exactly as in the texts.
During the second focus group interview, we discussed this point, and
the feedback from us helped Kenta break free from his limited routine tasks:
MASATO Your students have to use words in the list in a summary, right? But
if they memorise the text, they can make it without the list. So, what you
want your students to do is …
KENTA To develop an ability to connect words and phrases.
MASATO So are they supposed to reproduce the text? An accurate reproduc-
tion of it?
KENTA No, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same. If the content is similar,
it’s ok.
AUTHOR They don’t have to use the words in the list?
KENTA No, not really. Well, it’ll be nice if they can use some, but…
MASATO But since there are so many words in the list, it probably gives them
an impression you want them to use all of them and reproduce it accu-
rately. … But if they can retell the text using their own words, they don’t
have to use the list.
KENTA Yeah.
MASATO So, give them fewer hints, maybe a picture of Amy Cuddy6 and just
a few keywords that deliver her message…
KENTA I see. Like a graphic organiser you were talking about before.
MASATO Yes. Of course, there are various kinds of oral summary tasks, and
the one you are doing is feasible.
AUTHOR You could try various versions of this task.
MASATO Yeah. That may be good.
KENTA True. If students can use their own drawers in reproducing the text,
they don’t have to have the vocabulary list. [Second FGI, 09/08/2018]
Here, Kenta used the word hikidashi in Japanese, a drawer in English, by

which he meant “various ways to elicit solutions.” While having a “collab-
orative dialogue” (Swain, Kinnear & Steinman, 2015, p.42) regarding the
process of the oral summary task (in other words, reflecting together with
diagonal mentors in the same community of practice), Kenta came to the
conclusion that he should not stick to one particular way of doing the task,
and that he could experiment with various types of scaffolding so that his
students could make oral summaries more effectively.
In the journal during the second semester, Kenta often further mentioned
the oral summary tasks and described what he had tried out in his teaching.
For example, in late September, he stated that the difficulty level of the text
made it challenging for his students to orally summarize it. Then after read-
ing Masato’s journal entry about his trial of not assigning any homework
100 Chitose Asaoka
for preparation (especially looking up the meanings of unknown words in a
dictionary), Kenta wrote the following:
It takes a lot of efforts for students to prepare for a class. I mean, it is

meaningful to read a text in class, 98% of which is written in known
words. In fact, students probably learn more effectively from such texts,
especially for the purpose of reading between the lines or understand-
ing text organisation. When I was a student getting ready for entrance
exams, I thought reading difficult texts with many unknown words is
what it means to learn English, but now I think differently. I mentioned
in last week’s journal entry that because the text was quite difficult for
my students, I could do only reading tasks, but not spend much time on
speaking tasks. On further reflection, what I want to do in my teaching
is not only to develop their reading skills, but connect what they read to
what they can speak and write, so I decided to rewrite and simplify the
texts (for oral summary tasks). I used a revised text today, and it went
quite well. [JE, 10/4/2018]
As previously noted, Kenta strongly believed in the use of interesting topics

and teaching materials. What interests him matters in creating good quality
materials. He also believed that such materials would, in turn, encourage
learners to learn actively. However, through his interaction with other mem-
bers of the professional community, both in face-to-face and written forms,
Kenta came to realize that it is more important to encourage learners to use
the content for production, both in speaking and writing. Toward the end
of the second semester, he started to write more in the journal about a new
reproduction task in which he decreased the amount of vocabulary hints,
but instead offered more visual hints, such as pictures. The following journal
entry he made at the end of January clearly demonstrates his perspective shift
over the year due to participating in the collaborative community of practice:
In the first semester, I did what I call an oral summary task a lot. In the
second focus group interview, Masato pointed out that I should give
a higher degree of freedom for better teaching and so I changed from
what it was close to a “memorisation” task to a more spontaneous task.
Quite a few of my students said in their reflections that the revised task
was very effective. I now believe what is more important is my students
express their ideas using their words in English, even if it’s incorrect.
[JE, 01/31/2019]
Masato’s case
The lack of a climate of collaboration and collegiality in Masato’s work-
place was initially a major issue for him. He was desperate to find a space
to share what he really thinks; thus, he used this reflective and collaborative
community of practice as a trigger, “kikkake” in Japanese (Masato, second
FGI, 09/08/2018), to reflect on and improve his teaching.
Some of his other initial concerns included students’ mindset focused on
entrance exams and his colleagues’ mindset focused on the traditional gram-
mar-translation method as a result. In response to these issues, he expressed
his teaching belief in the value of content-based instruction, which was prob-
ably also influenced by Kenta, who had more freedom in terms of the choice
of teaching content:
Kenta can put emphasis on content-based teaching and enjoys teaching

in that manner, while I have to use a government-authorised textbook,
and I need to consider how I can make my students become interested
in the content of the texts, and how much time I can allow them to
spend on practicing the target language, not only reading the texts.
[Second FGI, 09/08/2018]
In the journal, he explained on September 28 that because the texts in the

textbook were quite difficult to read, he usually assigned some tasks before
class as homework: typically, looking up unknown vocabulary words, answer-
ing comprehension questions, and translating difficult sentences into Japa-
nese. However, he noticed that those who were good at English understood
most of the content of the texts by working on their homework by themselves.
Thus, these students became bored when listening to his lengthy explanations
in class. In contrast, those who were less proficient did not understand the
content well while working on the assignments, and in class, their incomplete
understanding of the content did not help them follow his instructions. What
is worse, because he needed to spend a great deal of class time on explaining
the vocabulary, grammatical structures, and content of the texts, there was
not much time left for practicing the language in class. Thus, Masato decided
to ask his students not to do any preparation for his classes at all. He thought
that by not preparing, all of his students could start anew and would listen
more carefully to his instructions. In class, he planned to increase the interac-
tion with his students while going over the important points of the texts only,
rather than sentence-by-sentence translations. He also planned various tasks
so that they could practice both input and output tasks in class. Moreover, he
assigned some homework for the students to review, instead of preview, the
lessons (e.g., reading aloud, writing a short essay, comprehension questions).
However, after a while, he soon noticed, to his surprise, that it was quite tough
for many of them to skim or scan the texts by sight or listen to the content of
the texts to grasp the main ideas without preparing in advance. Although he
thought that they were at quite high levels of English and could handle those
tasks, many of them turned out to have difficulty with the in-class tasks or had
to spend quite a bit of time on them in class.
After deliberation, Masato decided to undo his teaching process and assign
homework to prepare for his lessons. This meant that he had to go back to
the grammar-translation method, to some extent, as his students needed to
102 Chitose Asaoka
pass the university entrance exams in the end. In fact, this can be linked with
what he discussed earlier in the journal (September 8): a teacher must clearly
understand the expected learning outcomes first and then plan a lesson to
meet those specified purposes, also known as the so-called backward design.7
The following journal entry delineates his dilemma:
It is ideal to develop learners’ thinking skills through integrated skill

instruction. I’ve been seeking a way for this in classrooms, but when you
look at the current entrance exams, not many assess students’ produc-
tive skills, but reading skills. University entrance exams do not matter!
I should enhance their comprehensive abilities in English! This is what I
believe, but in reality, I need to deal with entrance exams. How I can
create a reading-based, and yet, interactive lesson is the challenge I want
to address. [JE, 10/19/2018]
Though Masato faced this dilemma, through interactions with Kenta, he

eventually learned that the desirable outcome for his students was to be able
to express their ideas, and that in order to do so, they needed to have ideas
about the content. This meant that they first needed to understand the text
in order to talk about it. Masato came to understand that it was important to
assist his students in a variety of ways, including focusing-on-form instruc-
tions so that they would have a good understanding of the input first.
As a result of participating in this project, Masato wrote a detailed journal
entry showing that his teaching beliefs had changed somewhat. Now he val-
ued receptive-skill training as well as productive-skill training:
Reading my previous journal entries, I can see that I disliked the traditional
grammar-translation method. But now, I think it could promote students’
English abilities if it’s used appropriately. At my school, reading-centered
teaching has been carried out, and I wanted to set aside time for students
to practice communicative skills, even in such teaching. But I eventually
noticed that reading and listening activities as pre-communicative tasks need
to be properly instructed in order to improve the communicative tasks of
speaking and writing. Without the chance of keeping this shared journal, I’d
have continued to focus more on communication-oriented teaching without
thinking carefully about my students’ needs and levels. Both of you gave me
a chance to notice a new perspective in my teaching. [JE, 01/30/2019]
Conclusion
The qualitative analysis of these two teachers’ journal entries and interviews
indicate that, even without common understanding of what makes teach-
ers successful in Japan, each participating teacher struggled to develop his
expertise in their own teaching contexts. Communicating and connecting
with each other, and sharing their perspectives and experiences in a commu-
nity of practice greatly facilitated this reflective process. Masato learned to
appreciate the value of training with input more, while Kenta gained a better
understanding regarding the value of production in the target language. In
both cases, the role of the diagonal mentor, somebody with similar profes-
sional experiences, was considered to be profoundly important. Yet, as Kenta
expressed in the final interview, there was “no direct personal stake” because
they taught at different schools. Masato, initially dissatisfied with the lack
of collegiality in his workplace, expressed his feelings toward having us as
diagonal mentors and working together as “kokoro-zuyoi” in Japanese, mean-
ing “encouraging” in English. He stated in the final interview that writing
journal entries in a relaxed way enabled him to have a dialogue with himself
as well. Similarly, Kenta expressed in the final interview that getting con-
nected was the key to joining this community. Masato’s journal entries and
comments worked as a hint to reflect on his teaching practice or belief and
made meaning of them as a professional teacher, which often resulted in new
insights and perspectives in his teaching.
The current study attempted to show how teachers develop their expertise in
an online and mutually supportive community of practice with the help of diago-
nal mentors. Similar to the argument in William and Ritter’s study (2010), their
shared inquiries of practice promoted a culture of reflection and helped them
avoid solipsism. Without stakeholders’ participation, they felt comfortable and
free to share their own voices, whereas their professional expertise was shaped
by diagonal mentorship in the collaborative community of practice for teachers,
with comments and feedback from near-peer professionals (Bulte, Betts, Garner
& Durning, 2007) who shared similar concerns and experiences.
As Bullough and Pinnegar (2001) rightly point out, through reflective
practice, teachers improve their learning situation not only for themselves,
but also for others in the same community of practice. Masato mentioned in
the final interview,
A successful teacher is in fact very near you, not just those who give
lectures in workshops. It is a huge shame that we don’t have an oppor-
tunity to learn that in my workplace, and also I feel more strongly than
before that I want to do something about this situation at my workplace.
Thus, the next step for them in their professional development was to expand
and extend the community of practice to their own workplaces.
The rich descriptions of these two EFL teachers’ struggles suggest that the
significance of collegiality and good communication with colleagues should be
given more emphasis in professional development in Japan. Teachers need to
interact with others, which will help them more constructively reflect on their
own teaching practice and expertise. In particular, mentors in each teaching
context and beyond should not be underestimated in the process of continuous
professional development. These two teachers’ professional learning journeys
also contribute to the field of professional development involving teachers in
different sociocultural settings beyond the Japanese context. With appropriate
and adequate support by others, teachers can learn to develop their agency
and become more confident professionals on their own. This will, in turn, help
104 Chitose Asaoka
teachers in terms of educating their students and promoting higher levels of
learning and teaching (Coach-therapy, 2018; Whitehead, 1993).
Notes
1 In the academic year of 2019, the core curriculum of prospective secondary
school EFL teachers was announced for the first time by MEXT, which provides
only a finite list of competences and skills necessary for them to attain. (https://
www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/shingi/chousa/shotou/126/shiryo/__icsFiles/
afieldfile/2017/04/12/1384154_3.PDF)
2 In Japan, public schoolteachers usually transfer to different schools every four
or five years.
3 According to Asaoka (2019), ALTs are native English-speaking teachers hired
through the Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme on a contractual basis
without a teaching certificate in Japan.
4 Hereafter, FGI refers to a focus group interview, and JE to a journal entry.
5 In Japan, teachers are responsible for every aspect of student life in school,
including the supervision of extracurricular club activities (Asaoka, 2019).
6 Amy Cuddy is a social psychologist and a TED speaker. Kenta used her TED
Talk speech as a base for creating his teaching material.
7 Backward design was one of the pedagogical concepts he learned in the summer
intensive programme for professional development in Hawai’i.
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6 Looking back with pride—
looking forward in hope
The narratives of a transformative teacher
Fatma Gümüşok
Introduction
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
(Dickens, 1859, p. 3)
In this well-known first sentence of the novel A Tale Of Two Cities which is
a narration of the lives of people before and during the French Revolution,
Dickens (1859) emphasized that opposing viewpoints can be used to define
the same situation with the aim of underlining its contradictions and con-
troversies. Such opposition can be found in the conceptualization of being
a language teacher today. The greatest amount of effort is being made for
teacher improvement in history; yet, teacher roles and autonomy in schools
are getting more reduced and ignored through the standardization of cur-
ricula and testing (Giroux, 2002; McLaren, 2007).
The endeavors for teacher development highlight the significance of
teacher knowledge (Leung, 2009), teacher cognition (Borg, 2009), teacher
socialization/learning (Johnson, 2009), which all put teacher perspective
in the center of all efforts. On the other hand, applying political concepts
like accountability in teaching (Johnson, 2009), and administering a gov-
ernmentally controlled curriculum (Giroux, 2002; McLaren, 2007) limit
teachers’ roles in schools and compel them to perform their jobs in a quite
restricted manner. In such a complex and challenging period when the con-
cepts of teaching to the test and standards dominate (Karaman & Edling,
forthcoming), becoming a teacher has evolved into a demanding job. Teach-
ers need to perform more than managing the class and delivering the con-
tent; as some scholars note, they need to be socially, politically, and culturally
aware and active (Kaur, 2012; Kugelmass, 2000) if they want to stand out
in teaching. In other words, releasing from the confinement of the technical
aspects of teaching and working on the ways of becoming a socially engaged
teacher who is responsive to the student concerns and societal progress can
be one form of success in teaching. Thus, investigating the school practices
of a transformative teacher is of great importance since transformative teach-
ers are aware of the problems posed by each stakeholder in education thanks
to their thorough critical reflections. Besides, they are also able to bring
a critical stance to their teaching and school lives, question all schooling
practices, raise awareness on equity and social justice, and contribute to the
development of society. Hence, such teachers’ accounts are likely to present
the portraits of successful caring teachers.
In this study, I scrutinized how Nergiz, an English as a Foreign Language
(EFL) teacher in Turkey, developed her identity as a transformative teacher.
Nergiz is known as a successful teacher among her colleagues since she is
able to build successful communication with learners, parents, and adminis-
trators; she is dedicated to her profession; she believes in the transformative
power of teaching; she has acknowledged the importance of students’ home
lives and has led projects for the improvement of her community. In that
sense, exploring narratives of her school life carries the utmost significance
to inspire the teaching community. By briefly describing the characteristics
of transformative teachers and the notion of professional identity, this quali-
tative narrative inquiry addresses the following research questions:
1. How does a transformative EFL teacher’s professional identity emerge

through her schooling experiences?
2. How does a transformative teacher enact her professional identity in her
school life?
Who is a transformative teacher?

The concept of transformative teachers is informed by Transformative Edu-
cation (TE). This school of thought addresses the issues of social justice,
equity, and change in society and proposes that schooling contributes to
the inequalities and injustices practiced in society every day (Akbari, 2008).
Although there are arguments that TE is “too abstract, theoretical, and
couched in exclusionary language [in which] many theorists have failed in
their moral obligation to make their ideas fully accessible to others, especially
practicing teachers” (Johnson, 2009, as cited in Barnawi, 2010, p. 108), dif-
ferent theorists emphasize different characteristics of transformative teachers.
The concept overall heavily draws on John Dewey’s progressivism and Paulo
Freire’s liberatory educational philosophy (McLaren, 2007; Wink, 2005).
Dewey’s call for integrating students’ daily experiences into classroom teach-
ing guides transformative educators in curriculum design. Freire’s conceptu-
alization of teaching as problem posing in which teachers and students learn
simultaneously and critically co-investigate the problem through interaction
(Shim, 2008) manifests the significance of dialogue for transformative teach-
ers. He envisaged dialogue as an indispensable characteristic of a transform-
ative teacher for action-oriented cooperative learning. Wink (2005) defines
dialogue with emphasis on its collaborative function for emancipatory trans-
formation: “Dialogue is change-agent chatter. Dialogue is talk that changes us
108 Fatma Gümüşok
or our context…. It can move people to wonderful new levels of knowledge;
it can transform relations; it can change things” (pp. 41–42).
On the other hand, Giroux (1988) defines transformative teachers as
transformative intellectuals who are “exhibiting a preferential concern for the
suffering and struggles of the disadvantaged and oppressed” (p. 175). This
description emphasizes that the problems of disempowered people should be
of interest to teachers. Giroux (2002) further elaborates on transformative
intellectuals as cognizant of the non-neutral aspect of curricula, which repre-
sent the values of dominant groups; thereby, he underscores teachers’ ability
to ask critical questions for what and how they teach.
Similarly, McLaren (1988) also employs the term transformative intellectuals
for teachers. He expands their qualities by suggesting that transformative
teachers should see teaching as an emancipatory practice and contribute
to the rehabilitation process of the community through democratic values,
that is, social justice and equality. In addition, McLaren (2007) argues that
transformative teachers cannot empower students, but they can provide the
ideal conditions through which learners can gain and practice empowerment.
As Wink (2005) discusses, transformative teachers conceptualized by both
Giroux and McLaren should have hope for the future and always feel “the
hidden ‘Yes, we can message’” (p. 110).
To become transformative intellectuals, teachers, firstly, need to be willing
for critically investigating, articulating, negotiating, and revising their beliefs
about themselves, their students, and the larger school community (Servage,
2008). Consequently, they provide all learners with abundant learning
opportunities for critical thinking by caring for them (Kaur, 2012). Addi-
tionally, teachers build relationships with students and their parents as well as
the community by getting further familiarized with their lives, valuing their
experiences and opinions reflected in the classroom so that they can utilize
learners’ stories in teaching (Kaur, 2012). In this way, teachers can discuss
community problems (i.e., injustices and inequalities) with their learners,
and consequently learners also question their beliefs and practices. Hopefully,
based on their questioning, they adopt a critical stance toward the general
societal, economic, and cultural issues (Hanson, 2013). Therefore, teachers
enable learners to transform firstly themselves, and secondly communities.
However, this is not a one-way procedure. Teachers also undergo the process
of learning and transformation with students (Servage, 2008). Teachers can
achieve this through dialogue and trust in learners (Freire, 1998). To this
end, reflection is likely to emerge in every step to be transformative (Cran-
ton, 2006; Hanson, 2013). One’s realizing her own teaching beliefs and
questioning the role of social, economic, and cultural problems within teach-
ing, and accordingly forming critical lenses and acting upon them require
critical reflection (Hanson, 2013).
Another characteristic of transformative teachers is their internalization of the
fact that “transformation comes in all sizes” (Shor, 1992, as cited in Greenman
& Dieckmann, 2004, p. 241). They appreciate even the slightest change; oth-
erwise, they may overlook the potential power of any activity (Greenman &
Dieckmann, 2004). Transformative teachers would rather look for every oppor-
tunity for transformation regardless of the size of its effect. Like other character-
istics, this is also very challenging to perform. Actually, being transformative is an
arduous task. Teachers become successful when they extend the relational aspect
of teaching (commonly considered between students and teachers) to the larger
community and develop higher-order thinking (i.e., critical) in students and
themselves. Therefore, their identity should also support the premises of TE.
What is professional identity?

Within the concept of being a transformative teacher, studying teachers’ pro-
fessional identity is complementary since their origins relate to the teachers’
positioning within the larger society, and their interactions with other people
(Sutherland, Howard, & Markauskaite, 2010). Teacher identity, explored in
terms of “psychological processes” in the past, has been studied within “con-
textualized social processes” recently with the influence of sociocultural theory
(Miller, 2009, p. 173). As a construct, it is challenging to define teachers’
professional identity (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013); nevertheless, it possesses certain
characteristics. Rodgers and Scott (2008) raise four underlying assumptions:
1 identity is dependent upon and formed within multiple contexts which

bring social, cultural, political, and historical forces to bear upon that
formation;
2 identity is formed in relationship with others and involves emotions;
3 identity is shifting, unstable, and multiple; and
4 identity involves the construction and reconstruction of meaning
through stories over time. (p. 733)
Identity as contextual implies that schools, family, religion, institutions, cur-

riculum, and teaching policies all influence professional identity formation
(Miller, 2009; Rodgers & Scott, 2008). Identity as relational and emotional
suggests that identity is constructed through teachers’ relationships with stu-
dents, other teachers, and parents, and those relationships inevitably require
some emotions. These relations help teachers review themselves from other
people’s perspectives (Sutherland et al., 2010). Identity as shifting and mul-
tiple underlines its changing nature. Identity is always in the process of reoc-
curring rather than being fixed and stable (Rodgers & Scott, 2008). Yet, in its
fragmented nature, one can still find interpretations and make sense of events
by narrative practices thanks to identity as storied (Rodgers & Scott, 2008).
Why do we need a study on the narratives of a transformative

teacher?
Globally, there is a growing interest in preparing teachers as transformative
professionals rather than technicians. For instance, studies have focused on
finding out how teacher education programs help student teachers become
transformative teachers (Abednia, 2012; Abednia & Izadinia, 2012; Barnawi,
2010; Greenman & Dieckmann, 2004; Morgan, 2009). On the other hand,
the study I present in this chapter aims to unearth the life story of a successful
teacher who can be described as transformative in her local school context. She
succeeds in encouraging girls to continue their schooling, creating awareness
on environmental issues, and helping learners become self-critical. Her expe-
riences can offer a broader perspective of both the challenges and rewards of
being a transformative teacher in secondary school in Turkey.
In this study, professional identity is regarded as “a tool through which
individuals make sense of themselves in relation to contexts and other
people” (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013, p. 121). Such a view entails teachers’
own understanding of what kind of a teacher they are, how they become
a teacher, and the combination of social and professional perspectives of
being a teacher (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). Further utilizing
the concept identity as storied, the study tries to examine how a teacher
forms her professional identity and how she enacts her identity in her
school life.
How did I conduct this study?

This study was designed as qualitative narrative inquiry since the aim was
to present a particular transformative teacher’s learning to teach with ref-
erences to the very early stages of her life. As for the interpretative frame-
work, critical theory was selected. According to Agger (1991, as cited in
Creswell, 2013), research design in a critical theory approach can be cat-
egorized into two ways: methodological, in which the researcher aims to
transform the lives of the participants; or substantive, in the theoretical
conceptualization or the topics of investigation. Since this study presents
the narrative story of a transformative teacher, critical theory manifests
itself as substantive.
Narrative inquiry as a method is based on Connelly and Clandinin’s
(1990) notion that “education is the construction and reconstruction of
personal and social stories; teachers and learners are storytellers and char-
acters in their own and other’s stories” (p. 2). In narrative studies, life
is seen not only as a sequence of fragmented events, but as a continuity
of sense-making processes (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013), which suggests that
newly occurred events become meaningful when they are interpreted with
references to the previous stories (Croker, 2009). Employing narrative as a
method reveals the complex process of learning to teach (Schultz & Rav-
itch, 2013) and the development of teacher identity (Miller, 2009).
As a data collection tool, semi-structured interviews were carried out since
they capture participants’ lived experiences and their meaning-making pro-
cesses (Seidman, 2006). Within the three-interview-series (Seidman, 2006),
the teacher elaborated on her past lived stories until the point she started
teaching, the details of her current practices, and the meanings of her expe-
riences, respectively. With regard to data analysis, the narrative stories were
analyzed for what the participant said. In other words, thematic analysis was
conducted (Creswell, 2013). Based on inductive interpretation by making
meaningful inferences, I identified themes. For the validation of interpreta-
tions, member checking was utilized (Creswell, 2013). I sent the interpreta-
tion of the interviews to the participant. She confirmed the representation of
the narrated events.
Who is this transformative teacher? & My role as a researcher

For this study, the participant was selected through purposeful sampling
(Creswell, 2013), since she was known as an outstanding teacher among
her students and a group of researchers. When I, as a researcher, asked my
colleagues whether they had any acquaintances with a successful caring
teacher, they immediately suggested me to work with Nergiz, the partic-
ipant in this study. They reported that Nergiz had excellent relationships
with her students, and considering the neighborhood in which her school,
a middle school, was situated; she had accomplished great things. The
school neighborhood, a slum area, was mainly populated by lower soci-
oeconomic status (SES) families with a lesser degree of attention to their
children’s education. Actually, I knew Nergiz as a graduate student. Based
on this acquaintance, I called her, explained the scope of my study, and
kindly asked her to participate. She agreed to cooperate by adding that
she was appointed to another school recently, a vocational single-sex high
school, to which she was getting accustomed. Nergiz was an EFL teacher
in Turkey. She worked in state schools for ten years, nine years in mid-
dle schools, and nearly one year in a high school. She was 33 years old.
Although I carried out interviews in late 2014, I am still in touch with her;
we occasionally meet and discuss our graduate studies. She recently started
to teach in a different Anatolian high school. She is now a doctoral student
and maintains her efforts to improve the conditions of the disadvantaged
students (i.e., visually impaired students) in her new school.
To conduct the first interview, I visited her school. I witnessed her
interactions with students, teachers, and parents. Additionally, her colleagues
wanted to have a conversation with me about their students. Thus, at specific
points, I added my own observation as endnotes. During data collection
and analysis, I followed the ethical guidelines of the institute, informed
Nergiz about the purpose and methodology of the study, and assigned her
a pseudonym.
How did this transformative EFL teacher’s professional identity

emerge?
There were three distinct points in Nergiz’s life to help her engage with
the transformation of her students and community. These were having
a similar background with students, becoming a leader, and having a
self-transformational experience which led her to become a teacher.
Having a similar background with students
Nergiz grew up in a slum area in central Turkey. She described her family as “not
rich, not middle but close to poor.” Her mother was a housewife; her father
was a civil servant, and she had three siblings. She reported that she received no
academic help from her family because her mother was illiterate and her father
had to work all the time to cover the expense of four children. She could not
help saying “if my parents had encouraged me, I could have passed it but they
were not conscious about the importance of the exam… I didn’t even have a
special book” for the exam, which was administered at the end of middle school
to place students to different types of high schools like Anatolian high schools or
science high schools. Students of these types of schools were mostly from higher
SES communities because high-SES parents, who were aware of the impor-
tance of education for their children to keep their status in the society, spent a
vast amount of money on preparation for the exam (i.e., private tutoring). She
thought that she would have received a better education if her parents had been
more aware. When she became a teacher, she made a special effort to keep in
touch with parents to inform them about every educational event in the school
and raise consciousness regarding the significance of those events so that she
could successfully serve her students through parent involvement.1
As for her family and relatives, Nergiz was aware that no person had
studied at university in her immediate environment. Most of her middle-
school friends “got married at a very early age and gave birth.… The boys,
most of them didn’t go to high school.” She was the first woman in her
neighborhood who earned a bachelor’s degree. She regarded her study as
an accomplishment, and in teaching students from lower SES families, she
made use of her life as a success story to motivate them. She stated:
I believe I can impress students with my upbringing. I was also raised

in a poor area. I always worked in part-time jobs every summer.… I
achieved the things that I wanted, I try to give the message that “OK,
you see me, you can also achieve what you want.”
Becoming a leader
In her high school, Nergiz could not bear injustices and became one of those
“loud students.” In one of the English courses, she got “frustrated” by the
teacher’s methodology. In her opinion, the teacher did not make an effort to
teach; she just read questions, and students answered them. One day she stood
up and said: “Miss Ayşe, we are doing only the tests. Let’s do something dif-
ferent.” The teacher did not change her methods but thanks to this event, her
friends started to call her braveheart since they did not dare to talk to the teacher.
Similarly, since Nergiz studied in a public school, there were specific dress
codes. The school administration compelled girls to wear white stockings. Since
white stockings got dirty quickly, she had to have quite a lot of pairs. Yet, she
could not afford them, so she talked to the administration. At that point, she did
not say she could not afford them but said: “Please think about us, maybe I have
a few but my friends don’t have…. So we should wear dark-colored stockings,
please listen to us.” She achieved her aim, and they started to wear black stock-
ings. These leadership moments formed a basis for her formation as a successful
caring teacher who aims for optimizing her students’ well-being.
Having a self-transformational experience

which enabled her to become a teacher
Until the high school years, Nergiz, who was always successful in her lessons,
“wasn’t impressed” by her teachers. Most of her teachers were neither caring
nor encouraging, which caused her not to think of teaching as a desirable
profession for her. She said: “Some of my friends had learning disabilities.
My teacher was very cruel to them, not physically but verbally. She used to
humiliate them saying ‘are you stupid?’... I met her years later but I didn’t
even talk to her.” She wanted to be a computer engineer back then.
Nergiz met her inspiring teacher in high school. Thanks to this teacher,
she dreamed about studying at university. She believed that her teacher was
the best because she took them to the university campus and invited her old
students to relax Nergiz and her friends before the university entrance exam.
She even invited a native speaker to the class, and “improved [their] person-
alities and [their] English”. In the college, Nergiz studied Linguistics. She
did not want to be a teacher because she thought that “teaching the same
thing again and again each year must be a boring job.” Yet, in her sophomore
year she signed up for a volunteer tutoring program in which undergraduate
students taught their major subject to “poor students” in rural areas. Within
this program, she went to a school every Sunday for a year. The next year,
this program was not organized. She asked for its reopening many times. As
a result of her endless efforts, the program restarted, and she became the
coordinator. She taught English to those students one more year. Through
this program, she said: “I realized that I love teaching. I can be helpful
for the students who started unluckily in life but can change it through us.
This is a great feeling; you can change students’ lives.” She interpreted that
touching students’ lives is a must for becoming a successful teacher.
She described those as “students who didn’t know anybody studying at
university or from different environments. They didn’t even go to Kızılay
or Ulus.”2 She took those students to her university, and let them meet peo-
ple on the campus. Through this program, she became one of the founders
of an environmental organization. She brought experts on environmental
issues to that school and raised students’ awareness. At the end of her
services, she collected feedback from those students. One student wrote:
“You should be a teacher. You are the one who was created for this job.”
After this community service-like experience, Nergiz’s conceptualization of
teaching changed; now, she considered teaching transformative, not dull.
In her senior year, she attended the teaching certificate program to help
more children through teaching. Upon graduation, she became an English
language teacher in a middle school in a northwestern city in Turkey.
How did this transformative teacher enact her professional

identity in her school life?
This transformative teacher’s professional identity informed her teaching life
in three prominent ways: 1) she had a strong sense of work ethics, 2) she had
working relationships with students, colleagues, administrators, and parents
through effective communication, and 3) she saw teaching as a transforma-
tive and affective practice.
Having a strong sense of work ethics

From the very first moment of professional teaching, Nergiz paid the
utmost attention to certain concepts like leaving her personal problems
outside the classroom, dedication to tasks such as being prepared, starting the
lessons on time, maintaining professional development, and retaining opti-
mism for her students’ future. For instance, when she first started teaching,
Nergiz had difficulties in balancing work and personal commitments. She
reflected the problems she had with her then-boyfriend/now-husband
to her classes. After one year of teaching, she managed it. She learned
“taking off one hat and putting another” while entering a classroom. She
realized that she was providing a service for the country. She believed
that she had to perform her job in the best way because the country, like a
mother, nourished her and gave her a chance to be a free woman. Upon a
decade of teaching, she could easily handle these problems. She arranged
her teaching duties in a balance. For instance, she prepared her tasks at
night after her son went to sleep. Nergiz’s sensitivity to work ethics and
her sound willingness to do her best in teaching drove her to be a prob-
lem solver and maximize her energy and efforts even in a hectic schedule.
Nergiz was always dedicated to her tasks throughout her teaching career.
Rather than doing a minimum amount of job or taking things easy to
“give the impression that she would be working,” she actually maximized
her performance. Her strong dedication even put her at odds with her
colleagues; she felt that just because she was doing her job as in the way
she should, she was alienated from her colleagues who spared minimum
efforts:
As a rule-oriented person, I do my jobs properly…. I am trying to pre-

pare worksheets and games, be in my classes on time, listen to parents
attentively, and find solutions to their problems. As other teachers don’t
take their jobs seriously or do such things, they ask “why are you doing
these?” When you step out of the circle, what you do becomes annoying.
For instance, they don’t want to have classes in the last two weeks of the
academic year but I do. I become alienated as if I were a nerd.
To integrate students’ perspective into her teaching, she asked students
to write feedback about her lessons at the end of each semester so that she
could reflect on her teaching. As a result of her reflection, she could make
autonomous decisions like not following the curriculum as she should.
Since she aimed to improve her students’ language skills meticulously,
she took charge and either omitted or added the parts in the syllabus she
used: “This term we have six units, but I am still in the third. I try to do
writing, listening, speaking activities in this limited time. That’s why I
can’t cover the curriculum, what is expected from us.”
Nergiz had never experienced burnout, although she sometimes felt
discouraged by other teachers’ statements. She underlined that most of
the teachers always complained about student laziness and failure. When
she said to her colleagues: “Please don’t complain about students, and
let’s not give up hope for their bright future,” they produced counter-ar-
guments like “after you have taught for twenty years, we’ll see you. You
are a novice teacher.” She refused to believe their remarks. She com-
pleted ten years in this profession and said: “There are many reasons to
be demotivated, but I believe I can achieve more than I do now and I
have motivation for this.”3 Maintaining her educational aspirations for
students despite her colleagues’ discouraging remarks strengthened her
growth as a successful and caring teacher.
Nergiz’s hope for her students was in contrast with the teachers’ pes-
simistic attitudes. She stated: “If there is no hope, there is nothing.”
Her plans for “sending students abroad through Erasmus-type projects
at the high school level or initiating projects through which girls can earn
money over their craft so that they can do more real-life like practices”
kept her hope always fresh and alive. The school she worked for was a sin-
gle-sex vocational high school. The students were from low-SES families.
Their future plans were shaped accordingly. Her aim to broaden their
visions reinforced her hope. She tried to “help those students to achieve
their full potential in a male-dominated society.” In the same way, her
opinion of female students as an agency of change in society further sup-
ported her hope: “As females, they have tremendous power to change the
future of the country let alone the changes they will bring about through
their jobs.” Besides, her hope was not baseless. She was realistic: “I know
I cannot touch the lives of 30 students out of 33 but even if only one
student makes a difference, it is a gain.”
Having working relationships through effective communication

Nergiz’s strong communication skills assisted her in establishing a rapport
with students, colleagues, administrators, and parents. She refined her
relationships through her non-judgmental stance and problem-solving
skills. She believed in the positive consequences of cooperative relationships
between administration and teachers. Her faith in transparent communication
enabled her to resist against a possible practice of inequality the administration
wanted her to partake in. When the administrator is considered superior
to teachers in the school hierarchy, teachers might be expected to follow
every instruction an administrator gives. However, when Nergiz found the
administrator’s order unfair, she could not remain silent and spoke out,
basing her action on the benefits of direct communication:
If teachers and administrators try to understand each other without

judging, they can solve problems. For instance, I was going to take my
students on a field trip. My administrator told me that I needed to col-
lect school security fees unrelated to the trip if I wanted to take the stu-
dents. Right at that moment, I showed my reaction. Instead of gossiping
about him, I directly said what I wanted to him.
She believed that having a non-judgmental attitude was the key to her
successful communication with the parents: “I don’t judge their beliefs or
appearances.” She appreciated frankness and mutual respect. Therefore, par-
ents frequently consulted her about their children’s problems. For instance,
she referred to one student and his parent from the middle school where she
worked previously. Her openness to communication further supported her
transformative teacher identity since one student could continue to study
thanks to her efforts:
I visit parents or they reach me…. One of my students dropped out of

school. One day, his mother called me and told that the boy was working
in the graveyard. I went to the graveyard for that student and tried to
persuade him to come back to school. And he did come. I believed that
I touched his life. He didn’t forget me. Two years after his graduation,
he sent me a present.
Seeing teaching as a both transformative and affective practice

After the volunteer tutoring program, Nergiz used the word love for her
profession. Her definition of teaching involved affective terms: “I like my
job, I am proud of it.”, “A person who really loves the job says I am a
teacher, and I am a teacher.”, or “My conscience told me to be a teacher
as my friends and students did. I was created for teaching. This is the job
I should do until my last breath.”
Nergiz’s concept of teaching as transformative focused on three issues:
enabling female students to continue their education, helping learners to be
self-critical, and raising awareness on environmental issues. She paid atten-
tion to students’ family lives in her lessons. In many ways, she became a
detective for solving student problems. The students shared their problems
with her, particularly the girls. In her lessons, she addressed the gender ineq-
uity reproduced in society. Her students acknowledged her concern for the
education of female students for the future of the country. Five students
from the middle school with such a problem consulted Nergiz. By fostering
teacher-parent collaboration, she maintained girls’ attendance at the school,
and even financially supported them:
I had students whose parents forced them to drop school. They told me
about this. I visited their parents, tried to persuade them to send their
daughters to school. I told them: “This is the girls’ right as it is the boys’.
If you take her out, she will question your decision and later you will be
regretful.” I mainly talked to their mothers; my speech really impressed
them, and then they convinced fathers. Finally, they said “OK”…. One
of the fathers refused to bear school expenses saying: “If she goes back
to school, you have to pay for it because I won’t.”
In her teaching, Nergiz touched upon the significance of being self-critical.

She believed that young learners would be overwhelmed by the sense of
hopelessness when they discussed serious topics like wars or injustices since
they could not take responsibility for these issues. At these ages, she aimed
to teach how to become self-critical:
I try to raise awareness on becoming critical; what I mean by having a

critical approach is when people are involved, things can be problematic.
At this point, one has to do self-reflection, then she can criticize others.
So, I try to be a model for that…. When I make a mistake, I say “I am
sorry, this is my mistake.”
Nergiz introduced herself as an activist on environmental issues. She

integrated her awareness into teaching. She proudly underscored that her
students, the parents, as well as her colleagues were transformed. They
became aware; they took actions and initiated projects within the community.
She started projects with an association.4 Her school was rewarded for their
efforts. With her students, she organized a demonstration called “an hour
without water” in which all students, teachers, and the staff neither drank
water nor used bathrooms for one hour. They organized a protest-like
march in the neighborhood. They went to the parents’ houses and invited
them to join the march. They administered water-saving questionnaires
and wrote letters to the mayor to draw attention. Moreover, her colleagues
supported her projects. For instance, a history teacher made a presentation
on the environmental practices in the Ottoman era. They designed and built
recycling bins. The parents saved leftover oil and dead batteries. She said:
“One of my students told me that not only his mother but also his neighbor
saved oil.” As these significant events in Nergiz’s school life demonstrated,
her endeavors on environmental issues in the community were appreciated.
Not only her students but also the parents and her colleagues benefitted from
and contributed to these awareness-raising activities. Her transformative
teacher identity both yielded and was strengthened by these Nergiz-led
activities, through which the school contributed to the transformation of the
community. Such community-based transformative practices reinforced her
successful teacher image.
Conclusion: What can be concluded from this transformative

teacher’s stories?
It seems that becoming a teacher, particularly a transformative teacher is a very
challenging, multi-faceted process that entails intellectual, social, moral, and
emotional aspects (Graham & Phelps, 2003). Yet, this teacher’s having a simi-
lar background with learners and experiencing self-transformation contributed
to her becoming process. Growing up in a slum area in a relatively low-SES
family was a resource for Nergiz, which enabled her to build a strong rapport
with students. She utilized her life story for motivating students and solving
their familial problems. Her friends getting married at an early age may be one
of the stimulating reasons for her sensitivity to girls’ education rights.
Having leadership qualities is also associated with the process of becoming
a transformative teacher (Collay, 2014). One’s understanding of her lived
experiences promotes better negotiations with the world and leads to social
transformation (McLaren, 2007). Besides, integrating social circumstances
into self-understanding, which is a form of critical reflection (Collay, 2014),
further strengthens the transformation. Nergiz’s talking to the administra-
tion about the color of stockings, and her initiative role in environmental
projects reinforced her transformative identity. Her leadership indicated her
successful teaching which aims for not only student academic achievement
but also the betterment of both the student and local communities.
Nergiz’s community service in the volunteer tutoring program facilitated
her own transformative learning. As Brooks (2000, as cited in Collay, 2014)
states, transformative learning yields “some type of fundamental change in the
learners’ sense of themselves, their worldviews, their understanding of their
pasts, and their orientation to the future” (p. 781). Her conceptualization of
teaching as boring evolved into transformative, “changing students’ lives.”
Her future plans immediately altered and she joined the teaching certificate
program. Nergiz’s efforts to enable those students from the volunteer tutor-
ing program to visit the university, see the campus life, and educate them in
environmental issues can be regarded as the initiation of “the process through
which students learn to critically appropriate knowledge existing outside their
immediate experience in order to broaden their understanding of themselves,
the world, and the possibilities for transforming the taken-for-granted assump-
tions about the way we live” (McLaren, 2007, p. 214). With regard to her
attempts to preserve the environment, organizing public advocacy events and
writing letters to the parents and the mayor contributed to “the restoration of
a community of shared progressive values” (McLaren, 1988, p. VXIII).
Commitment, motivation, and job satisfaction as the indicators of teacher
professional identity (Canrinus, Helms-Lorenz, Beijaard, Buitink, & Hofman,
2012) played a significant role in Nergiz’s growing as a successful transform-
ative teacher. Her strong commitment to the job as demonstrated by having
classes on time and at the end of the school year, her motivation as a teacher
with a great capacity to do further, and her satisfaction from teaching as a
source of “energy” were the building blocks of her identity. In addition, her
affective commitment to the job with huge emphasis on “loving teaching and
students” constituted a strong pillar of her identity. As Lanas and Kiilakoski
(2013) suggest, emotions like love also lead to pedagogical transformation. In
this sense, Freire (1998) regards teachers’ love as armed love and lovingness,
which is the core meaning of teachers’ work. Teachers should love not only
their students but also the very process of teaching so that they can bear all
the injustices and difficulties faced during teaching (Freire, 1998). This might
be the reason why Nergiz lived up to her ideal teaching duties (i.e., doing
environmental projects, involving parents) and kept her motivation despite her
colleagues’ disapproving and pessimistic comments.
Nergiz’s relationships with students, teachers, administrators, and parents
were based on dialogue. Her emphasis on listening to people without judg-
ing echoed Friere’s (1998) conceptualization of a progressive teacher with
humility: “Listening to all that come to us, regardless of their intellectual
level, is a human duty and reveals an identification with democracy and not
with elitism” (p. 39). Girls’ sharing their education problems, or parents’
consulting her for help (i.e., going to the graveyard) were the result of her
openness to dialogue. Additionally, her collecting feedback from students for
professional improvement can be considered within dialogue since “open-
ness is a prerequisite for dialogical education” (Abednia & Izadinia, 2012,
p. 349). Nergiz’s emphasis on dialogue can also be interpreted as a result of
her transformation. In high school years, she judged one teacher’s methods
and showed her reaction by shouting at the teacher in front of all classroom,
which might be considered disrespectful. However, now as a teacher with
ten years of experience, she highlighted the importance of communication
and a non-judgmental stance. In that sense, one can see that transformative
teachers not only transform students, schools or communities but also go
through transformation on their own (Servage, 2008).
This narrative inquiry aimed to explore how a transformative teacher
developed her professional identity and how she enacted her transformative
identity within the Turkish public school context. Drawing on her upbringing,
the teacher was capable of sympathizing with and motivating students
to accomplish a lot. A strong sense of work ethics enabled her to regulate
her school life and teaching. Change in her conceptualization of teaching
promoted her self-transformation, which formed the basis of transformations
she led. Regarding teaching as transformative, she assisted girls’ attendance
at school and increased awareness on environmental issues among students,
colleagues, and parents. Overall, the transformative teacher’s success derived
from her understanding the lives of her students, her openness to non-
judgmental dialogue, and caring for social relations with everyone involved in
education: students, colleagues, administrators, parents, and community. She
aimed for not only her students’ academic achievement but also their personal
development and moral stances in life, which further contributed to her
transformative efforts. All in all, her stories included numerous messages about
both the rewarding experiences and challenges of being a transformative teacher
via which teachers can reflect on their teaching accordingly. Each teaching
context is inherently unique; yet, it might be concluded that teachers’ refined
communication skills with humility and openness toward dialogue, aspirations
for societal improvements in addition to students’ academic achievements, and
leadership roles in the broader well-being of the community might assist them
to become successful practitioners in secondary education.
Notes
1 During my presence at her school, a few parents visited her upon her invitation.
She informed these parents about the new English study strategy she had recently
introduced to students. Through this strategy, 15 minutes campaign, learners
were asked to study English voluntarily for 15 minutes at home every day. They
could listen to music, watch TV series, do anything they would like, and it did not
necessarily have to be about their lessons. She asked parents’ help and requested
them to frequently ask their children whether they had studied for 15 minutes.
While doing this, she was gentle and attentive to the parents. First, she talked
about the students’ strengths. Then, she underlined her belief in students, and
their potential success if they took part in this campaign. In the end, the parents
told her that they were glad their daughters had a teacher like her.
2 The names of the places are particularly presented as it is to reflect the genuine
condition of the students. These represent the central neighborhoods (down-
town) in the capital city, Ankara.
3 When I was waiting for Nergiz in that high school, I saw teachers complaining,
too. Two teachers were teasing each other using a sarcastic language regarding
students’ success. One of the teachers told me that she had difficulties in keeping
students quiet and she had to say “be silent” or “shut up” most of the teaching
time, which left nearly no time for teaching mathematics.
4 TURÇEV (Türkiye Çevre Eğitim Vakfı/Foundation for Environmental
Education in Turkey)
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7 Understanding a teacher’s
professional identity through
pedagogical rhythm
Sören Högberg
Introduction
On one occasion when I enter Hannah’s classroom, she is sitting on one of
the front desks together with a 12-year old pupil. The two have their arms
wrapped around each other and are deeply involved in a quiet and intimate
conversation. Hannah notices my arrival but pays me no further attention. I
realize at once that whatever is going on between Hannah and the girl comes
first. I pass them quite closely; the desk they are sitting on is next to the door.
I find a chair at the back of the classroom and sit down. This is the environ-
ment where 30 pupils in grade 6 gather daily. I start to observe what is hap-
pening. Outdoors, in a small town in middle Sweden, the snow is melting.
It is almost impossible to spend some time outside without getting wet. Due
to these weather conditions, several pupils enter the classroom although it is
still their lunch break. I realize that all of the pupils entering and leaving the
classroom, passing back and forth and socializing with each other, are aware
that Hannah and the girl are having a private and intimate conversation. We
can all see that Hannah is comforting their classmate.
Normally, Hannah’s pupils are expected to spend their lunch break outside
but today neither Hannah nor one of her colleagues, who enters the class-
room for a short time, seems to want to uphold this rule. Everyone seems to
agree that weather conditions change how the rules should be applied. What
strikes me as a visitor in the classroom is that Hannah and the girl continue to
talk to each other in an intimate way under these rather messy circumstances.
Never during a period of almost ten minutes does anyone approach Hannah
or the girl in order to say or ask either of them something. I look at the clock
on the wall and I start wondering when the class is going to start. Some of the
children go to their desks and sit down, while others keep wandering around
and chatting. Everyone in the classroom seems to respect that Hannah and
their classmate need to end their talk before anything else can take place.
Then, suddenly, the two stop talking. The girl returns to her desk and
Hannah grabs some papers in order to start teaching. I—being the visiting
researcher—wonder if I have literally become a fly on the wall. Hannah and
her pupils start the class as if everything is just as usual.
124 Sören Högberg
In the following text, I will describe Hannah’s professional identity as a pri-
mary school teacher in the year 2019. I do this by using a conceptual frame-
work developed in a Deweyan tradition (Högberg, 2015) where I focus on
the pedagogical as well as the ethical intentions that simultaneously emerge in
educational settings. Thus, intentions are here understood as the aim of ongoing
activities which evolve as a result of the interactional processes that continuously
take place between Hannah and her pupils. Her narrative is, so to speak, both a
result of their intertwined actions and her thoughts about those actions.
Hence, the aim of the conducted case study is to describe Hannah’s teach-
ership—successful in terms of a clear professional identity. In this sense,
the work that I will present belongs to a relatively new research field which
Campbell (2008) has called “the ethics of teaching as a moral profession.”
Context, method, key concepts, and the rationale of the study

Hannah works as a teacher at a middle-sized primary school in a small city
in Sweden. Here, parents can apply to the school they want their children to
attend, but Hannah´s school is usually not one of these. Her primary school
is located in a lower income area with a multicultural character.
My decision to study Hannah is primarily based on her long experience
of teaching, but also her reputation as a colorful committed teacher, highly
respected by her pupils. I believe her career can enable the conditions neces-
sary to capture one teacher’s professional identity. Hannah radiates an enor-
mous amount of energy and passion for her work. She is now 60 and she
speaks quickly and intensely. However, my point of departure is that a vast
majority of teachers could have been chosen, since quality or successfulness
can be understood in many ways. I will present her narrative from a pragmatist
position. Hence, Hannah’s narrative is here understood in terms of actions; as
a result of all the interactional processes that she has been part of over the past
30 years. Most of this experience has been gained at the school where she is
now working.
I have tried to capture these processes by focusing on the dominant ped-
agogical as well as ethical intentions. I did this by observing the teaching
activities in her classroom on five occasions, each time for about two hours,
supplemented by several small talks with her. Thereafter, in order to gain a
broader sense of her experience of these interactional processes across the
whole of her educational career, I conducted two longer in-depth interviews
with her totaling 2 hours and 42 minutes.
During my observations, I took notes using an analytical scheme which
allowed different contents—themes of communication—to be discerned. These
themes were later analyzed, firstly in terms of short-term objectives, both explic-
itly outspoken as well as implicitly apparent through action, and secondly as
intentions that give the short-term objectives their meaning in relation to the
ongoing interaction. The only data I used were that gathered from the pupils
who had given me, along with their parents, written permission to observe them
in class. The interviews with Hannah took place outside formal school hours. I
Understanding a teacher's identity 125
used an interview guide that included questions such as: What would you say
characterizes your teaching? Can you identify reasons for such a description?
What do you want to happen while teaching? How do you prepare your lessons?
How do you relate to the curriculum? Of what importance is the choice of con-
tent? What would you say creates a good teaching situation? What has surprised
you over the years as a teacher? Can you describe situations when you for some
reason have shifted your intentions because of interactional processes? During
the interviews, I asked for clarification and at times, I tried to precis my interpre-
tations in order for Hannah to respond. The interviews were recorded and tran-
scribed. Hannah was given the opportunity to read and comment on all texts.
The moral dimension of teaching as the theoretical frame for the study empha-
sizes intention as a key concept for the analysis (Högberg, 2015). As mentioned,
moral is here understood as the intertwined ethical and pedagogical inten-
tions continuously emerging in educational settings (see Dewey, 1916). But,
all emerged intentions are also by nature linked to teachers’ overall ambitions
as well as to both their and their pupils’ more particular short-term objectives,
which are present in advance before everyone becomes involved in specific edu-
cational situations. So, what is here considered as emerged ethical and peda-
gogical intentions are the joint results of how both the teacher’s as well as the
pupils’ particular short-term objectives change, grow, and shift as a consequence
of classroom interaction in a continuous process. Over time, the process will
create certain patterns where some ethical and some pedagogical intentions will
come to dominate over others. The key concept for these kinds of patterns is
pedagogical rhythm, developed to distinguish differences in emerged short-term
objectives, simultaneously as well as over time, in order to gain a more nuanced
understanding of teachers’ work (Högberg, 2015).
Hence, the analytical process used here has emphasized what intentions, ethi-
cal as well as pedagogical, seem to appear more frequently than others. In order
to capture such patterns better, a longitudinal study might give a more accurate
answer to what kind of pedagogical rhythm characterizes Hannah’s teachership.
However, the way Hannah relates to the pedagogical rhythm that surrounds her
work becomes crucial for her professional identity as well as to how she presents
her narrative. As the chapter progresses, the concept of pedagogical rhythm will
be described and more clearly defined as we encounter moments from Hannah’s
teaching but, more importantly, as we listen to what Hannah herself has to say.
In one of the interviews, Hannah tells me that she is a good teacher. Her defi-
nition is based on nearly 30 years as a working teacher. It is a definition shaped
by an emerged morality and aligned with Dewey’s (1916) philosophical rea-
soning. It is Hannah’s narrative of her professional identity—her teachership as
“successful” that will be presented. The rationale behind letting Hannah provide
the definition lays in the value of capturing teacher professionalism, not as a set
of standards formulated from an outside position, but from an insightful posi-
tion inside the profession, based upon a strong sense of professional identity. My
point of departure from the question of what constitutes a good teacher is that it
can never be generally defined, even though there is a strong tendency in society,
especially on a political level, to aim for such a definition. Teachers can be good
126 Sören Högberg
teachers in different ways depending on how they value, prioritize, and interact
with their pupils in relation to context and outcome. I build the discussion here
upon the idea that a clear professional identity is linked to successfulness.
The rationale, then, for telling Hannah’s as well as other teachers’ narra-
tives is to create deep and varied understandings of what teachers’ work is all
about. We need to be able to capture and take into account the conditions of
the teaching profession when political decisions are made, when pre-service
teachers are educated and when journalists are making their contributions to
public debate, as well as when large national or international evaluations are
constructed. Despite the need for such a respectful attitude, we also need to
be open to ways of criticizing teachers’ work. By adopting a moral dimension
of teaching, and with some help from the concept of pedagogical rhythm,
Hannah’s narrative also gives rise to some critique, not least of herself.
Hannah’s overall ambitions

When I ask Hannah about her ambitions as a teacher and how she understands
teachers’ work in a broader sense, she tells me that it is hard to put her ideas
into words. She criticize herself for not being analytical enough and recalls a
situation when a colleague had asked her if she had some kind of beacon that
led her in her work. Hannah remembers how she, at the time, was unable to
answer the question. It all rendered into a strong self-critique in which she char-
acterized herself as someone who just got on with her work without reflecting
on questions such as: “What am I doing?” or “How do I conduct my work as a
teacher?”. Still, she tells me, the colleague also remarked that she seemed to have
a very warm relationship with her pupils. Hannah adds:
Nevertheless, here is probably something that I think is crucial. My rela-

tionship with the pupils. That is what the basis is. Without a relationship,
I’m a bit handcuffed.
In order to answer my questions on her ambitions as a teacher, Hannah more

than once seeks her answers in those educational situations when she has
been dissatisfied with her work. She recalls situations when the daily work
has become dull and her efforts do not seem to reach her pupils. It strikes
me that Hannah has a very good ability to analyze her work, although she
expresses the opposite. She says:
At the time I was dissatisfied, I was not working full time and after a
while, I realized that due to those circumstances the pupils did not have
the prerequisites to get to know me. My teaching is based on a close and
serious relationship. When relationships are established, we take it from
there. It comes back to you in a number of ways with regard to who the
pupils are and their needs.
To Hannah, a good relationship with her pupils consists of her efforts to
make school a place where serious processes are able to develop in ways
that make it possible for her to set high standards. Her ambition is to cre-
ate a pedagogical environment, a climate, or an atmosphere, which includes
pupils responding to such high standards in a constructive way. According to
Hannah, a good relationship is established when her pupils express that they
want to know and learn things, combined with a conviction that education is
important. In saying this, Hannah shows that she is convinced this is the way
to make a difference in her pupils’ lives. Her ambition is almost a blueprint
of Dewey’s (1897, p. 78) words: “To prepare him [the pupil] for the future
life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he
will have the full and ready use of all his capacities”.
The overall aim for Hannah is to create a community, which, according
to Hansen (1992), can be described as a “shared morality”. Hannah tells
me about an episode where this becomes obvious. What happened in this
particular educational situation is a description of her ambitions. She says:
It is about confidence and high expectations but also about a visualizing

process. I like to highlight what pupils’ get out of their hands – ‘look
don’t you think it looks great?’ One time a boy said to me: ‘Hannah, we
are almost authors; really we are really like real authors even though it
was not his [the boy’s] story that was read aloud.
Hannah elaborates the meaning of the boy’s utterance in relation to a procedure

where her pupils, after writing stories, are divided into groups where they read
their own stories to each other. The pupils are then requested to choose five of
these stories to be read aloud in front of the class. Hannah says that she usually
also adds one or two more stories, which she believes can highlight the lesson in
a constructive way. Finally, Hannah and the class read the chosen stories aloud.
It was during one of these sessions that the boy expressed a feeling of being part
of a community of real authors. To Hannah, this becomes a vivid example of
what her teaching is all about. She clarifies her idea with the words “this is how
I think interest grows” and explains her position, what she wants to accomplish,
by imaginatively picturing one of her pupils saying the following words:
I want to be able to perform in such a way. If I work hard, I can be as

good as anyone else can.
Hannah’s overall pedagogical idea is implemented by her actions, as reoccurring

intentions in everything she does. Her ambition is to convince all her pupils to
take a serious standpoint in relation to schoolwork, regardless of subject. To
Hannah every subject is equally important. She mentions the term “engine”,
which symbolizes an independent self-sufficient attitude toward schoolwork.
She wants her pupils to develop an attitude characterized by curiosity inter-
twined with an open mindset in relation to all kinds of new knowledge as well as
new abilities. To make this possible a certain climate, a specific shared morality,
128 Sören Högberg
needs to be established in line with Hansen’s (1995) reasoning about teachers,
“shaping a classroom world”. Even though Hannah brings forward a self-cri-
tique when invited to put her overall ambitions into words, it is obvious that
Hannah is confident about her work. When interacting with her pupils, she does
not hesitate when describing how to act in relation to her professional identity.
Sometimes I think that maybe I should be a little bit more self-critical.

But still, it is based on the fact that I feel very confident in who I am and
I feel very confident in the role of … well I am a good teacher. I know
that. I know that I can make my pupils achieve.
Although some pupils might have a “smaller engine”, Hannah is confident that
she almost always can make her pupils increase their willingness to be engaged
in schoolwork. By establishing relationships that support a shared morality she
expresses her overall aim in terms of developing everyone’s impelling cause
in life. Hannah’s overall ambition also defines her view of what is a successful
teacher, which she expresses in terms of being present as an adult—in addition
to the parents—in her pupils’ lives. When pupils feel confident turning to
her for all kinds of issues, and when she at times can serve as role model, she
views herself as a successful teacher. Hannah does not by any means look upon
herself as perfect. On the contrary, her vision is based upon the idea that she,
as an imperfect person, can stimulate her pupils to always do their best. Being
successful means always trying to do one’s best. This is the principle which, for
Hannah, provides “the push” for all learning processes.
Hannah’s view on more short-term objectives in educational

situations
When Hannah reflects on the different interactional processes together with
many different pupils her narrative stands out as a vivid memory of diverse com-
munities. She gives me several examples of her perceived successes: times when
she felt she was sensitive to her pupils’ actions and made appropriate responses
to ongoing conversations in open class. At the same time, she is also critical of
situations where she felt she lacked sensitivity or might have responded more
thoughtfully. Hannah expresses these feelings in particular during one of our
interviews. This allowed me to see a pattern, strengthened by the observations,
in the way she expresses her professional sensitivity toward educational situa-
tions, a pattern which I describe as her pedagogical rhythm (Högberg, 2015).
Firstly, Hannah judges herself to be highly responsive toward her pupils’
well-being. She expresses a high awareness of the value of having an active
ethical eye on what is happening in educational activities, mainly because some
of the pupils are more fragile, vulnerable, and exposed than others. Her short-
term objectives routinely concern these pupils. On one occasion she says:
Some pupils might sigh and say nasty things about what another pupil
has said. Then I need to help him or her out for instance by saying: ‘now
that is a good question’. Although it may sound a little clumsy or mis-
placed, when you turn it around you can actually make it into a relevant
question. The point of departure must always be - what everyone says
makes sense.
The above statement shows how Hannah always tries to shift her pupils’ atten-
tion from what might at first seem to be irrelevant to instead become some-
thing relevant according to what is discussed at the time. The reason behind her
objective in highlighting a different aspect of the discussion lies to a large extent
in Hannah’s ethical concerns. Hannah’s argument is not about how she, by
taking advantage of a “clumsy or misplaced” utterance, can give the discussion
a new pedagogical angle for everyone to reflect upon, although that might also
be the outcome. The intention that grows out of the educational situation she
describes here has a clear connection to Hannah’s overall ambitions. By acting
in the way she describes, her pupils are meant to respond to the idea that every
utterance is worth listening to. This emerged intention, which grows out of her
interaction with a particular class, is above all based on an ethical standpoint
that carries pedagogical consequences. Hannah's statement tells me that the
educational environment in which she integrates with her pupils is periodically
accentuated by an attention toward ethical objectives prior to pedagogical ones.
Secondly, when it comes to pedagogical objectives, Hannah is mainly con-
cerned with what Klafki (1995) describes as the second step of instructional
planning when she tells me that she always enters the classroom well prepared.
To Hannah, this is a very serious matter. She says: “I never come unprepared
for school. I would never expose myself to such a situation”. She emphasizes
that compared to others she “writes [down her planning] very carefully despite
having worked so long”. She describes teaching activity almost like a journey.
She says “I need to know where we are going”. She stresses that she needs an
overall idea in terms of more generic abilities in order to be able to plan how
certain tasks can be prepared. Then she compares herself to a carpenter, needing
to shape the task differently for different pupils and their different prerequisites.
This is also why she is highly critical of the tendency in Sweden to break down
overall ambitions into detailed pre-determined short-term objectives. She says:
All these kinds of learning outcomes. I think they’re tiresome. What is it

we’re trying to do? What are we doing when we break them down into
some kind of outcome related to a single lesson? It’s all crazy. I don’t
understand, it doesn’t go along with me and my understanding.
To Hannah, the core pedagogical issue is about making the subject meaning-
ful to her pupils. She says:
Learning outcomes are not so much about pure factual knowledge. They
are so much more about being confident in oneself, wanting to be brave,
to have ambitions, to have the courage to believe in one's own ability,
to have some kind of direction forward, that’s what I want to give them.
130 Sören Högberg
It strikes me that Hannah is fulfilled by an idea that Jackson (2012, p. 59)
expresses in the following way, when discussing what good teachers do
almost automatically. He writes:
They routinely look on the bright side of their students’ scholarly efforts.
Moreover, they do so from the very start. That is how they begin their
response to whatever their students offer in the way of oral commentary
and written work. They treat it at first as a cup half full rather than half
empty. They applaud what is often paltry in quality, making it appear
better than it actually is.
The pedagogical issue for Hannah in this sense is closely intertwined with
her overall ambitions. This means that each subject in school has its meaning
only in relation to her pupils, similar to what Max van Manen (1991) refers
to as “the tact of teaching”. As a result, the subject, the content on which an
educational situation is focused, becomes, in Jackson’s (2012) words a subject,
that is something more than an object. It is when a subject becomes meaningful
to a group of pupils that the pedagogical objective comes alive. I think this
is what Hannah means when she repeatedly places value on her experiences
with words such as “it turned out in a good way” or “it turned out to be
not so good”. Klafki’s (1995) first step of teaching preparation—the didactic
analysis of the subject matter, where the objective is analyzed in itself, as an
object without a relationship to specific pupils— is for Hannah a more implicit
question. Instead, Hannah relies heavily on a deep conviction that what she
is doing when she is teaching is, at least in a broader sense, “something that
usually turns out to be good”. Carrying out a didactical analysis in advance of
teaching a specific content in order to figure out what such a content in itself
brings in terms of possible learning trajectories or what constitutes the societal
or political rationale behind such a content are issues of less importance to
Hannah. In this way she reflects Dewey (1897, p. 80) when he says “I believe
that the art of thus giving shape to human powers and adapting them to social
service, is the supreme art”, with the difference that Hannah emphasizes “giv-
ing shape to human powers” more than “adapting them to social service”.
Hannah describes her teaching preparation in terms of trial and error, in
which she relies on her experience and faith in her own ability to choose
the most appropriate content. To her, it is a constant struggle to structure
teaching activities that target pupils’ individual needs while supporting as
much as possible as a whole the group of pupils she faces every morning.
In this sense, yesterday’s activities are almost always the point of departure.
When I ask her if the curriculum plays a role in giving her work some kind
of direction, she says:
I lean more toward my own experience and look at what I have. We

need to get that ‘engine’ and make it work. That is number one. [---]
Curriculum is more present at an early stage of the semester. [---] Maybe
I put too much faith in my own experience, maybe I need to, or, but I
trust it [her experience]. It usually turns out good; they usually manage
well [on national exams].
The contours of a pedagogical rhythm—describing Hannah’s

teachership
The concept of pedagogical rhythm conceptualize the moral dimension of
teaching “whenever teachers and pupils interact in relation to a studied sub-
ject” (Högberg, 2015, p. 297). In this way, a pedagogical rhythm is always
understood as the result of what takes place in educational settings. It is a per-
spective of the moral as emerged intensions. The concept captures the possibil-
ity of distinguishing how answers to pedagogical and ethical issues take shape
in terms of different, parallel and sometimes even contradictory intentions
for everyone to respond to in educational situations. Over time, the variety
of emerged intentions may create a visible pattern possible to understand as
a rhythm if certain intentions reoccur from time to time. When describing
a pedagogical rhythm, we need to discern how different intentions can be
distinguished from each other and find out what kind of intentions emerge
more often than others. Hence, a pedagogical rhythm cannot become visible
in a single moment, just as we cannot understand Hannah’s interactions with
her pupils from a brief visit to her classroom or even from one or two inter-
views. After a longer period of time of being present in educational settings
lead by Hannah, however, it would be possible to understand a single educa-
tional situation as a representation of the kind of intentions that has become
more as well as less frequent over time. In that context, a single educational
moment can give us the contours of a pedagogical rhythm, which aligns with
Hannah’s professional identity, her teachership. From interviewing Hannah,
a single educational situation aligned with her expressed overall ambitions
can give validity to what is a representative educational situation.
Such an educational situation occurs during one of my visits to Hannah’s
classroom. On that occasion, she gave the class two questions to reflect on.
The pupils were asked to think of something that had happened to them
that they thought they would remember for the rest of their lives. Then they
were asked to think of something that had happened during their lifetime
that they thought posterity would remember. She explained her idea to me
before the lesson by saying that she wanted her pupils to understand the pur-
pose of history as a subject. She said that events hold some kind of meaning
for people, that we recall events in order to understand ourselves, as parts
of who we are. Later on in the class, when the pupils were discussing their
answers, a wide range of topics were addressed. One of the pupils mentioned
the time in the forest when he learned how to ride his bike, another men-
tioned the time when she moved to a foster home and yet another talked
about the importance of Brexit.
To a certain extent, everyone was able to join the discussion on his or her
own terms. When analyzing the presence of intentions in this educational
132 Sören Högberg
situation, it became obvious how ethical objectives dominated over peda-
gogical ones. The analysis showed numerous occasions when Hannah called
on everyone to come forward and say something as well as the frequency
with which she required everyone’s attention to what was being said. This
educational situation, which lasted for about 40 minutes, also had a number
of more content-related pedagogical objectives. On such occasions, Han-
nah was eager to convey an explanation of what Brexit was all about so the
larger group of pupils could understand the discussion that took place. When
another pupil talked about the terrorist attack in Oslo, Hannah gave the
class a short lecture on what happened at the time in Norway. This included
a clear statement of her position of what happened that day. By expressing
her opinion in this way, Hannah’s standpoint became a normative message
of how to relate to such an event.
I have previously defined pedagogical rhythm as “the shifts of different
and recurring intentions consisting of pedagogical and ethical issues created
through interaction between teacher and pupils in actions over time” (Hög-
berg, 2015, p. 297). From this 40-minute-long educational situation with
Hannah, it has been possible to discern more than one emerging intention.
As described, the ethical and pedagogical objectives shifted back and forth
in a steady rhythm. In this pedagogical rhythm, the intention to seriously
listen to what was being said was regularly accentuated as well as to bring
pupils together by demanding everyone to take part in the discussion. Han-
nah’s efforts to help everyone understand the topics that were mentioned
gave her pedagogical intention a more or less randomized character. Still the
pedagogical intentions can be described as a broader intention to understand
what constitutes major historical events in our time, and as an intention to
assimilate a certain value regarding terrorism.
As I previously mentioned, an analysis of a 40-minute educational situa-
tion can hardly describe Hannah’s whole teachership. But I choose to high-
light this educational situation because it represents a recurring intention
to involve all pupils in common discussions in order to create a community
with a shared morality, where everyone’s contributions carry a value for all of
them to embrace. The situation also represents Hannah’s broader approach
to the subject studied. Her pedagogical rhythm, the moral dimension of
her teaching, can be described as an accentuation of an intention to create a
working community that includes an open and less directive position regarding
the nature of the content. The most important issue evident from Hannah’s
teaching is not what the pupils learn; it is their willingness to learn, and to
help each other to keep learning.
The existing circumstances at the time of the interviews prompted
Hannah to stress the importance of building for the future and having a
long-term-perspective. She says:
During this year, we built something. I think it’s good. Yes, in relation
to what we’re learning, that we dare to hold on, to be somewhat repet-
itive. That we’ll create a pattern [in how we work], especially when the
pupils are younger. We’ll do this [establish patterns] in a certain way and
then [hopefully] we’ll get comments [from pupils] such as ‘wow, yes,
this turned out in a good way’.
Thus, if we take Hannah’s narrative as actions into account, as well as her

thoughts on mutual actions, the contours of Hannah’s pedagogical rhythm
emerge. Its character is built upon four major intentions. If ordered by fre-
quency as well as importance, the creation of a close teacher-pupil relation-
ship comes first. The second is a shared morality described as a devotion
to schoolwork, with the third the intention to treat everyone’s views with
respect. Viewing every subject as equally important is the fourth.
Hannah’s thoughts on shifts of objectives including a

self-critique
When I ask Hannah about unexpected moments in educational situations which
have given her a reason to shift her short-term objectives, she finds it difficult
at first to recall such situations, although she intellectually reflects that she has
probably done this many times. To Hannah, the need to shift intentions due to
pupils’ responses has become a natural response, to such an extent that these
shifts in objectives have become nearly invisible to her. Short-term objectives
are, in other words, of minimal meaning to Hannah. Instead, she views them as
means to accomplish her overall ambitions. This is why she expresses a critical
attitude toward the idea of formulating desirable outcomes for individual les-
sons. What is important to Hannah is to get her pupils started. When she tries
to think of the consequences of unexpected events in terms of shifted objectives,
she at first mentions situations where she needs to teach a content more thor-
oughly than planned. Secondly, she mentions situations when her pupils show a
joyful attitude, which stimulates her to develop the current lesson here and now,
in order for them to remain in a joyful mood. In doing so, she takes advantage
of what Garrison (2010, p. xvi) terms as a “teachable moment” that “arises
when everyone in the class desires to explore possibilities together”. During the
interview she realizes, thirdly, that there are a number of situations when she
suddenly remembers previous educational situations in situ, for example, what
she did in a similar situation possibly years ago. Then if she evaluates her recol-
lected idea in a positive way, she adopts the method or the assignment from her
repertoire developed over many years. Her rationale for doing this is her judge-
ment that it will serve the purpose of stimulating her pupils in such a way that it
enables them to participate. In Dewey’s (1922) words, what Hannah describes
can be understood as an ability to listen to her impulses and evaluate them in
order to give educational situations new directions. She believes that when she
gets her pupils going, the learning process itself will generate their motivation to
keep on working. Her faith lies in her experience and confidence to cope with
ongoing educational processes; she believes that she will always be able to find
something to capture that can be discussed in a serious way, which in turn will
create opportunities for her pupils to learn.
134 Sören Högberg
It is mainly when such a process is absent that she identifies a reason to
shift her teaching. This awareness might lead her to stop the teaching activ-
ity and say to her pupils “no, this isn’t working, you’re not with me, what’s
happening […] this is pointless because you’re somewhere else”. If this is
the case, it might cause Hannah to begin a teaching content built upon
what she calls “basic knowledge” for everyone to learn. This is in itself a
contradictory way of acting in relation to her overall ambitions, because it
emphasizes a short-term objective for a single educational moment. How-
ever, from a long-term perspective, these short-term pedagogical objectives
are still means for Hannah to create a mutual educational process that will
get her pupils’ “engines” going.
Hannah gives me an example of how she recently became frustrated when
her pupils’ responses showed lack of general interest in schoolwork. She
explains to me how this frustration was built up over a series of events, and in
so doing gives voice to a mood of frustration that has to do with her pupils’
attitude to the current content taught. She starts by saying:
Last Tuesday, I don’t remember exactly when, but I was so annoyed,

I was teaching English and I heard someone saying ’aah, do we need
to have English?’ I mean those sort of negative comments. I get so
annoyed by them. Then this pupil said ’What, am I not allowed to have
an opinion?’ I said ’Yes, you are allowed to have an opinion, but that
does not give you the right to spew hostility over us and create a bad
atmosphere, because it affects me and the others who will teach you, it
won’t turn out well’.
Hannah tells me that as the day progressed, the bad atmosphere continued
to grow. Later, she read a novel aloud to the class. The story was about the
siege of Sarajevo, describing a situation where there was no electricity, a lack
of water as well as other shortages. Continuing her story, she says:
Then I remember that we [during a previous lesson] forgot to talk about

what people have talked about in Sweden too. Are we prepared for such
a situation? [---] Then three of the more talented pupils, which makes
me even more disturbed, [---] I do not remember exactly how we got
there but one of them said: ‘I was without power once, the cellphone
was uncharged for three hours and I thought I would die’ and another
one said something like: ‘The worst thing that could happen is that
you’re without the internet’. [---] It became so puberty-like. I mean,
you may think that way but hold on! I was so mad, irritated and dis-
turbed. I just closed the book with a bang. Told them that they were
not ready for this, not mature enough. Then we sat there looking at each
other for five minutes.
Although one of the pupils, as Hannah describes it, “immediately realized

that he had crossed the line and apologized and said he was sorry” she was
unable to calm down. Still, she and her pupils at the end of the day had a
discussion about the idea that attitudes matter. To Hannah, it is of great
importance that her pupils can change their perspective and try to under-
stand another person’s position. According to Hannah, because of that clos-
ing discussion, that day turned out well after all. As did the following days.
Yet, Hannah realizes that she, as she described herself, sometimes acts in
ways that can cause problems. Hannah describes herself as very transparent
person. When something happens, she almost immediately has the capacity
to express an opinion, which she knows she can be both beneficial but also
the opposite. She knows that her pupils sometimes think of her as a bit odd,
but she is confident that they like her anyway and regards her transparency
as a value in itself. She wants all her pupils to feel like highly valued members
of the classroom community.
However, there have been occasions when Hannah asks herself if she
pushes her pupils too hard. As a counterweight to the above example, Han-
nah tells me about a situation when a parent told Hannah what her daughter
had said at home. The girl had asked if children could be burned out. When
she heard this, Hannah says her “anxiety grew”. She adds:
Of course, it’s an act of balance. When I become so … I take my job very

seriously, but maybe sometimes I lose … well, we have to play together.
[---] My God, do I run them over? I wonder if I’m responsive enough
when I have my agenda? [---] I figure there are disadvantages linked to
having a very clear agenda. I might lose something. This [episode] really
got me thinking.
To me Hannah appears to be a very open-minded person. She dares to take

my questions seriously in a way that allow her to critique her own teacher-
ship—her pedagogical rhythm—without losing her overall idea of what con-
stitutes her way of teaching. She is confident about what she is doing, to such
an extent that she has the courage to consider different critical perspectives.
She is able to acknowledge that being a dominant teacher and having close
relationships with her pupils might be a problem. Hannah says that there is
a risk that “they can become a little passive and too responsive to what they
think are my preferences.” Later when we talk, in relation to her conclusion
that her pupils are always formed in a certain way, she says that she “can
almost become too important” to her pupils.
Understanding Hannah’s teachership—her pedagogical rhythm

To Hannah, working as a teacher has always felt the right thing to do. She
says to me that she has “never wanted to do anything else”. Her teacher-
ship is built upon what Sockett (2012) calls a moral authority. To me as an
observer, it seems obvious that her pupils trust her intentions to be always
in their best interests. I see this when I visit her classroom and I notice how,
during our interviews, Hannah describes again and again situations when
136 Sören Högberg
her pupils want to talk to her. One time Hannah clarifies that this is because
“they know that I will always listen to what they have to say”. She is always
keen to create a space for a personal conversation. She wants her pupils to
feel she is an adult support person in addition to their parents. In fact, she
expects them to come to her and share their thoughts and feelings if some-
thing bothers them at school. For Hannah, such behavior means a great deal
for it also symbolizes an absence in her own private life. Hannah has a disa-
bled daughter who is unable to communicate how she feels because, among
other things, she does not have the ability to talk.
At one time during the interview I ask Hannah how she relates to the Dew-
eyan way of regarding school as a “weak public” (see Englund, 2006), as a
place for the deliberation of pluralistic values in ways that may challenge pupils’
values and views. I ask this question because I think she is close to holding such
a view. However, Hannah is not comfortable with the expression. Instead,
we agree upon the expression “extended family”. For Hannah, her teaching
intentions are focused more upon those pupils who are “poor on experience”.
She explains her intentions by using the metaphor of a “clothes hanger”—as a
framework which pupils need for knowledge to gain hold.
Hannah stresses that her way of teaching depends on the pupils she works
with. Her school is situated in an area where parents are often unemployed
and where educational attainment levels are low. Due to the kind of pupils
she has met over the years, she realizes that the authority she needs must
be built upon relationships in order “to get them started”. She strives for a
moral authority that can create opportunities for epistemological processes,
not the other way around. She views her opportunities to develop an “epis-
temological authority” (Sockett, 2012) as a less accessible route when pupils
are, as she says, “poor on experience”.
The pedagogical rhythm that has developed during Hannah’s teaching
over the years can be understood as highly contingent. The morality that
emerged from interaction between Hannah and her pupils accentuates the
intentions of promoting good relationships, a serious devotion to work,
the value of everyone’s view as well as an open and positive attitude toward
every subject. Hannah’s teachership is based upon a moral authority that
opens paths for her to set norms for a shared morality to such an extent
that, at times, Hannah might affect her pupils more than she realizes.
Nevertheless, as Hannah tells me, that is what she aims for—the promo-
tion of good human values, which she is confident she is representing. In
doing so, she takes a vast moral responsibility, which can be regarded as
highly problematic. However, at the same time, that is what constitutes
Hannah as a good teacher—taking a professional responsibility. She ena-
bles her pupils to be part of a community and extends their experience of
a shared morality of respectful and ethical concerns. That is also why she
is proud to repeat, without doubt in her voice, the words of a colleague
who once said:
Hannah, you always have such nice pupils!

Conclusion
I find Hannah’s teachership, described in terms of a certain pedagogical
rhythm, as heavily grounded in ethical intensions for reasons that depend on
the socioeconomic context of her schools’ location. Over the years, she has
developed a solid professional identity related to what she regards as necessary
for the majority of her pupils. Her narrative shows the importance of teach-
ers, on both a national as well as a global scale, that have the ability to read a
pedagogical situation and adjust their performance accordingly—to shift the
intentions as a consequence of the situations. Hannah’s professional identity
also includes her own critique of her performance when she realizes that her
pedagogical intentions are not as prominent in her pedagogical rhythm. Still
her professional identity shows great quality of importance in an educational
environment where teachers increasingly teach as part of a team. Hannah’s
narrative shows the need to value teachers’ professional identities as individuals
and acknowledge what each one can contribute to the group. A more realistic
and constructive discussion would be to talk about, not what constitutes a
successful teacher in general, but about what makes a successful teaching team.
References
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Inquiry, 38(4), 357–385.
Englund, T. (2006) Deliberative Communication: A Pragmatist Proposal. Journal of
Curriculum Studies 38(5), 503–520.
Dewey, J. (1897) My Pedagogic Creed. School Journal, 54, 77–80.
Dewey, J. (1916/1985) Democracy and Education. In J. Boydston (Ed.). The Middle
Works, 1899–1924: Volume 9. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1922): Human Nature and Conduct. An Introduction to Social Psychology.
New York: Henry Holt and company. (The project Gutenberg eBook).
Garrison, J. (2010) Dewey and Eros. Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching.
Charlotte: Information age publishing.
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av lärarstuderandes nätbaserade seminariesamtal. (On the Moral Dimension of
Teaching: A Perspective and a Study of Teacher Students’ Discussions in Net-Based
Seminars.) Örebro: Örebro Studies in Education 51.
Jackson, P. W. (2012) What is Education? Chicago & London: The University of
Chicago Press.
Klafki, W. (1995) Didactic Analysis as the Core of Preparation of Instruction
(Didaktische Analyse als Kern der Unterrichtsvorbereitung). Journal of Curriculum
Studies, 27(1), 13–30.
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Ontario: The Althouse Press.
8 Revisiting selves through
a “success” perspective
An autoethnographic quest of a language
teacher across intercultural spaces
Tugay Elmas
Introduction: A personal conceptualization of “successful

teaching/teacher”
Prospective language teachers go into teacher education with personal opin-
ions they have accumulated over the long years as students about teaching
as a profession and what it means to be a good teacher. However, during
teacher education and initial years of teaching, teachers soon discover those
ideas being confronted and in some cases replaced by local and global dis-
courses that impose rather dominant attributions to what constitutes “suc-
cessful teaching,” as well as who a “successful language teacher” is. When
language teachers face with tensions challenging their perceptions about the
teaching profession and identities associated with “successful teaching,” rather
than perceiving them as passive agents who conform to the dominant stances,
they should be seen as active agents who constantly negotiate between what
is imposed on them and what they believe by adjusting to changes or strug-
gling to maintain their beliefs (Buchanan, 2015). Navigating between the per-
sonal and broader forces can shape not only the sense of teacher agency but
also the ongoing work of teacher identity authoring (Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2018).
Although such conflicts may be inevitable, they can translate into invaluable
teacher learning opportunities (van der Wal et al., 2019).
Teaching is a complex endeavor that goes beyond the acquisition of theoret-
ical and pedagogical skills. It is a state of constant “becoming” (Clarke, 2008).
To understand this process, teachers may question their positionings by asking
themselves “who am I as a teacher?” (den Brok et al., 2013, p. 143). At the
core of this self-questioning lies how teachers make sense of their identities in
the interplay of their personal and professional life histories (Beijaard & Meijer,
2017). As language teaching involves “identity work,” teachers across differ-
ent contexts may find themselves having to negotiate between identities that
are deemed to be valuable and ones that are not in relation to wider sociocul-
tural and sociopolitical forces (De Costa & Norton, 2017, p. 8).
The notions of “successful teaching” and “successful teacher” are prob-
lematic since success is a dynamic and multifaceted phenomenon that is
constantly being shaped and reshaped by macro and local factors. Even the
following questions are sufficient to capture the complexity it presents. “What
Revisiting selves across intercultural spaces 139
makes a successful teacher?” Teachers are expected to demonstrate expertise
in pedagogical, instructional, and subject domains along with having certain
personal and professional traits such as socio-affective awareness. Depending
on certain aspects and how these areas are valued within a given context can
establish the criteria for success. “Who determines the notion of success in
teaching?” In today’s business-like education trends, teachers’ practices are
being monitored and evaluated by school administrations, students, parents,
and other stakeholders for the sake of “accountability measures.” Teachers
who deviate from the set standards of what is deemed “successful teaching”
should either live up to the expectations or face the consequences.
The phenomenon of success is a social construct that emerges as a site of
constant struggle across different spaces and times for teachers which drives
them to mediate between their own beliefs, perceptions, subjectivities, and
other influences such as educational policies and practices, socio-cultural dis-
courses, and contextual factors. Bearing on this point, it must be difficult
to arrive at an inclusive definition of “success” in teaching as its contested
essence invites rather diverse conceptualizations of what is valued as “suc-
cessful teaching” or “successful teacher” on personal, professional, and soci-
etal fields. This means it deserves attention to be questioned, challenged, and
explored from a rich array of perspectives to contribute to the understanding
of its multidimensional and dynamic nature.
Approaching the concept of “success” by adopting an intercultural per-
spective as one important dimension might help us bridge the link between
“successful teaching” and international mobility. In today’s interconnected
world, international experiences can contribute to language teachers’ con-
tinuing “personal, pedagogical, linguistic, and intercultural development”
(Çiftçi & Karaman, 2019, p. 105). What is the place of intercultural expe-
rience within the perception of “success” in teaching? Does one necessar-
ily become a “successful” language teacher through international mobility?
Guided by these questions, in this chapter, I aim to focus my interpretive
glasses (Olsen, 2016) on my personal intercultural experiences as an attempt
to understand the link between “successful teaching/teacher” and interna-
tional mobility by embarking on a critical reflection on the challenges and
dilemmas of living in different countries, in England as “an immigrant,”
in Germany as “an Erasmus student,” in the United States as “a language
teacher.”
The method giving voice to my narrative

Since the foundation of this inquiry is the use of the researcher’s personal life
stories, autoethnography is adopted. Autoethnography is defined as a “qual-
itative, interpretive, and critical research method” (Linn et al., 2013, p. 22),
which constitutes the following characteristics, a) intentional critique of culture
and cultural encounters, b) contributing to the current literature, c) purposeful
approach to vulnerabilities, d) establishing a rapport with audiences to induce a
response (Linn et al., 2013). Furthermore, autoethnography situates the self at
140 Tugay Elmas
the center with linkage to different settings. This context-laden feature situates
the self in relation to others as well as the social trajectories (Wolcott, 2004).
Exploring the journey of self by delving into how navigating in various contexts
influences an individual is seen as the basis of this method (Ngunjiri et al., 2010).
How researchers undertake autoethnography inquiry may vary. While
some argue for an unrestricted approach that does not adhere to conven-
tional research reporting, labeled evocative autoethnography, which can con-
tribute to creating aesthetically compelling texts (Ellis & Bochner, 2000),
others suggest a more systematic framework through analytical autoeth-
nography, which places an emphasis on the theoretical analysis (Anderson,
2006). However, it is noted that there is no clear-cut boundary between the
two, and depending on the purpose, the researcher can even adopt a mixed
approach (Ngunjiri et al., 2010). In this study, I utilized a blended approach,
meaning I used theoretical lenses to scrutinize my lived experiences in order
to construct the analytical text.
As for data collection tools, autoethnography provides the researchers
with a wide range of options, since autoethnographer’s personal experience
is used as primary data for social inquiry. The researcher can utilize “recall-
ing, collecting artifacts and documents, interviewing others, analyzing self,
observing self” to gather data (Chang, 2013, p. 113). Having such extensive
access to using personal data allows the researcher to provide unique input to
recognize self-experience in different socio-cultural contexts (Chang, 2013).
Autoethnography has been criticized for having some limitations such as
placing subjectivity at the center (Anderson, 2006), and prioritizing emo-
tions (Holt, 2003). However, despite its limitations, autoethnographic
inquiry offers considerable benefits, since it is not bounded by the standards
of conventional research (Watson, 2009). By using vulnerability and self-ex-
posure astutely blended with theoretical and analytical lenses, the researcher
can create research in an aesthetic way (Ellis et al., 2011), which allows for
“contextually meaningful understandings rooted in real-life experiences of
individuals and communities” (Mirhosseini, 2018, p. 82).
The design for tracing the narratives

Critical self-analysis can be a powerful tool for autoethnographers to tap
into feelings, thoughts, and perceptions (Chang, 2013). One method of
analyzing self is through constructing a “culturegram” (Chang, 2008, pp.
97–98), which can aid the autoethnographer to create visual categoriza-
tions to explore his/her identities in multiple contexts. Figure 8.1 illus-
trates my own culturegram, which is organized based on my intercultural
journeys in different countries. The encircling interlinked key concepts will
guide me to interpret my lived experiences, which is coated with a complex
and multi-dimensional endeavor.
Guided by the culturegram, this chapter is divided into three parts. The first
part deals with “Discovering otherness,” which draws on the representation
Percepons
Communies
Language
Self / selves
Tensions/conflicts
Discovering
-isms otherness
Inclusion
De- / re-
Construcon Exclusion
Peripheral to Navigang in
central the third
parcipaon space
Agency In-betweenness
Polics Capital (s)
Power Culture (s)
Figure 8.1: Self-analysis diagram
of self and others (Dervin, 2012). The second part addresses “Navigating in
the third space,” which utilizes the notion of third place (Kramsch, 1993) to
delve into the dynamic and hybrid spaces that I had been a part of during my
Erasmus experience in Germany. The third part focuses on “Peripheral to the
central participation,” which makes use of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) situ-
ated learning theory, to scaffold the process of me becoming part of various
communities as a Fulbright teaching assistant in the United States.
An introduction to an ongoing narrative

My father has always had an adventurous soul. As a child, I grew up with his
stories of running away from home being tempted by starting a life in the
city away from the borders of the dull village life. He made his first attempt
at the age of 14. One day he hopped on a bus and disappeared. Two months
later, he was back in the village ever determined to leave everything behind
and make a new life for himself. Two years later he pulled his grand escape.
On a starlit night, when it was all quiet, he left home to embark on a journey
to Istanbul. However, this was not the end. After 28 years of his first flight,
at the age of 42 his urge to transgress borders resurfaced, this time taking
him to a completely foreign land, England.
In 2008, after three years of my father’s departure, we were finally at
where he first arrived, Manchester Airport. The moment we stepped out of
the plane, the excitement we had long harbored was replaced by confusion.
Being bombarded by a constant flow of announcements in a language that I
was familiar with but could not fully comprehend did not help much either.
142 Tugay Elmas
One thing that distinctly evoked in me was the feeling that I was experienc-
ing something new, something foreign.
As we were waiting for our turn at the customs, looking around made me
realize that I was surrounded by so many different faces that I had never
seen before. The officer at the counter shouted, “Next.” I was holding the
hand of my ten-year-old brother and he was holding my mother’s. When we
reached the counter, the officer looked us up and down and asked for our
passports. After meticulously inspecting them, looking me in the eye she
asked, “What is your purpose of visit?”
Discovering otherness
“Next, please. Hello, sir. What would you like to have?”
“Oh God! I am Starving!” he cried, exhaling a fresh breath of alcohol that
I could smell even from behind the counter.
“Then, you are in the right place,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Ermm. What should I have? What should I have…? I’d like to have a
12-inch pepperoni pizza, please.”
“Would you like to have that deep crust or thin crust?”
“What?”
“Would you like to have it deep crust or thin crust?”
“Thin crust, please.”
“That will be 14.50, please.”
After three months of arriving in England, here I was serving pizza at two in
the morning at my cousin’s pizza shop. This was not the life I had imagined. I
had expected a life in the great city of Manchester. Yet, we ended up in a small
countryside town called Colne. As a recent high school graduate, I dreamed of
going to university. I wanted to become a physical education teacher because
of my background as a semi-professional football player. To that end, the first
thing I did was to apply to the local college. However, my credentials from
back home were not recognized. I was told to pursue A-levels, which was a sub-
ject-based qualification, to eventually get into university. However. there was
another problem. Taking A-levels required high-level proficiency in English.
Therefore, first, I had to attend language courses, for which I had no money
to spare. With that, all my expectations were shattered. I had left everything
behind with the hope of starting a better life, yet here I was feeling like I did
not even exist. I was filled with growing despair. The future looked bleak.
It is stated that society is a multifaceted construct that contains different
arenas and fields within itself (Bourdieu, 1984). When an individual joins a
field, he/she brings in what is referred to as habitus, that is, the internalized
cultural and personal resources a person possesses through the accumulation
of experiences in particular social trajectories. These resources can present
themselves in different forms of capital, namely economic capital referring
to the level of income and wealth; cultural capital is symbolic elements like
social group, economic investments to educational credentials, acquiring a
certain set of tastes; and social capital denoting social networks and contacts
people attain. When a person enters a field, these different forms of capital
become symbolic capital, which can be explained as the competed or valued
capital within a certain space (Bourdieu, 1986). Each field is governed by
what Bourdieu (1984) frames as doxa, in other words, a set of rules that are
constructed and reinforced by the dominant group(s).
As an 18-year-old teenager from Turkey, the social capital I accumulated did
not match with this new field. In fact, it rather clashed with it. What I mean
is that it was not just about the kinds of social capital I possessed; it was also
about how I was perceived by others. As Clark and Dervin (2014, p. 13) state
“it is through representation that people come to understand the world and
organize their construction of reality and of one another.” There was an estab-
lished discourse long before my arrival, within which identities were being
invented in relation to local epistemologies and I was labeled differently based
on the social markers such as language, religion, nationality, and skin color.
Despite being encumbered by a life I had not envisioned; three crucial
cases profoundly impacted my attitude toward the challenges I was encoun-
tering. Firstly, I was the only one who could speak English in my family. Even
though my dad had been living in England for three years at the time, he
could only speak a little English enough to survive as a chef in his workplace.
Although my father had the desire to learn English, he told me that he never
had the chance to attend a formal language course, since they were so expen-
sive, and he had very little time to spare due to working long shifts. For my
mother and my little brother, on the other hand, English was a total mystery.
Naturally, I had to meet the role of language mediator, which came with a lot
of new responsibilities such as taking care of all the paperwork, translating
during medical visits, attending to any needs related to my brother’s school-
ing. Basically, anything that required English required my presence.
Secondly, even though going to university seemed impossible, it remained
as a slim possibility. For that reason, I needed to get a job and make money.
That was how I ended up working at my cousin’s pizza shop. The only social
capital that had enabled me to keep my dream alive. This job not only sup-
ported me financially, but it also provided me with a space in which I could
communicate with the locals. In a way, it was a space for transitioning both
cultural and linguistic borders. While the circumstances arising from differ-
ent expectations were significant in shaping my initial journey, one particular
experience deeply transformed my future actions, which is the third case.
One day, my cousin said, “Let’s go to the coffee house.” I did not know
what he meant by the coffee house, thinking we were going to a local coffee
shop. After a 15-minute drive, we arrived at an alley. Then, we entered a
building and climbed the stairs to the second floor. As he opened the door
in front of him, the air filled with the smell of freshly brewed tea. The place
was decorated very much like the ones in Turkey, bearing the characteristics
of a typical coffee house, called kıraathane1. There were about seven tables
covered with red tablecloth scattered around the place. Some of the tables
were occupied with middle-aged men cheerfully playing card games. There
were a few framed pictures of different sceneries from Turkey on the walls.
144 Tugay Elmas
A handful of people were attentively watching Turkish news on the far cor-
ner. Next to the television, there was a small area where the tea urn was
placed. A man was behind the counter busy with pouring tea. My cousin
and I found a table and settled on our seats. Looking around a strange feel-
ing poured in me. This place felt like an escape from all the uncertainties of
the outside world. It looked familiar. It smelled familiar. It sounded familiar.
After a few minutes, a couple of my cousin’s friends arrived. We started to
chat. “How long has it been since you arrived?”, one of them asked. “It has
been only two months”, I replied. “Ohh, you are new! Welcome to England.
Murat2 and I have been here for almost 10 years.” As we were sipping our
tea, they started to unfold their stories. Murat came to England illegally.
He paid thousands of pounds to be smuggled into England. Although he
tried to obtain a residence permit through asylum, he failed and still had no
papers. Adnan, on the other hand, came to England to learn English and
never left. They were working at Turkish restaurants to make a living. When
I asked them if they considered going back home, Murat said, “After spend-
ing ten years here, what are we going to do if we went back?”
On my way home I was lost in thoughts. I did not want to end up like those
people in the coffee shop. They in a way constructed their own sanctuary
where they felt culturally and linguistically safe by wittingly or unwittingly
employing separation strategies to “hold on to their original culture” (Berry,
1997, p. 9). I did not judge them. I bet they all had their unique life stories
that brought them together in that particular space where they established a
connection with culture(s) they longed for. However, I imagined a different
future for myself. In my imagined community (Anderson, 1983), I wanted
to participate in the host community and be part of it. In order to achieve
that I needed to make an investment in improving my English proficiency to
strengthen my cultural and social capital, which were the key to making the
transition of being an outsider to becoming an insider (Norton, 2013).
While working at the pizza shop provided me with a setting in which I
could engage in conversations with customers, in terms of language and
social integration it was quite restricted. That was when football came to my
rescue. Looking back now, I realize that football was my most and only valu-
able symbolic capital, which aligned with the new field. Back home, I played
football as a semi-professional player. Soon after I arrived, I started pursuing
opportunities to keep playing football. Luckily, I landed a trial with the local
team; Colne Football Club, which competed in the regional league. After
playing in a friendly game, they decided to sign me. That was one of the
defining moments of my life in England because football opened a new field
of participation for me. It in a way functioned as a bridge for transgressing
borders. Furthermore, being the only foreign player in the team gave rise
to constant renegotiation and reconstruction of multiple identities. In one
of the forum posts, I was referred to as “a Turkish delight”, which was an
ascribed identity given by others (Oetzel, 2009). Next thing I know, I was
being called “Turkish delight” by my teammates and even some fans. It was
not an identity I would have associated myself with, but I did not have a
say on it. Due to power relations particular identity/identities an individual
wants to present may go unrecognized.
My interactions with migrants from different countries were also shaped by
certain assumptions and markers. In the neighboring town, Nelson, a diverse
community of minorities resided. The Pakistani community made up the
majority. The barbershop I went to was located there and it was owned by a
Pakistani family. I still recall my first visit there. When I opened the door, I was
welcomed with the sounds of an unfamiliar language. I took a seat. The TV
on the wall was on, which was in a language that was foreign to me. When it
was my turn, I sat on the chair. The barber looking at me through the mirror
said something in a language that was not English. When I did not respond,
he went on saying something else. In English, I told him I did not get what he
was saying. Confused, he asked me, “Are you not Pakistani?”
It is claimed that experiencing such identity tensions may cause an indi-
vidual to reflect on their identities, which could contribute to challenging
their positionalities (Jackson, 2010). Throughout my four years of residence
in England, in different social spaces involving different people, I constantly
found myself negotiating avowed and ascribed identities (Oetzel, 2009).
Transgressing cultural and linguistic boundaries were not always pleasant.
While at certain times within various groups I felt a sense of belonging,
once I was away from the known spaces I also faced unpleasant incidents
of discrimination, racism, and marginalization. As Harari (2018, p. 111)
states “identity is defined by conflicts and dilemmas more than by agree-
ments.” It was through conflicts and discomforts that I explored my foreign-
ness (Tochon & Karaman, 2009), which had a profound effect on my future
intercultural journeys to come.
Navigating in the third space

The courtroom was filled with uncertainty. When I say the courtroom, I
would not want you to imagine one of those scenes from a Hollywood movie
where there is a tall judge’s bench towering the room accompanied by a jury
and a group of spectators following the case. It was quite the opposite. The
room was designed very similarly to a conference room. My family and I
were anxiously sitting at the small u-shaped table facing the judge. On our
left, there was an immigration official. Our lawyer was to our right making
the case for us to be granted the settlement visa. The immigration official
objected against it on the basis of my father changing his workplace without
informing the necessary agencies, thus violating his visa terms. Before the
hearing, our lawyer told us, especially my brother and I, to speak in English
at all times to signify how socially and linguistically “integrated” we were.
Showcasing our linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991) as a symbol of alignment
with the norms of the society was supposed to prove that we were valued
members. However, it did not work out that way. The judge ruled that we
had our time. After almost four years of constant struggle to build a life
from scratch, being told to leave everything behind with an unprecedented
146 Tugay Elmas
decision felt like we were being robbed of everything we had gone through.
Our appeal was not heard. It had no value. We were ordered to leave in a
month.
Finding myself back home in a place that harbored remnants of familiarity
yet felt very much foreign resonated with what I had experienced when I first
moved to England. Being separated from the field I tried so hard to be part of,
in doing so going through cultural and identity transformations, had a great
influence on my readjustment period. I was bombarded with uncertainties,
which slowly but steadily drifted me into obscurity. I was experiencing reverse
culture shock (Gaw, 2000). It is suggested that the struggles during this tran-
sition and readjusting phase tend to be at its peak level at the beginning and
decrease slowly with time (Lakey, 2003). While the feeling of estrangement
gradually subsided, it never really disappeared. Instead, it left itself to a state of
in-betweenness, as I constantly had to negotiate my positionings.
One of the positionings was rooted in revaluing the symbolic capital I
had accumulated in the former field. In the language domain, English as a
linguistic capital translated into a valued asset in Turkey, which aided me to
reify a forgotten dream, going to university. I got into English Language
Teaching department in 2012 at the age of 22. This academic space opened
a new chapter in my intercultural journey. Since I returned from England,
I had a craving to transgress borders once again. To that end, in my junior
year, I applied to the Erasmus program to study a semester abroad. My des-
tination was the University of Cologne located in Cologne, Germany.
Pre-sojourn aspirations
Various factors may encourage university students to participate in a study
abroad program. It is reported that students believe studying abroad can
offer them career enhancement opportunities, introduce new academic
spaces, provide an immersive environment for experiencing a new culture
and learning a new language, and make traveling to different places possible
(Doyle et al., 2010). My aspirations in embarking on an Erasmus journey
were threefold: a) I wanted to seek academic betterment in an international
setting; b) influenced by my prior experiences in England I hoped to experi-
ence a different culture and language; c) I wanted to meet new people from
different cultures.
While my future expectations acted as a source of excitement for the upcom-
ing possibilities, during the preparation period I was overwhelmed with the
formal procedures. However, I was aware that if I were to only deal with the
formal paperwork, I would have undermined the cultural and linguistic prepa-
ration (Çiftçi & Karaman, 2018). To that end, I signed up for the buddy pro-
gram organized by the host university and I also got in touch with an exchange
student from my department, Selin, who at the time was already studying at
the host institution. Since I had very little support from my own institution,
having these two connections not only helped me with the formal preparation
but also with the cultural, linguistic, and academic aspects.
Through the buddy program, I was matched with a local student, Mila, who
supported me throughout my study abroad experience. Having such an inval-
uable connection with a local student made me feel safe. With Mila’s help, I
enrolled in the pre-semester German courses offered by the host university. She
also got me in touch with the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) in Cologne.
Engaging in beneficial dialogues related to academic and social life with her
translated into constructing a distant linkage with my future destination.
While sojourn
Sojourners may find themselves in situations where their cultural and lin-
guistic identities are challenged. As a coping strategy, some may prefer to
restrict their social network to co-nationals. Conversely, some may welcome
the opportunity of establishing a space for dialogue between different com-
munities through which they can negotiate cultural and linguistic identities
(Jackson, 2011). This arena for navigating between one’s own culture and
other cultures can contribute to the emergence of a symbolic “third place”
(Kramsch, 1993), in which sojourners attempt to understand intercultural
encounters by detaching from their own habitus to mediate across cultural
and linguistic boundaries (Kramsch & Gerhards, 2012).
However, for sojourners, it may not always be possible to distance them-
selves from their cultural and linguistic positionings. At this point, as an
alternative way of making sense of cultural differences, the concept of cul-
tural blocks and cultural threads (Holliday, 2016) can be used to comple-
ment the notion of third place. According to Holliday (2016), cultural blocks
focus on cultural differences by constructing “we” vs “they” dichotomy
which precludes intercultural interactions, while cultural threads underscore
establishing a common ground for negotiating intercultural dialogue. Dur-
ing my Erasmus experience, two dynamic and hybrid spaces where multi-
ple languages and cultures intermingled played a crucial role in establishing
transcultural dialogues.
The first space was the pre-semester German Language course which
accommodated Erasmus students from various backgrounds. During the
introduction activity in my class, it was revealed that there were people from
ten different countries and almost everyone spoke two or more languages.
In time, our classroom extended beyond learning only German and became
a vibrant place for intercultural learning. We would organize events to get
together and share personal experiences. Bringing together people with such
diverse backgrounds created an arena for navigating across intercultural
boundaries. Erasmus Student Network (ESN) in Cologne was the second
space that helped me expand my intercultural social network. Through ESN
not only international students but also local students connected with each
other. In a way, ESN acted as a bridge between cultures.
Within these dynamic and multidimensional third places, the prevailing
characteristic was the negotiation of cultural/linguistics identities through
cultural threads rather than cultural blocks. However, at times, it was possible
148 Tugay Elmas
to encounter incidents of cultural blocks, which served as moments of inter-
cultural learning. Our common identity, being an Erasmus student, brought
us together and thus created a sense of belonging to these communities.
Personally, participating in these hybrid communities and negotiating my
own positionings transformed me once again.
Post sojourn implications

Coming back home unfolded a period of readjustment similar to what I had
gone through when I returned from England. But a different dimension
emerged this time. Mentally, I was better prepared. I was able to anticipate
what was awaiting me. This mindset deriving from my prior journey made
the transitioning process manageable. Furthermore, a clear determination
of putting my lived experiences in use surfaced, which materialized through
the Language Club at my university. The most important essence of the
club was based on the very idea of sharing knowledge. Prospective language
teachers from various language departments were recruited every semester
to become volunteer teachers to teach the languages they were studying to
fellow university students. As a club, we initiated two projects for incoming
and outgoing Erasmus students.
Every semester for the incoming international students, we offered a free
intensive “Turkish for Erasmus students” to help sojourners acquire basic
language abilities and provide them with a supportive environment for the
cultural transition. As part of this initiative, I also taught Turkish to sojourn-
ers coming from different countries. Another project was “Erasmus work-
shops for outgoing students” which was designed around bringing together
former Erasmus students with the local students who were considering stud-
ying abroad or were in the process of preparing for their Erasmus semester.
Our aim with these workshops was to create a space for sharing experiences
and therefore offering formal and informal guidance.
Peripheral to central participation

Various personal and professional factors may motivate teachers to pursue
a transnational teaching career (Bense, 2016). As a senior pre-service lan-
guage teacher, I wanted to teach abroad after I graduated, and to that end,
I applied to the Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship (FLTA) program
granted by Fulbright to teach Turkish in the U.S. I had several reasons for
applying; regarding the personal sphere, I aimed to maintain “my identity as
a world citizen,” to further accumulate “linguistic capital by improving my
English abilities,” to gain more insight into “intercultural communication
dynamics with the hope of teaching this subject in the future.” As for the
professional domain, I believed that participating in the program could “fos-
ter my teaching practices” and would be beneficial for my future “academic
career.” With these aspirations, I embarked on my next intercultural journey
to University of Wisconsin-Madison as a language educator.
When I arrived in Madison I felt like I was already living there for a long
time. What made the cultural and personal transition different in Madison
was the complex interplay of different levels of participation my avowed and
ascribed identities granted me. In different spaces, I enacted different iden-
tities as well as being associated with certain identities. At the university
where I was an FLTA, I was a Fulbrighter. In class as an instructor of the
Turkish language, I was not only a linguistic and but also a cultural expert.
Attending classes, I was an international student. Participating in outreach
projects through the university’s “International Reach” program, I was a
cultural ambassador. Being a member of the Madison Association of Turkish
Students (MATS), I was part of a group of students and scholars who came
from Turkey. Outside these spaces, I was just another foreign face.
Lave and Wenger (1991) suggest that learning occurs through participating
in a community of practice as newcomers acquire the valued knowledge and
practices to seek membership within that community. To do so, initially, they
go through a process of transitioning from a peripheral trajectory to becoming
full members in the community. This is conceptualized as legitimate periph-
eral participation. Navigating between different modes of participation across
communities of practice affects one’s identity (Wenger, 1998) since it also
encompasses “a process of understanding who we are and in which commu-
nities of practice we belong and are accepted” (Handley et al., 2006, p. 644).
However, seeking membership in a community of practice can give rise to
complex power relations (O’Donnell & Tobbell, 2007). Depending on inter-
nal and wider external forces, the identities an individual brings into a commu-
nity of practice can give them an empowering or disempowering status. While
certain identities can legitimize participation, and grant an insider position,
those who are rejected may lead to a marginalized status.
In the work domain, my Fulbright identity preceded other identities. It
was an empowering status that granted me admission to the community of
academics in my department. Back home, being a Fulbrighter did not sig-
nify much, but in this context, it was perceived as a valued identity, which
promoted an inward trajectory within the community. The linguistic and
cultural capital I possessed enabled me to have a designated core position
as a language expert and a cultural insider in the classes I taught. They also
extended to the outreach events, and the classes, I took, as I was attributed
to the role of cultural ambassador. Within MATS, being from Turkey was
enough for me to be endorsed as a member.
Being able to navigate between these communities by enacting multiple
identities was a form of “brokering” (Wenger, 1998, p. 105). In my case,
I was constantly and consciously making use of my lived experiences as an
international nomad with an awareness of my ascribed/avowed identities to
inhabit different trajectories across communities of practice. The title of this
part “Peripheral to central participation” in that regard is rather metaphorical
representing the symbolic journey of constructing a sense of belonging since
a community of practice retains no single center or core (Wenger, 1998).
150 Tugay Elmas
Wider sociocultural and sociopolitical dynamics governing my new
environment played a central role in my cultural and linguistic learning,
the forms of participation, and identity negotiations. Being home to a
large number of international students over the years, Madison had a wel-
coming attitude towards differences. This cosmopolitan mindset (Beck,
2006) also reflected itself on campus life. However, being surrounded
by an environment that embraces the “other” does not guarantee that
every individual would uphold a mutual understanding of these values.
One should be prepared to encounter discomforting experiences at any
moment.
Conclusion
So far, this chapter has allowed the reader with insights into my journey in
different intercultural spaces. In this section, I want to reflect on understand-
ing the linkage between “successful teaching/teacher” and intercultural
perspective within the framework of my personal narratives. To that end,
I would like to address the questions I have posed at the beginning of this
chapter: What is the place of intercultural experience within the perception
of “success” in teaching? Does one necessarily become a “successful teacher”
through international mobility?
It is not an easy task to arrive at definitive answers to these questions since
the notion of “successful teaching/teacher” is multiple, situated, designated,
relational, shifting, and negotiated. While certain characteristics, competen-
cies, and experiences may be appreciated as part of the established “success-
ful teaching/teacher” discourses in a particular space and time, in another
they can be disregarded. Therefore, teachers are likely to find themselves in
situations where they have to negotiate between their own perceptions of
“successful teaching/teacher” and the dominant “success” narratives at the
institutional and societal level.
In my case, engaging in the writing of this autoethnography through
revisiting my lived experiences and critically analyzing them engendered
a new level of self-awareness about myself as a novice English language
teacher, who is currently teaching at the tertiary level in Turkey. My jour-
ney in different intercultural spaces has contributed to my personal, pro-
fessional, linguistic, pedagogical, and intercultural development. Having
gained an in-depth awareness of my experiences abroad continue to trans-
late into my teaching pedagogies and conceptions about language teaching.
Based upon my own conceptualization shaped by my intercultural experi-
ences, “successful language teaching” must include intercultural aspects by
fostering intercultural awareness, sensitivity, understanding, and commu-
nication, helping learners’ critically question their cultural and linguistic
identities, promoting activities to question ethnocentric tendencies in order
to help learners develop skills and attitudes to communicate effectively and
appropriately across the complexities of cultural and linguistic borders both
at local and global spheres.
However, within the dynamics of my institutional context, intercultural
perspective is not recognized as part of the “successful teaching” stand-
ards which tend to emphasize mostly improving students’ language pro-
ficiency. This misalignment creates a site of struggle between the self and
institutional dynamics. Although I cannot teach completely independent of
the imposed criteria, I struggle to create opportunities to incorporate my
teaching pedagogies. For instance, despite the contextual limitations, I seek
to implement culturally responsive teaching in my classes which involves
perceiving my students as complex beings representing an amalgam of cul-
tural and linguistic identities as well as striving to create a co-constructed
space where my students can freely voice their opinions. Another example is
that whenever an opportunity arises at my institution, I host workshops to
promote the importance of intercultural perspective in “successful language
teaching.”
Therefore, getting to know our dynamic and multifaceted positionings
can have a profound impact on who we are as teachers and how we teach
as a way to struggle against the constraints we as teachers constantly face
(Farrell, 2017). Such an undertaking would allow teachers to go beyond
the prescribed identity attributions defining who a “successful teacher”
is and empower them to bring their unique experiences as an invalua-
ble resource to their classroom practices to better attain language learn-
ers’ complex needs (Oda, 2017). Through such personal empowerment,
teachers can form a self-understanding of what makes them “successful”
not only based on external standards imposed on them but also by the
qualities they bring into the classroom and their teaching communities
(Çiftçi & Karaman, 2019).
Notes
1 The word kıraathane is a compound word. Kıraat, which is Arabic means “to
read.” Hane, which is Persian means “place, house, location.” Turkish Language
Association defines “kıraathane” as “large, clean, and well-appointed coffee-
house with newspapers, magazines, and books for customers to read.” However,
the coffee house I am referring here is the one where mostly men occupy to
socialize by engaging in various activities, such as playing board games, reading
newspapers, watching television.
2 Pseudonyms are assigned to refer to people throughout the chapter.
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9 Path toward the construction
of a professional identity
A narrative inquiry into a language
teacher’s experiences
Pınar Yeni-Palabıyık
Introduction: Identity
Nowadays, research on teacher identity has received increasing attention
in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
(see, e.g., Aneja, 2016; Swearingen, 2019; Zhang, 2017). A survey of the
field revealed three major areas with respect to the basic features of teacher
identity. First, the nature of professional identity was noted as multidimen-
sional and multifaceted; however, researchers hold opposing views regarding
the construction of sub-identities. At one end of the continuum are those
who argued for the well-balanced nature of sub-identities (Beijaard, Meijer
& Verloop, 2013). At the other one are those who indicated the conflict
between sub-identities (Trent, 2010). Second, there is an emphasis on the
relationship between personal and social dimensions of identity formation.
Several studies focus on personal dimensions such as emotions (O’Connor,
2008; Zembylas, 2003), but the importance of professional context should
also be considered in shaping teacher identity. Third, there is also a relation-
ship between agency and structure in forming identities.
The teachers’ professional identity is accepted as one of the most crucial ele-
ments in their professional development (Mockler, 2011). Recent decades have
witnessed the discussion of “transformative teacher professionalism” intertwined
with teacher professional identity development (Mockler, 2005). This kind of
professionalism has been characterized as collaborative, responsive to change,
inquiry-orientated, and the like (Sachs, 2003). Such a situated, context-specific,
authentic way of professional learning strongly contrasts with the idea of making
a set of core skills and standards (Mockler, 2005, 2011) and perhaps necessitates
a shift in focus within the scope of teacher professional identity research.
Using stories and narratives in research on teacher professional identity
has been justified due mainly to the importance of narrative and dialogue in
the construction of self. This aspect points out small-scale and in-depth char-
acteristics of teacher professional identity research (Beijaard et al., 2013);
therefore, exploring teacher identity with a narrative focus may suit well to
elaborate the process of professional learning moments for teacher profes-
sional identity construction.
156 Pınar Yeni-Palabıyık
Formation of identity-in-practice
Wenger (1998) defines identity as a social concept mainly because “it is
produced as a lived experience of participation in specific communities”
(p. 151) and explains the social dimension of learning by using the term
Community of Practice (CoP). Identity-in-practice has an action-oriented
approach toward identity conception, so Wenger (1998) classifies five main
dimensions of identity: negotiated experiences, community membership, learn-
ing trajectory, nexus of multimembership, and relation between the local and
global. Sachs (2001) further argues that these dimensions can be utilized
when “developing a revised view of professional identity for teachers as these
features address social, cultural and political (macro and micro, individual
and group) aspects of identity formation” (p. 154). In this chapter, these
frames of identity were adopted to explore the professional identity con-
struction of an English language teacher.
Identity as negotiated experiences refers to who we are in terms of how we
experience ourselves through participation and the way we and others reify
ourselves. Participation speaks of the processes of engaging in social activities
and being a community member as a source of identity. Reification means
making something concrete such as categories, labels, narratives of the self,
and self-images. Yet, identity cannot be equated to those reifications; instead,
it is produced as a lived experience of participation in specific communities,
including reifications.
Identity as community membership simply refers to defining ourselves by
the familiar and the unfamiliar. If an individual notes that he/she is a mem-
ber of a certain community, this is not sufficient to form his/her identity,
instead that individual should indicate forms of competence that the com-
munity requires; by this way his/her identity can be formed as community
membership. Three dimensions of identity are suggested to explain the
familiar territory: mutuality of engagement, accountability to an enterprise,
negotiability of a repertoire. It is the mutuality of engagement providing mem-
bers to experience their life as meaningful. Belonging to a certain commu-
nity ensures them to validate their worth. Such experience creates personal
histories of becoming within the CoP. Accountability to an enterprise means
indicating forms of responsibility to contribute to an enterprise. Negotiabil-
ity of a repertoire suggests that individuals gain the ability to interpret and use
the repertoire of the practice that they continuously engage in. Concerning
unfamiliarity, interacting with new practices takes the individual into unfa-
miliar territory, so “our nonmembership shapes our identities through our
confrontation with the unfamiliar” (p. 153).
Identity as learning trajectory involves defining ourselves by where we
have been and where we are going. Identity is a “constant becoming,” so
Wenger (1998) uses the term “trajectory” to explain the ongoing nature of
identity. There can be several different types of trajectories within the com-
munities of practice.
Path toward the construction of a professional identity 157
• Peripheral trajectories. By choice or by necessity, becoming a full mem-
ber of a community of practice might never be possible in some trajec-
tories. However, there can be a sort of access to that community and its
practice; this is sufficient to contribute to one’s identity.
• Inbound trajectories. Newcomers engage in the community as they want
to become full members of its practice; “their identities are invested in
their future participation” (p. 154).
• Insider trajectories. Identity formation does not come to an end when
an individual becomes a full member of a community. Instead, one’s
identity continues to evolve; that is, there are always “new events, new
demands, new inventions, and new generations,” all of which provide
opportunities for renegotiating one’s identity (p. 154).
• Boundary trajectories. Some trajectories are valued only because they
link communities of practice. This sort of practice signifies how delicate
it is to sustain an identity across boundaries.
• Outbound trajectories. Some trajectories drive an individual to leave the
community, “being on the way out of such a community also involves
developing new relationships, finding a different position with respect to
a community, and seeing the world and oneself in new ways” (p. 155).
Engaging in multiple trajectories provides a context to determine what
is potentially significant, indicating learning as identity.
Identity as nexus of multimembership involves the definition of ourselves by

the ways we join our various forms of identity into one identity. There are
two dimensions: identity as multimembership and identity as reconciliation.
The former claims that to be a member of any CoP does not generate the
whole form of our identity. For instance, one’s profession does not form the
entire identity of that person; instead, it is only a part of his/her identity.
Besides, reconciliation does not entail harmony at all times; instead, it sug-
gests finding ways to make various forms of multimembership coexist either
as a successful resolution or a constant struggle.
Identity as a relation between the local and the global refers to the definition
of us by negotiating local ways of belonging to larger groups and establish-
ing broader styles and discourses; it is the interplay between the local and
global. Individuals participate in a CoP to form the picture of a broader
context, or they use the broader context to make sense of their participation
in the local community.
In brief, Wenger’s theory of identity construction in practice offers a pow-
erful framework to explore the lived complexity of teachers’ professional
identity formation. This chapter highlights an English language teacher’s
experiences both as a learner and a teacher, her relationships with family
members, students, colleagues, and her membership in many different com-
munities as well as how all these experiences she gained contributed to her
transformation into a professional teacher.
Narrative inquiry for studying teacher identity
Over the last decades or so, much research has been conducted on teacher
professional identity with a narrative focus (Jiang, Min, Chen & Gong,
2013; Leigh, 2019; Watson, 2006). In terms of identity as a multiple con-
struct, teacher professional identity formation involves sub-components
such as academic identity, teacher identity, and institutional identity (Jiang
et al., 2013). Various factors may shape teacher identity, that is, personal
experience, professional context, and even the external political environment
(Mockler, 2011). Professional identity as a concept is found to be linked to
the professional knowledge and action (Watson, 2006). Space, that is, the
city and the school culture, also influences the teacher’s professional identity
construction either positively or negatively (Leigh, 2019).
In a systematic review of research on foreign language teacher identity in
Turkey, the need for research on professionalism and teacher identity was
highlighted (Taner & Karaman, 2013). In a more recent systematic review
article on non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in L2 school
contexts has called for research on NNESTs’ professional identities; besides,
while small-scale qualitative research methodologies have been adopted
much, employing narrative inquiry is less in the area of NNEST identity
research (Yuan, 2019). Therefore, exploring stories of an NNEST by using
narrative inquiry may provide valuable insights on teacher education research
and methodology. In this chapter, I aim to inquire into the professional iden-
tity construction of a language teacher, Elif1, from Turkey. Elif presents the
characteristics of a professional teacher endowed with professional autonomy
(Güven, 2010). In addition to possessing a career plan (Güven, 2010) and
following a continuous professional development path (Özdemir, 2016), she
defines herself as a researcher of her practice, which has become very popu-
lar in recent decades (see, e.g., Sachs, 2016). It is hoped that exploring the
journey of an experienced teacher working at a state high school may bring
valuable insights for those who are in their initial years of profession and
teacher candidates.
Method
This study investigated the identity construction of a teacher through narrative
inquiry. Life story approach was adopted to explain a teacher’s story of her life
(Ojermark, 2007). An English language teacher was chosen because she can
be presented as an outstanding case to illustrate the types of challenges and
motivation in becoming an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teacher in the
context of state schools in Turkey. In-depth phenomenological interviewing
(Seidman, 2006) was performed to collect data; three semi-structured interviews
were conducted. In addition, a few exam papers, recent curriculum vitae, and a
trainee’s report written about the participant, Elif, were used to enrich the data
gathered from the interviews. Interviews were conducted in Turkish. In this
paper, I have translated all quotations from Turkish into English.
Given that good teachers have strong teaching skills and positive per-
sonality traits (Thompson, 2008), Elif defines herself with her hands full of
materials. She considers her students’ needs and interests in designing her
instruction (e.g., using instructional technology). She also develops personal
relationships with her students by visiting their world outside school (e.g.,
staying at the dormitory). While there may be some limitations in becoming
a successful teacher due to standardized movements (e.g., standardized test-
ing, mandated curricula), a teacher with intrinsic motivation can find a way
to become a professional with her attempts such as participating in projects
and teacher training activities.
I met Elif during my participation in a project about teaching English as
a lingua franca concept. We were the trainees in the piloting period. The
project was kind of an in-service teacher training program that required par-
ticipation on a voluntary basis; the participants were grouped by institutions
they worked. As Elif and I work for Ministry of National Education (MoNE),
we were in the same group. At that time, I observed her as a person who was
eager to participate in projects related to her profession; she was also very
cooperative and meticulously fulfilled her responsibilities.
Thematic analysis (Barkhuizen, Benson & Chick, 2014) as well as “time”
and “place” techniques (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) were blended to
analyze the data. Data were read several times to form initial codes, then
described by placing it in time and space. “Place” referred to the places she
grew up, educated, started profession, and teaching at the time span of data
collection. “Time” referred to the narrator’s stories in the past, present, and
future. Data were restored under two emerging themes: Elif’s path toward
becoming a professional teacher, Elif’s construction of teacher identity, also
interpreted according to the framework suggested by Wenger (1998) to
uncover the professional identity of the narrator.
A narrative analysis of Elif’s identity construction

Elif was born in Eskişehir, a city located in the central region of Turkey.
She started primary school there; she attended secondary education exams
and achieved success. She enrolled in Eskişehir Anatolian High School, at
that time education period lasted for eight years together with preparatory
class, so she started to learn English at the age of 12 in a preparatory class.
Graduating from high school, she enrolled in Education Faculty of Anadolu
University in Eskişehir.
Holding a bachelor’s degree in English Language Teaching (ELT), Elif
started her profession at Heybeliada Navy School, a military school in Istan-
bul. Until she was retired, she worked for Beşiktaş Anatolian High School,
Kabatas High School for Boys and Istanbul High School for Boys, all of
which are academic upper secondary state schools located in Istanbul, Tur-
key. Students were able to enroll in these schools by passing secondary edu-
cation examination with very high scores after elementary school. When I
jotted down her story, Elif was 47 years old, and she had more than 20 years
of experience. She was married and had a son. She had been working for
Kabatas high for eight years. Contrary to its name, Kabatas high is a co-edu-
cational school with five years of education, including preparatory class. The
school has a boarding part; there are students from all over the country. The
school has its foundation, alumni, and Parent-Teacher Association.
Elif’s path toward becoming a professional teacher

Teaching as a profession had never attracted Elif’s attention when she was
a high-school student. In her last year at high school, she took university
entrance examination, and she selected teaching as her last choice since she
had always dreamed of becoming a doctor. As for a teaching subject area, she
chose teaching English, because she felt herself competent in English. She
enrolled in the ELT Department of Anadolu University.
Her decision to be a teacher emerged not before her last year at the uni-
versity because she was not aware of the true feel of the teaching profession
previously. As an undergraduate student, Elif and her classmates used to
learn the history of English language, linguistics, and phonetics as part of
language teaching. However, in her senior year, she took a practicum course
and learned how to prepare lesson plans and how to put the theory into
practice. As a senior student, she felt herself more relaxed in the practicum
courses, and she realized that those courses were more engaging for her, so
she started to think of teaching as a profession suitable for her.
After graduation, she started her career as a teacher at the military school.
At that time, the techniques that they used to teach English were the same
as those she had been taught; audio-lingual method. When she was a stu-
dent in high school, they had a language laboratory and headphones there.
They used to learn the language with the “parroting technique,” based on
memorization. During her initial years of teaching, Elif’s instruction was
similar; it was traditional and mainly based on the coursebook centered on
memorization. Some parts of the course books were written in phonetics,
and their exams included writing phonetics and grammar. Joint examination
procedure was conducted in that school (Heybeliada); she needed to arrange
her instruction in accordance with her colleagues who were teaching English
at the same grade level. Therefore, her instruction focused on memorization,
repetition, grammar, and translation.
Recognizing the inadequacy of these techniques, she decided to develop
herself. While searching for alternatives, she was informed about a seminar in
a bookshop by chance, she went, and her professional development journey
started. Then she started to attend seminars at the British Council (BC). As
she was a teacher from a public school, BC encouraged her participation in
seminars by providing some courses free of charge for her.
While she was working at the military school, she met her husband, and
they got married. At the end of her second year in the profession, her hus-
band encouraged her to get a degree at Marine Management because he was
a naval officer. However, the military school did not permit her to enroll in a
graduate program. Therefore, she was inducted to Beşiktaş Anatolian High
School, and she earned her master’s degree in the area of shipping finance.
Completing the master’s program, she changed her profession and started
to work as an editor at the magazine “Computer World.” However, she real-
ized that she was employed as a reporter, and her salary was often not paid
on time. She also had a newborn baby, and she realized that she got used to
the teaching profession.
Elif, then, returned to teaching and started to work at Beşiktaş again.
Going on her way to become a professional in her area, she met teacher
candidates from the ELT Department of a university in İstanbul who came
to her school as a trainee. She met their supervisor, who was an expert in
teaching English by using stories and drama. She was an academician whose
latch string was always out. She invited Elif to her practicum courses, and
she went. Their interaction influenced her in using stories and drama for
language teaching; for instance, she learned how to practice “fishbowl activ-
ity.” She said: “I now hold that drama should be included in ELT, but at the
beginning of my profession I was like how can I play drama, I’m a teacher,
how can it be possible?” Besides, that academician shared her students’ les-
son plans, and Elif used the drama exercises of these plans in her classes.
Based on her experience, she emphasized the importance of university and
school connection for teachers’ professional development.
Over the years, as she gained experience, Elif developed a sense of profes-
sionalism in many respects. First, the study of language skills rather than the
discrete items of language (i.e., grammar) became more prominent in her
instruction. She recognized the inadequacy of using the coursebook only;
instead, she preferred to prepare her materials as an addition to the syllabus.
As joint examination procedure was conducted in her school (Kabatas), they
needed to prepare a single syllabus. Even so, she made her additions to
enrich her courses related to the themes introduced in the syllabus. In the
joint examination, the students were responsible for the themes introduced
in the syllabus. Nevertheless, Elif’s students were also responsible for the
extra resources and activities she covered in her classes as part of perfor-
mance work.
Second, Elif understands teaching as a concept intertwined with real life.
She used a short story about a forgetful grandfather, and then they watched
a video focusing on Alzheimer’s disease. While they were discussing the mat-
ter, one student mentioned reading news in a newspaper about a celebrity
who had Alzheimer’s a few days ago. Therefore, language became a tool to
raise awareness in life matters, and Elif brought the real world into her class-
room by initiating a discussion on such a crucial aspect.
Third, Elif understands English as a language for communication, as long
as the students continue to communicate, she does not interrupt them to
correct their errors on pronunciation, but she used to focus on perfect speak-
ing and correct pronunciation in the first years of her profession. Even if she
used to conceptualize English as a language of British or American com-
munity, she now understands it as a language spoken all over the world; she
prefers to use listening materials, including conversation among people from
different countries.
Elif emphasizes speaking perhaps because she felt herself incompetent
throughout her language learning span in this area. She applied for a Euro-
pean Union Funded (Comenius Program) Project, and she went to Oxford,
U.K., to attend a teacher training program for two weeks. In this program,
she was introduced to “Social English” and realized the importance of speak-
ing skills. She learned how to teach conversational skills. She then started a
master’s program in ELT, which helped to connect her practices with theory.
Elif also participated in a seminar about impromptu speech in English,
which was held by English-Speaking Union2. As they already had the Turk-
ish Debate Society in their school, she decided to found the English Public
Speech Club as part of this society. These two clubs were merged and named
“Debate Society” to equip students with debating skills both in Turkish and
English. Her rationale for founding this club was to enable students to prac-
tice English outside the classroom. They even went to Germany to attend an
international English debate competition.
As she still feels herself incompetent in speaking, she tried to connect her
courses to that “Debate Society.” She used the discussions of that club to enrich
her classes in speaking. Besides, she required the carpenter in her school to craft
a “speech platform.” She was the only teacher in her school, possessing a speech
platform. She took the platform into the class and assigned her students to pres-
ent their projects on this platform. In this way, both she and her students got the
opportunity to speak not in the classroom but on the stage, in a sense.
The shift from traditional to more skill-based instruction was also reflected
in Elif’s examination style. She used to prepare grammar-based exams, includ-
ing rewriting sentences, filling in the blanks with correct verbs according to
tense. She used to name her exams as “First Term Fourth Written Exam,”
yet her last exam titled “1st Term 2nd English (Skills) Exam,” which was
sufficient to observe the change from traditional to skills-focused practices.
Elif’s exams open a promising perspective for assessment and evaluation.
Her grading system on writing is based on three criteria: good, better, best.
There was no worse, no right or wrong choice, she had a process approach
toward assessment, and she tried to motivate her students by using only a
positive criterion of assessment. She participated in an online open course
focusing on teacher training; in that course, she was evaluated based on three
criteria levels: good, better, and best. This aspect motivated her a lot, and she
decided to use it to assess her students.
Elif participated in another training program on testing and evaluation
organized by MoNE. She learned how to use Bloom’s taxonomy in this
training. She prepared her last examination based on this taxonomy3. For
the comprehension level, Elif asked the students to write the summary of the
video about Alzheimer’s that they watched beforehand.
Previously, Prof. Paul Kei Matsuda visited her school and gave a talk on
writing assessment. In this seminar, she got the vision that students should
not be limited to a certain topic to write; instead, they should choose what
to write. In her last exam, she gave all the vocabulary of the topic that they
were addressed in the class and asked the students to choose six of them and
write dialogue by using these words.
When she recognized her students’ emphasis on achieving success in
school only rather than the gist of learning, she took a video named “not yet
or now” to change her students’ viewpoint. The video was about grading in
general; a professor suggests writing “not yet” in students’ school reports
instead of certain grades. She got her students to watch the video just before
the exam week, and they discussed the matter in class.
In reality, making use of technological resources in her instruction was some-
thing indispensable for Elif as she said, “you cannot reach that generation if you
do not have the technology.” As a teacher of adolescents, she sought ways of
avoiding being perceived as a boring teacher. This is because she remembers get-
ting bored a lot when she was a student. Once she used an article on pollution as
a reading exercise, but her students complained about getting bored. Then she
found herself having to use technology. She prefers to use a web-based learning
platform named “Edmodo.” She used it for the listening part of an exam. She
downloaded a proficiency test preparation video and uploaded it to the Edmodo
space, and then students listened to the material and answered the questions.
Besides, she formed a mobile instant messaging platform with her students in
the preparatory class. This way, her students can get in contact with her anytime
they need it. Also, she uses an online file sharing platform. Her students are con-
nected to this platform. Students upload some of their assignments there; Elif
reads them online and gives feedback on this online platform.
After attending another teacher training seminar held at Robert College,
she decided to introduce the learning platform (Moodle) that was intro-
duced during the seminar to her school (Kabatas). With the principal’s per-
mission, she met the Parent-Teacher Association and introduced Moodle.
The computer technologies teacher volunteered to support the installation,
so their school obtained the Moodle software.
As a teacher who truly enjoys teaching, Elif had never tried to limit her
attention to a certain group of students. Her school (Kabatas) used to have
a private kindergarten branch, and she taught English courses there for two
years. This experience helped her to realize the instructional differences
related to adolescents and young learners.
Elif also viewed the teaching profession as a part of her personal life.
She said, “teaching is a profession that lasts 24 hours a day.” I was able to
see Elif’s emphasis on this when she invited me to a private university for
our second interview. Some students had participated in a competition at
that university, and they asked Elif to accompany them. When I saw her,
she looked very tired. She said, “I stayed at the dormitory last night, and
I couldn’t sleep well. Even if I’m not responsible for it, I cannot reject my
students’ request because they need me.”
Elif described herself as a learner of teaching. She said, “I learn while I’m
teaching; I’m a teacher and a learner at the same time.” Building on such
an aspect, the shift from a technicist to a professional was observed in Elif’s
practices. Among such practices are integrating technology into her instruc-
tion, intense focus on the study of speaking skill, connecting practice with
theory, addressing language skills both in her instruction and assessment, and
understanding English as a language of the world. Thus, she constructed her
unique way of teaching style by adapting and internalizing all those learning
processes into her teaching practices.
Elif’s construction of teacher identity

The process of exploring new practices helped Elif as a teacher to construct
her teacher identity professionally. Her teacher identity construction was
influenced by her personality, motherhood, and even her experiences as
a student. First, being a mother influences Elif’s teaching. She said, “my
son says, ‘I’m an individual, you have to accept me as I’m, and you should
respect me.’ My students have the same expectation as well.”
Elif met several individuals during her studenthood, and they contrib-
uted to her teaching journey. Her primary school teacher encouraged her
to sit for secondary education examinations. She felt herself indebted to her
teacher because she used to live with her grandmother; her parents were in
Germany. Elif was able to become aware of the examination and sit for it
with her teacher’s help. She attended prep class in high school. Her teacher
was a fascinating lady; she lived abroad (in the U.K.) for a while and had just
returned at that time. She impressed Elif because “she did not practice what
should be done; she tried to teach the subjects of the book in a different
manner. We had a language laboratory, and she led us to listen to the mate-
rials that she brought from the U.K.” Observing such a teacher might cause
Elif to have an intrinsic motivation to enrich her lessons with extra resources
and materials instead of being bounded by the coursebook only.
Also, several academicians contributed to Elif’s teacher identity construction.
She met the academician, who was an expert in using drama in language teach-
ing. She invited Elif to her presentations at ELT conferences and her courses at
the university. Her path crossed with another academician who was an expert in
the area of World Englishes at a colloquium at Boğaziçi University. While she
was explaining the problems that she experienced in MoNE, that academician
invited her to a training program. The purpose was to educate ELT teachers on
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) paradigm. In this program, they read ELF-re-
lated articles on an online platform; they shared how to practice those theories
in the classroom; they prepared activities and practiced them in their courses
as ELF-aware teachers. She named herself as “ELF-aware teacher.” She partic-
ipated in the ELF7 conference held in Greece as a presenter. She shared her
ELF-aware lesson plans and the video recordings of her courses. She said, “this
was a very effective training because we were the first teachers sharing the praxis
dimension of ELF; up until then, just the theory dimension was discussed.”
Elif presented a single identity coupled with lots of identities like a teacher,
student, and even a researcher sometimes. She continuously searched for new
ways to enrich her instruction; for example, she was curious about “flipped
classrooms.” Her identity moved from teacher to learner in the “Debate
Society.” She stated,
one of my students runs her peers at English Debate, and every week I
take a seat and listen to that student together with others. I mean, I con-
fuse the teacher model in the students’ mind, and I do this on purpose.
Elif has never been a typical teacher who believes in teaching as her sole respon-
sibility. She has always taken an active role in various positions related to her
profession such as mentoring, teacher training, and moderating a webinar. She
had a certificate of mentorship awarded by MoNE. She had teacher candidates
from the ELT Department of Boğaziçi University. They regularly observed
her classes, and one teacher candidate interviewed her and wrote a report. The
candidate described her by noting “like a painter like a teacher” to explain the
bidirectional nature of teaching. Elif learned something while teaching just like
an artist who got painted while painting the artifact.
Apart from mentoring, she had considerable experience in teacher training.
Her training experience began with her participation in the program organ-
ized by MoNE, supported by the World Bank. She applied for the program,
and after completing her training session, she started to work as a trainer
in addition to her regular classroom teaching. However, she could practice
only one teacher training seminar in Istanbul. When she was required to give
training in different cities of Turkey, she decided to put an end to this expe-
rience. She then became a testing trainer for MoNE and organized testing
and evaluation training for the teachers in her region.
Elif participated in a blended teacher training program organized by Rob-
ert College. They first attended the face-to-face session, and then they stud-
ied with Robert College teachers via an online learning management system,
“Moodle.” At the end of the course, she was qualified as a teacher trainer and
went to Gaziantep, a province located in the southern part of the country.
She said, “we shared our studies with the teachers there. I also shared what I
experienced while I was trained at Robert College. We gave online feedback
to each other. I mean, we learned while we are teaching.” Being satisfied
with sharing her knowledge and experiences, Elif believed that her teacher
training experiences broadened her horizon.
Elif also had a moderating experience on a webinar organized by BC.
Before the praxis, BC led her to get online training from an expert on webi-
nars. She carried out the webinar under the control of an employee from BC.
She said, “in essence, I’m getting pushed into this situation. From now on, I
learned lots of things and came to an efficient point, so I need to share them
now.” She put an end to her words by saying “to participate in lots of things
perhaps being unsuccessful sometimes, but with its different contributions
offer to achieve success for the next step in a sense.”
In brief, Elif’s teacher identity construction was influenced by multiple
identities. Among such is her identity as a mother or a learner, and even
her professional experiences as a mentor and a teacher trainer. Also, several
individuals, she met influenced her teacher identity construction. Her teacher
identity even reflected inspiring teachers she met when she was a student at
primary and secondary schools.
Discussion
Elif’s stories exemplify the five dimensions of identity as negotiated experi-
ence, community membership, learning trajectory, nexus of multimember-
ship, and relation between the local and global (Wenger, 1998). From this
perspective, participation, competence, and multimembership are central to
identity construction together with local and global interrelations. All these
pieces of identity help to reflect professionalism, which is transformative.
Participation, reification, competence, and multimembership

Participation in a community and reification are two sources of identity for-
mation (Wenger, 1998). Elif’s identity was constructed via her experience
in English-Speaking Union. She participated in this activity and became a
community member via establishing the “English Debate” in her school; she
also reified her participation by crafting a “speech platform” for her classes
to practice discussion. However, participation in a community is insufficient
to prove membership in a real sense, so individuals should present a compe-
tence on their participation (Wenger, 1998). Elif’s moderating experience of
a webinar indicated her competence in her participation in a society (British
Council) as part of community membership.
Besides, she accepted to be a trainer after Robert College’s seminar indi-
cated her competence in accountability to an enterprise as it refers to taking
responsibility in contributing to an enterprise. Her interaction with the teach-
ers in Gaziantep by giving feedback to their materials reciprocally reflected her
identity formation as a community membership by mutual engagement, which
means learning how to engage in action with other people. Elif has regularly
participated in lots of seminars and training, and she learned new ways of
assessment there such as Bloom’s taxonomy, then she adapted this taxonomy
into her assessment as part of the negotiability of a repertoire suggesting the
ability to interpret and use the practices that are continuously engaged in.
The impact of unfamiliarity on an individual’s identity formation is
another facet discussed by Wenger (1998). Elif ’s experience in teaching
English to young learners at the kindergarten took her into the unfamil-
iar territory as a nonmember because she had always taught English to
adolescents till then. Even so, she enjoyed her experience and transmitted
what she learned into her instruction with adolescents. Elif ’s narrative also
indicated an identity formation via multimembership with a successful reso-
lution; her transitions from teacher to different roles were resolved in one
identity. She internalized her experience of multimembership and transmit-
ted her experiences as a mother, learner, or trainer to construct her identity
as a teacher.
Learning as identity, interconnectedness of local and
global relations
Multiple learning trajectories were drawn to explain the construction of
learning as identity (Wenger, 1998). Elif’s professional identity construc-
tion was influenced by many learning trajectories, as well. Her interaction
with the academician, who was an expert in teaching language via drama,
influenced her in many respects. Elif participated in her classes and observed
various teaching activities as part of the peripheral trajectory, which refers to
an individual’s participation in a trajectory but not in a full sense. Then she
transmitted her experiences as a learner to her classes by using activities such
as “fishbowl” as an insider trajectory. This practice meant that Elif practiced
new events and new demands in her class as a trajectory different from the
one she participated in the supervisor’s class. In essence, Elif’s mentoring
experience caused her interaction with that academician formed the bound-
ary trajectory. Mentoring experience served to link the trajectories of periph-
eral and insider.
Elif had to seek a new teaching position as she was not permitted for
graduate studies while working at the military school. Leaving the military
community caused her to develop new relationships in MoNE as a new
community, so appointment experience was reflected as an outbound tra-
jectory in Elif’s identity construction. She participated in the ELF project,
and she invested her time and effort to become a full member of this trajec-
tory as a newcomer. She prepared ELF-focused activities and practiced them
in her classes. Then, she shared her experience at a conference reflecting
inbound trajectory, which refers to participation in a community to become
a full member as a newcomer. Thus, Elif’s identity was invested in her future
participation in ELF though her participation in the beginning was periph-
eral as a trainee.
Elif’s identity reflected a bridge between real life and the classroom. As
part of the storybook, she aroused her students’ attention to a serious issue
in today’s world ‘Alzheimer’s.’ The disease, as a broader context, was used to
make sense of the participation in the classroom as part of the local commu-
nity. Global and local relations were interrelated in her instruction, forming
her professional identity.
Transformative teacher professionalism

Above mentioned points indicated construction of a professional identity.
Even if the teaching practices as a novice teacher reflected “best practices
agenda,” meaning prescribing what to do (C. Karaman, personal communi-
cation, October 1, 2014), her identity showed a transformation leading to
a teacher identity characterized by professionalism. Elif’s narrative indicated
a professional teacher’s characteristics, so she did not limit her way of teach-
ing to the standards like the coursebook, syllabus, etc. She considered her
students’ needs and interests, and she integrated technological devices into
her instruction. All these visions, perspectives, and experiences are defining
features of her identity as a professional teacher possessing the capacity to
generate situation-specific ideas (Kumaravadivelu, 2006) to solve the prob-
lems that emerge in the teaching context.
Elif’s profile represented professionalism independent in nature since
independent professionalism refers to the ability “to take action to effect
change where appropriate” (Leug, 2009, p. 53). As an ELF-aware teacher,
she tried to enrich her courses by presenting language-related materials dif-
ferent from the native speaker norms. She considered English as the lan-
guage of communication, so she questioned the native speaker norms in
theory and enriched her instruction with resources involving various forms
of English (i.e., World Englishes).
The dichotomy between theory and practice relationship in teacher edu-
cation (see, e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2006) has been successfully resolved
in Elif’s journey of becoming a teacher. By enrolling in a master’s program
in ELT, Elif got the opportunity to connect her practices with a theory that
enabled her to theorize her personal practical knowledge. Therefore, she had
the chance to internalize theoretical practical knowledge. Her way of assess-
ment organized following Bloom’s taxonomy indicated her internalization
and use of theoretical practical knowledge, which formed one of the pieces
of professional identity construction of a teacher. Besides, her continuous
struggle to practice theory in her classes was reflected in her conference pres-
entation as an ELF-aware teacher serving a bridge between the ideal and the
real (Burns, 2009).
Language as social practice posited “meaning resides not in the grammar
of the language, or in its vocabulary, or in the head of an individual, but in
the everyday activities that individuals engage in” (Johnson, 2009, p. 44).
Elif presented the social facet of the language by providing her learners the
chance to use it in a real sense. Even if she started her courses with a lan-
guage-focused exercise (e.g., a storybook), she took the course to discuss
current issues like “Alzheimer’s,” indicating her emphasis on conceptual
meanings rather than the discrete forms of the language. She also founded
the “English Debate” to present her students the opportunity to use the
language in everyday practice.
Change is indispensable in the journey toward becoming a professional,
and Elif indicated changes in her “beliefs preceding her practices” (C. Kara-
man, personal communication, October 8, 2014). Elif constructed the pro-
fessional identity of a teacher who had inner power to change her beliefs and
practices which can be observed in her attitude toward using drama in teach-
ing English. Despite all her efforts toward professionalism, Elif did not view
herself as an expert in her profession; instead, she had a process approach
toward her profession, continuously searching for and learning new ways
to develop herself. In brief, based on all these frames of reference, “trans-
formative teacher professionalism” (Sachs, 2003) is observed in Elif’s story
starting from her novice years as a technicist to her current practices with a
professional profile.
Conclusion
This chapter described the story of becoming a teacher by investigating a
teacher’s professional identity formation process. Elif’s story embodies sev-
eral professional learning moments for those searching for how to become
a professional teacher. Becoming a professional teacher necessitates taking
responsibility and taking an active role in various positions related to the pro-
fession. Also, change in beliefs is a must to change the practices. To do this,
teachers or teacher candidates must continuously question their teaching
methods and have an intrinsic motivation to search for different ideas and
practices. Another crucial point is Elif’s emphasis on school and university
connection. Therefore, graduates of teaching departments should move on
to their professional development either by enrolling in graduate programs
or seeking other professional development opportunities.
In brief, Elif’s story presented that the journey of making the transition
from a technicist teacher equipped with best practices to a professional one
is a bumpy road demanding lots of qualifications. There must be inner
motivation to learn and to change as a first step. Second, the accumula-
tion of knowledge in areas of technology, pedagogy, subject matter, etc. are
required. Third, the resolution of multiple identities in a single identity is a
must to form a professional identity. Last, teaching vision of a teacher and
encountering inspiring teachers in different phases of teaching adventure
influence a teacher’s identity construction in a positive manner.
Notes
1 A pseudonym.
2 A charity working to give young people the speaking and listening skills and the
cross-cultural understanding they need to thrive.
3 The taxonomy includes six cognitive sessions from simple to complex: knowl-
edge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
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10 “Successful teaching”
Neoliberal influences and emerging
counter-narratives
Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi and A. Cendel Karaman
Introduction
The current political, social, and economic climate is characterized by var-
iegated forms of neoliberalism that is considered to be the latest dominant
form of the capitalist economy (Block, 2018; Fairclough, 2010; Harvey,
2005). With the spirit of the free market and free trade, the neoliberal con-
dition not only pervades the economic realm but also permeates into vari-
ous domains of human lives (Holborow, 2015). Having a protean nature,
neoliberalism continues to promote and extoll several market-based notions
such as individual autonomy, entrepreneurship, competition, investment,
innovation, and so on (Brenner, Peck, & Theodore, 2010; Springer, 2012).
However, such emphasis on self-interested, isolated individuals tends to
mask rising unemployment rates among certain social groups and economic
inequality that has been accelerated mainly by neoliberal practices in the last
three decades (Block, 2018; Chun, 2017; Piketty, 2014).
Characterized by self-centered rationalities and devaluing of the public
good, neoliberal practices can also be traced within global inequalities in
access to food, shelter, income, education, and health care. Despite these
patterns, neoliberal ideology, through concerted efforts by several transna-
tional and national entities, has become the common sense that influences
individuals’ interpretations of and approaches to realities (Block, 2018, Dar-
dot & Laval, 2014; Gramsci, 1971; Hall & O’Shea, 2013; Harvey, 2005;
Holborow, 2015). As Gramsci noted, common sense is “the incoherent set
of generally held assumptions and beliefs common to any given society”
(Gramsci, 1971, p. 323). For Gramsci, people who align well with the com-
mon sense that is dominant depending on the historical stage of a capi-
talist society tend to develop uncritical and incoherent conceptions of the
world and view power, domination, and inequality as part of a natural order
instead of as part of complex historical, economic, political, social, and cul-
tural processes. The core tenets of the global neoliberal ideology seem to
have achieved such a dominant, hegemonic status in people’s lives although
its representations may vary depending on the local context (Block, 2018;
Chun, 2017; Gramsci, 1971; Hall & O’Shea, 2013; Holborow, 2015). In
many places in the world, the global systemic power disparities have largely
“Successful teaching” 173
been erased from the public discourses to prioritize “the supreme worth of
the neoliberal individual” (Harvey, 2005, p. 21) and to foster “a program of
the methodical destruction of collectives” (Bourdieu, 1998).
Considering its hegemonic, common sense status and therefore its incur-
sion into “almost every single aspect of our lives,” we cannot evaluate edu-
cational practices outside the neoliberal fabric (Shamir, 2008, p. 3). In that
regard, contemporary schooling systems also tend to reinforce neoliberal
conditions by usually highlighting “the cultural knowledge and values of the
group of individuals who politically and economically control society” (Jen-
link, 2017, p. 166) and by relegating social justice discourses to insignificant
positions in educational practices (Apple, 2004; Giroux, 2013). Within this
climate, teachers’ roles have been largely framed by technical, managerial,
and instrumental understandings of education.
Guided by prescribed “skill-sets” that mostly target “cognitive” skills, teach-
ers are expected to prepare students for a global workforce and raise individu-
als who aim to be the entrepreneur of their lives and follow a lifelong learning
path through selfish rationalities detached from compassion for others and the
common good. Many teachers are then inclined to comply with the account-
ability measures that are accompanied by imposed standards, managerial con-
trol systems, business discourses of effectiveness, and resulting imaginaries and
construction of “best practices” or “successful teaching” (Apple, 2017; Ball,
2016; Baltodano, 2012; Buchanan, 2015; Connell, 2009; De Lissovoy, 2008;
Fenwick, 2003; Giroux, 2013; Hara & Sherbine, 2018; Jenlink, 2017; Loh &
Hu, 2014; Mooney Simmie, Moles, & O’Grady, 2019; Reeves, 2018; Sker-
ritt, 2019; Sleeter, 2009). Therefore, moral, epistemic, and political discourses
of education (e.g., social justice orientation, locally relevant curriculum and
pedagogies, sense of community, and so on) have been subordinated to mar-
ket-dominated discourses that emphasize self-interested individuals, quantifia-
ble outputs, standards, competition, and corollary corporate benefits (Jenlink,
2017). In such an “audit culture” detached from moral and liberating under-
takings (Freire, 2005), “successful teaching” becomes mainly a “matter of
standardized, research-based instruction, which can be verified with students'
standardized exam scores” (Reeves, 2018, p. 105). In this respect, common-
sensical narratives of “successful teaching” with no references to the neoliberal
influence may bring complicity with these neoliberal agendas.
In this chapter, next, we clarify our mode of inquiry or inspiration and
elaborate on the history of neoliberalism in order to be able to position
our later discussions in a broader historical, political, societal, and economic
context. Then, we continue to discuss the neoliberal influence on educa-
tional domains in detail and critically evaluate the construction of “successful
teaching” under neoliberal conditions and current power mechanisms. While
delineating these patterns of neoliberal influence on educational domains,
we share examples from other chapters in order to illustrate and locate these
patterns in specific narratives. Since the macro ideological structures such
as neoliberalism attempt to invade micro-realities, tracing the neoliberal
influence within the micro-realities or narratives of teachers can indeed be
174 Emrullah Yasin Çiftçi and A. Cendel Karaman
a fruitful endeavor to understand the patterns of neoliberal influence and
possible counter-narratives and acts.
On the other hand, due to the incoherent, incomplete, and contradictory
nature of common sense (Gramsci, 1971), neoliberalism is always vulnerable
to contestation and resistance (Ball, 2016; Burns, 2018; Chun, 2017; Davies
& Bansel, 2007; Fairclough, 2010; Hara & Sherbine, 2018; McInerney,
2007; Willis, Smith, & Stenning, 2008), meaning also that counter-hegem-
onic discourses or counter-narratives challenging its dominance and influ-
ence are possible. Considering this possibility, we put forward that teachers
may be inclined to comply with neoliberal demands on education, yet this
does not mean that they cannot provide any counter-narrative challenging
neoliberal practices. Therefore, in this chapter, following our discussions on
the neoliberal incursion into educational domains with examples found in
other chapters, we also aim to offer patterns of counter-narratives that again
emerge from the narratives of the teachers given in other chapters in this
book. After these discussions that strive to preserve an unbridled focus on
hope, we share our concluding remarks.
The aims of this chapter closely relate to the concerns and discussions
of several other contributions in this book such as Gershon (Chapter 2),
Mooney Simmie (Chapter 1), and Moreira, Anunciato, and Viana (Chap-
ter 3). Nevertheless, with our particular focus on the patterns of neolib-
eral influence and counter-narratives that emerged mainly from the studies
in this volume, our chapter not only brings a macro critique/support to
micro-narratives but also supports these other conceptually oriented chap-
ters in a synergic manner against this strong attack on the soul of teach-
ing (Zeichner, 2014). In this respect, all chapters together in this book
can have substantial implications for further discussions in similar and/
or different contexts in terms of striving to protect the liberating soul of
teaching.
For our inquiry in this chapter, epistemically, we refer to the paradigm of
critical discourse studies (CDS). In particular, Gramscian tools help identify
discourses and practices of neoliberal influence and emerging counter-nar-
ratives and acts against this influence. We discuss our mode of inquiry or
inspiration in detail in the next section, which is followed respectively by a
brief history of neoliberalism, neoliberal influence on education, emerging
counter-narratives, and concluding remarks.
Mode of inspiration: Critical discourse studies

As a research paradigm, CDS is an interdisciplinary approach that seeks
to identify and investigate “issues of ideology, power and inequality”
(Flowerdew & Richardson, 2018, p. 1) through systematic investigations of
semiotic data in various forms such as visual, spoken, and written. Thanks to
its rich intellectual history and strong relations with critical social theories,
CDS is a respected field in terms of investigating ideologies and power that
are infused into discourses at different interrelated scales such as macro,
meso, and micro (Fairclough, 2010; Rogers, 2009; Wodak & Meyer, 2016).
CDS can help researchers investigate the existence, emergence, or absence
of dominant discourses such as neoliberalism in different domains of human
lives. It can also assist in identifying emerging counter-discourses or critical
perspectives against dominating or disempowering discourses. In this respect,
CDS does not remain only in the realm of analysis but also aims to stimulate
social change.
Considering its critical attitude and a keen interest in issues related to
power and ideology, CDS proposes no single established empirical method
to collect and analyze data (Wodak & Meyer, 2016). Similarly, our reli-
ance on CDS in this chapter is not strictly methodological but instrumen-
tal because it has inspired and informed us to seek and identify non-linear
interactions between transnational macro structures (neoliberal ideology in
particular) and teacher narratives that may reflect such macro influences.
While our inquiry does not involve conducting a full-fledged critical dis-
course study, combined with Gramscian tools, the paradigm of CDS is a per-
tinent approach for our analytical trajectory. We employ some of the critical
perspectives and tools offered by this rich research paradigm.
In this chapter, we do not conduct a micro linguistic analysis but a
broad analysis of the neoliberal influence and meaning-making in educa-
tional domains. While moving between those interrelated scales of power
relations and exploring non-linear interactions, we rely on two particular
Gramscian intellectual tools: common sense and good sense. These intellec-
tual tools help analyze discourses of reproductive dominant ideologies and
counter-discourses and acts challenging dominant hegemonic constella-
tions. Gramsci’s common sense and good sense help discuss patterns that
can be located between the two poles of a continuum: domination and
resistance.
As noted earlier, Gramscian common sense is “the incoherent set of gen-
erally held assumptions and beliefs common to any given society” (Gramsci,
1971, p. 323), and neoliberal ideology seems to have achieved a dominant
common sense status. Therefore, influenced by neoliberal common sense,
people tend to develop uncritical and incoherent conceptions of the world.
However, since no ideological work or domination is complete, common
sense is not immune to contestation and resistance. Every individual holds
the potential to critically evaluate commonsensical influences and therefore
to resist dehumanizing conditions. In such instances of critical examination
and possible action, Gramsci (1971) asserts that good sense emerges, which
is “the healthy nucleus that exists in ‘common sense’” (p. 328) and deserves
“to be made more unitary and coherent” (p. 328). For our aims in this chap-
ter, we argue that neoliberal common sense may invoke certain images of
“successful” teaching that would align with neoliberal ideals. Neoliberalism
seems to have a significant ideological influence over educational domains
in current schooling systems, but counter-narratives are possible and indeed
they are emerging and highly visible, as we will discuss in this chapter with
examples from other studies in this volume. The next section offers further
introductory explication on neoliberalism and several influential theories.
This is followed by an interpretation of the major influences of neoliberalism
on the construction of “successful teaching” and several patterns of coun-
ter-narratives or alternative understandings of “success” against the philoso-
phy of neoliberalism in teaching.
A brief introduction to neoliberalism and theories of

neoliberalism1
Theoretical roots of current neoliberalism as a political economy go back
to Friedrich von Hayek’s programmatic writings in the 1940s and to the
scholars who worked at the Chicago School of Economics during the 1950s
and 1960s. Inspired by von Hayek’s ideas that focused largely on laissez-faire
entrepreneurialism, Milton Friedman and his colleagues at the Chicago
School of Economics became the leading scholarly figures of neoliberalism.
The writings of Friedman and his colleagues became particularly influential
by the late 1970s, during which the United States experienced an economic
swamp, also known as stagflation. The causes for the stagflation were mainly
associated with Keynesian economics that tolerated state intervention in the
markets sometimes in favor of funneling taxes into social assistance such as
welfare programs, healthcare, and education. As a solution to the stagflation,
Friedman and his colleagues insisted on a market that is free of institutional
interventions, and they eventually became “successful” at convincing key
economists and politicians on a global scale of the value of their program
that focused on the supremacy of the market, free trade, and entrepreneuri-
alism (Steger & Roy, 2010).
Following the theoretical “success” of the Chicago School, the late 1970s
and the early 1980s witnessed several structural changes and reforms in terms
of the implementation of the free market economy worldwide. Ronald Rea-
gan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom (UK) were the
leading political names who influenced the adjustment period for developing
countries. Through a concerted effort with several think tanks, the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund and the World Bank introduced structural adjustment
packages to the economic structures of different developing countries. Since
then, the notion of free market and trade has been indispensable to political
and economic elites worldwide within the processes of accelerated globaliza-
tion (Steger & Roy, 2010).
In effort to describe what neoliberalism entails, Harvey (2005) notes:
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic

practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by
liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an insti-
tutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free
markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an
institutional framework appropriate to such practices.
(Harvey, 2005, p. 2)
This definition reflects a Marxian perspective of the global political econ-
omy, which is not the only perspective available to understand neoliberalism.
In this respect, critical neoliberal theorization falls under two broad camps:
Marxian political economy and Foucauldian governmentality (Springer, 2012;
Wacquant, 2012). From the Marxist perspective, neoliberalism restores the
economic power of the capitalist elite and contributes to the unequal growth
of power and capital by offering competitive advantages to those who are in
the positions of power and usually depicted as “the 1 percent” (Chun, 2017;
Harvey, 2005; Holborow, 2015). This camp further argues that collective
action and social foundations of solidarity have been strategically devalued,
and the supremacy of the market, competition, and individual have been high-
lighted (Davies & Bansel, 2007; Harvey, 2005; Holborow, 2015).
On the other hand, the Foucauldian perspective avoids interpreting neo-
liberalism as purely a top-down ideology or a theory of political econ-
omy. This camp posits that the neoliberal market development requires
a new form of rule, which he calls governmentality (Foucault, 2008). By
linking government and mentality, Michel Foucault develops an under-
standing of merging governing with rationality through which neoliberal
subjects tend to believe that their choices are made through their own
“rational calculations” (Davies & Bansel, 2007, p. 251). However, neolib-
eral governmentality contributes to the formation of subjects who tend to
regulate their own conduct around neoliberal ideals, which mainly focus
on self-interest and entrepreneurship (Foucault, 2008; Holborow, 2015;
Lemke, 2001; Peters, 2016; Read, 2009). Within and through neolib-
eral discourses, individuals, therefore, are positioned as free, rational sub-
jects who can compete and succeed through their own selfish rationalities.
However, these neoliberal subjects, who act commonly as “mini-replicas
of corporations” (Holborow, 2015, p. 77), are “eminently governable”
(Foucault, 2008, p. 270).
Although Marxian political economy and Foucauldian governmentality
capture essential aspects of neoliberalism, neoliberalism as a practice tran-
scends this binary of camps. Neoliberalism is a variegated phenomenon
and “a rascal concept - promiscuously pervasive, yet inconsistently defined,
empirically imprecise and frequently contested” (Brenner et al., 2010, p.
184). Through its complex interactions with individuals and situated ele-
ments within diverse political, economic, societal, cultural, and linguistic
contexts, neoliberalism exhibits hybrid practices and local variations. There-
fore, there are neoliberalisms that, for example, recently have tended to
pick neoconservatism as spouse and showed variation in terms its incursion
into various domains of human lives in different country contexts (Gray,
O’Regan, & Wallace, 2018; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2019; Ong, 2007;
Springer, 2012; Wacquant, 2012). Therefore, it is extremely difficult to
define neoliberalism in strict, rough terms (Brenner et al., 2010; Gray et al.,
2018; Springer, 2012). Nevertheless, if we may, for the sake of drawing a
contour, neoliberalism seems to preserve its transnational “common genus”
regardless of the context, which “consists of an articulation of state, market,
and citizenship that harnesses the first to impose the stamp of the second
onto the third” (Wacquant, 2012, p. 71).
Considering the situated, diverse forms of neoliberalism as well as its core
tenets, Springer (2012) urges us to develop “more flexible and circuitous
understandings of neoliberalism” (p. 133). In his theorization, neoliberal-
ism has been conceptualized as a discourse that merges political economy
and poststructuralist (Foucauldian) approaches “without privileging either”
(Springer, 2012, p. 134). This conceptualization is important to note because
both Marxian and Foucauldian approaches seem to share a fundamental
understanding: capitalism as a central problem. Neoliberalism indeed con-
structs material forms through policy and programs. Further, on the micro-
ground, individuals are constructed and positioned as rational creatures and
entrepreneurs of their lives. In this chapter, therefore, we integrate both
Foucauldian and Marxian approaches “without privileging either” (Springer,
2012, p. 134).
Neoliberal practices and discourses strive to (re)produce a neoliberal sub-
ject who is the entrepreneur of oneself or homo economicus (Foucault, 2008,
p. 226). In addition, clearly, neoliberalism also contributes to elite power
and to “structuring structures” (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 72) that significantly
influence the acts of agents who come from especially disadvantaged social
classes. Furthermore, neoliberalism has gained a common sense status and,
therefore, has contributed to individualized societies and (re)production of
social inequalities. However, due to the incoherent, incomplete, and con-
tradictory nature of common sense (Gramsci, 1971), neoliberal essence and
derived variations are always vulnerable to contestation and resistance (Ball,
2016; Burns, 2018; Chun, 2017; Davies & Bansel, 2007; Fairclough, 2010;
Hara & Sherbine, 2018; McInerney, 2007; Willis et al., 2008), meaning
also that counter-hegemonic or good sense discourses are possible (Gramsci,
1971), as discussed in the previous section.
Overall, neoliberal common sense unavoidably influences educational prac-
tices and teacher identities or narratives. Therefore, teachers may be inclined
to be entrepreneurs of themselves or homo economicus and, through a self-in-
terested manner, may comply with the regulatory mechanisms that have been
introduced by “neoliberal education.” However, this possibility does not mean
that they cannot provide any discourses of good sense or counter-hegemony
which may indicate sensitivity toward collective human conditions, social jus-
tice, and resistance to several forms of technicist and managerial assault on
education. In the rest of this chapter, we expand on these arguments by bring-
ing examples occasionally from other studies in this volume.
Neoliberal influences on educational domains and the

construction of “successful teaching”
Education has always been a key domain of public interests that both con-
verge and diverge. Education has also been the target mechanism of gov-
erning ideologies, often reflecting the unspoken values of dominant groups
as exemplified by various endeavors to shape the curriculum (Apple, 2004;
Kliebard, 2004; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2016). Nevertheless, before the
incursion of market principles into educational practices, state-funded educa-
tion was an important public good under the Keynesian welfare state. How-
ever, with the neoliberal transformation of human lives and resulting school
curricula, education started to be seen mainly as an economic instrument
that aligns with the aims of raising skilled, flexible, self-focused, and com-
petitive human capital for the (global) market and industry (Attick, 2017;
Burns, 2018; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2016; Pinar, 2004).
Gary Becker (2002), one of the influential proponents of human capital
theory, argues that the “success” of both individuals and economies depends
mainly on “how extensively and effectively people invest in themselves” (p.
3). Individuals are then held responsible for the acquisition of marketable
knowledge, skills, and information through a lifelong learning orientation
(Block, 2018; Peters, 2016). In this view, homo economicus, which has been
characterized by Foucault (2008) as the desired neoliberal subject, antici-
pates the future job market in an entrepreneurial manner; self-regulates to
meet market demands; pursues endless self-development; and expects finan-
cial rewards and credentials. If homo economicus can continue to develop
market-related skills and capabilities, their competition power and “worth”
increase (Holborow, 2015).
In addition to the focus on self-interest, entrepreneurship, financial returns,
and competition, the market-based fundamentalism of neoliberalism seeks to
privatize public institutions, including schools, for the better functioning of
so-called free economy. As a result, however, this free market drive contributes
to the conditions necessary for the emergence of a low-waged, high-skilled
workforce and eventually appears to be contributing to corporate profits,
growing inequalities, and rising anxiety and depression in societies (Hall &
O’Shea, 2013). In that regard, the increasing defunding and privatization
of schools may also be curbing access to decent education by disadvantaged
groups who lack, due to systemic reasons, sufficient forms of capital (Giroux,
2013). Education, accordingly, has become a private right and established
strong connections to neoliberal ideals, which appear to silence vulnerability
and laud those who are already deemed to be “successful.”
Nevertheless, student achievement continues to be connected to standard-
ized tests that are given to every student regardless of their origin. The content
and structure of these tests are informed by the curriculum that aligns with
the demands of the market and human capital theory (Pinar, 2004; Reeves,
2018). To facilitate and control this process, the educational conducts have
been regulated mainly through externally imposed standards or strictures,
quantifiable outputs, comparisons on different scales, and carefully selected
meta-narratives of “best practices” (Attick, 2017). This neoliberal climate that
has attempted to subjugate many educational domains in different parts of the
world, therefore, is imbued with managerial control systems, accountability
metrics, standards, tests, and rankings (Apple, 2017; Ball, 2016; Baltodano,
2012; Buchanan, 2015; Connell, 2009; De Lissovoy, 2008; Fenwick, 2003;
Giroux, 2013; Hara & Sherbine, 2018; Jenlink, 2017; Loh & Hu, 2014;
Mooney Simmie et al., 2019; Reeves, 2018; Skerritt, 2019; Sleeter, 2009).
This constellation of neoliberal influence on education leans on the “audit
culture,” referring to the invasion of multiple domains of society by the logic
of economic efficiency, technical-managerial accountability, and market meas-
urements (Shore & Wright, 2015; Strathern, 2000).
The teaching profession, inevitably, has been assaulted by the complex
cogs of the audit culture, too. Although becoming a teacher is a dynamic,
complex, and situated process (Clandinin & Husu, 2017), the mechanisms
of the audit culture and so-called universal principles emerging from pos-
itivist research attempt to describe and regulate the teaching profession
in a reductionist manner that pulls off the profession from its intellectual
and moral roots (see also Connell, 2009; Mooney Simmie, in this volume;
Gershon, in this volume). Under such systemic processes springing from the
neoliberal ideology, teachers themselves also tend to act like homo economi-
cus. While striving to monitor their own performance with regard to set
standards and quantifiable student achievements and while seeking oppor-
tunities to improve and compete, teachers, however, tend to disregard their
moral, political, and possible transformative roles (Mooney Simmie et al.,
2019). Therefore, strong alignment with the audit culture that is obsessed
with numbers and atomized individuals may prevent teachers from respon-
sible acts in terms of social justice and construction of a democratic society
(Connell, 2009; Gershon, in this volume; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2019).
Drawing on our discussions so far, which treat briefly the neoliberal influ-
ence on education, we cannot consider teacher professional learning and iden-
tity construction outside the neoliberal fabric. Neoliberal governing mechanisms
such as audit culture (e.g., objectivity, efficiency, and productivity) may seem
as major “reliable” sources for teacher learning and development, which may
result in feelings of competency or incompetency (Gershon, in this volume;
Skerritt, 2019). In this regard, clearly, understandings of “successful teaching”
have been influenced by official discourses of audit culture, positivist research,
and self-interest despite the impossibility of offering a single definition and prac-
tice of “successful teaching” that would be valid for everyone and every context
(Connell, 2009; Gershon, in this volume). In the rest of this section, we briefly
explore several traces of neoliberal influence on the construction and perception
of “successful teaching” by dwelling on the teacher narratives in this book.
Having surveyed the teacher voices from various contexts in the world in
this volume and authors’ particular ways of constructing the chapters, we
find that the neoliberal influence on teaching and teacher education mani-
fests itself, no surprise, mainly through the audit culture. At some points in
the narratives of these teachers, we discern that the teaching “success” has
been attempted to be associated with fixed sets of standards and measured
with quantifiable outputs, which are imposed by external, more powerful
entities. We also notice that these powerful discourses that give priority
to standards, numbers, and tests/nation-wide examinations attempt to
be the major source of teacher self-regulation, for example in Australia
(Longaretti & Toe, in this volume), Brazil and Portugal (Moreira et al., in
this volume), Japan (Asaoka, in this volume), Sweden (Högberg, in this vol-
ume), and Turkey (Gümüşok, in this volume).
Since the imposed regulations are performative and prescribed in a top-down
fashion instead of being informed by bottom-up acts of teachers and stu-
dents, the top-down standards emerging from market fundamentalism seem
to refrain from developing links to social justice discourses. In this respect,
the teachers from Brazil and Portugal (Moreira et al., in this v olume), for
example, complain about the necessity of classifying learners who are already
deemed to be “failure” due to their socioeconomic background; therefore,
they complain about the attempts to reduce the complexity of teacher and
learner lives to biased standards and quantitative measurements that aim to
reveal simplistic, unjust relationships with “success.” Based on such teacher
voices, it seems that it has become more difficult to remember the moral
and ethical responsibilities of schooling under the neoliberal common sense.
In this respect, Longaretti and Toe (in this volume) reveal that the imposed
standards or expectations may lack clear elements in terms of relation-
ship-building with the surrounding social communities.
Highlighting an atomized perspective of teaching that renders possible
teacher unions irrelevant and mainly deals with the micro events of the class-
room or self-focused teacher development, neoliberal common sense in edu-
cational domains may prevent teachers from linking school context to wider
contexts such as economy, society, and politics and therefore may prevent from
pursuing acts related to collective values and social justice. But, most chapters
in this book acknowledge the influence of broader contexts and dimensions on
schooling practices. Nevertheless, despite their theoretical reliance on sociocul-
tural frameworks and brief engagements with critical literature, some chapters
tend to eschew establishing durable reflexivity with the possible macrostructures
that attempt to project desired, narrow images of teaching through, for example,
standards and measures. Instead, they choose to remain in the realm of micro
school events and relations for teacher development and identity construction.
In some few places in the book, there is also a tendency to limit teacher
competency or “success” to the ability of self-reflecting and personal growth
based on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which may have little or no
interest in issues related to social justice and can be a narrow perspective in
terms of the relationships among the schooling context, diversity of students,
and their communities (Dyches & Boyd, 2017; see also Mooney Simmie, in
this volume for her remarks on politics of reflection and politics of resist-
ance). For example, along with a sporadic engagement with the criticality, the
focal teacher in Yeni-Palabiyik’s chapter (in this volume), Elif, places much
emphasis on autonomy, flexibility, and lifelong learning, which may indi-
cate the characteristics of teachers as homo economicus who places insufficient
emphasis on the matters of inequality and social justice but tend to follow
material rewards and, in an entrepreneurial manner, “educational trends”
that have closer connections to the market or industry than the surrounding
communities. Another example of a micro understanding of classroom events
can be occasionally found in Asaoka’s chapter (in this volume). Despite their
laudable attempts to establish supportive teacher communities to overcome
feelings of loneliness resulting from neoliberal policies, Asaoka’s focal teach-
ers mostly direct their attention to micro-aspects of student learning and
teacher growth.
Nevertheless, we acknowledge these teachers’ engagement with local
needs and willingness to go beyond what is prescribed by course books,
which can be interpreted as a counter-discourse to neoliberal mantra in edu-
cational domains. Further, every chapter in this book, which focuses deli-
cately and critically on the complexity of “success” in the teaching profession,
attempts to explore micro-macro connections among educational contexts
and, to varying extents, strive to unleash the construction of “successful”
teaching from the neoliberal common sense through which numbers, com-
petition, and self-interest dominate and matters related to social justice are
downgraded or neglected. Therefore, having surveyed these chapters, we
also identify some patterns of counter-narratives or good sense in Gramscian
terms, which we will discuss in the next section.
Emerging counter-narratives confronting the neoliberal

influence on teaching
As discussed earlier in this chapter, due to their partial and incoherent approach
to reality, dominant ideologies or commonsensical worldviews offer incom-
plete, contradictory understandings and therefore always have to confront
unanticipated consequences (Gramsci, 1971; Skerritt, 2019). With its com-
mon sense status, which contributes to the naturalization of growing systemic
inequalities, neoliberal ideology is contested (Ball, 2016; Burns, 2018; Chun,
2017; Davies & Bansel, 2007; Fairclough, 2010; Hara & Sherbine, 2018;
McInerney, 2007; Willis et al., 2008). Antonio Gramsci’s approach to contest-
ing dominant ideologies stands out in that regard by welcoming resistance in
multiple fronts in human lives, thereby not aiming to reduce acts of resistance
to certain traditions or movements. With this conceptualization, he indeed
opens up several possibilities for the construction of conditions that may lead
to radical democracy in a just society (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985).
Relying on the Gramscian understanding and also on the spirit of “radical
hope” (Freire, 2005), discourses or narratives challenging neoliberal ideals can
be treated as signs of hope against dehumanizing ideological conditions. In
this respect, it is important to note that the dominance of neoliberal common
sense in teaching does not lead to its complete internalization by teachers. We,
therefore, contend that counter-narratives or, in Gramscian terms, good sense
discourses that contest neoliberal influence on teaching are always a possibil-
ity, and these discourses need to be treated as signs of hope for the transfor-
mation of educational practices in the direction of a just society. Further, to
resist, contest, or negotiate the neoliberal influence, teachers do not have to
position themselves within a named tradition, but their good sense discourses
deserve “to be made more unitary and coherent” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 328), as
these can be united into stronger and larger counter-discourses against neolib-
eral common sense. In this section, we, therefore, explore several patterns of
counter-narratives that emerge from teacher narratives in this book in order to
help reflect on how counter-hegemonic educational processes can construct
a coherent counter-framework and contribute to the emergence of radical
democracy in a just society.
To begin with, this volume itself, with its initial emphasis on the Aristote-
lian concept of “wisdom of practice,” bears elements of challenging neoliberal
common sense in educational research that has been dominated by positivist
research paradigms. The book, in that regard, does not choose to predominantly
focus on linear causal relationships, technicist aspects of teaching, and quanti-
fiable outputs and measurements in terms of “successful teaching.” Through
its embracement of such methodological approaches as autoethnography and
narrative inquiry, the book opens up an avenue for teachers to express their
complex lifeworlds without being concerned about numbers, comparisons, and
self-development. Therefore, it may not be a coincidence to find several patterns
of counter-narratives against the neoliberal assault on teaching.
While discussing their understanding of “success” in the teaching pro-
fession, most teachers in this volume seem to avoid associating “success”
with the externally generated attempts that aim to identify standards of “suc-
cessful” or “good” teaching. For example, Hannah, in Högberg’s chapter
(in this volume), is critical of breaking down teaching goals into sub-goals
and being evaluated by this regulatory agenda. Hannah, therefore, evaluates
“success” in teaching “not as a set of standards formulated from an outside
position, but from an insightful position inside the profession” (p. 125).
With these words, she seems to highlight the situated nature and ethical
dimensions of “successful teaching,” which may not necessitate an overreli-
ance on the transmission of factual knowledge, testing students, and the fail-
ure of some students and even teachers, as Gershon (in this volume) would
also argue. Teachers in Moreira et al. (in this volume) also question the nor-
mative nature of standards and complain about the neoliberal policies that
they think impose a “one-size-fits-all” curriculum and limit their efforts for
progressive education. Similarly, for Anna, a focal teacher in Longaretti and
Toe (in this volume), “teaching is far more than the curriculum within the
classroom” (p. 84). Anna, here, signals her alignment with social justice dis-
courses in teaching and, therefore, seems to support helping disadvantaged
learners achieve a significant level of accomplishment through schooling.
Similar to Anna, Elmas (in this volume) also positions the teaching profes-
sion within the wider sociocultural and sociopolitical factors, thereby high-
lighting local as well as global nature of teaching as opposed to universalizing
tendencies of dominant educational research. He owes his complex evalu-
ation of systemic influences partly to his intercultural experiences through
which he seems to have better grasped the contextual nature of human prac-
tices and possible differences as well as similarities among human groups in
terms of meaning-making processes and power relations. As a result, he, as
a language teacher, affirms “learners’ complex needs” and, as a moral result,
social justice discourses in education. The emphasis on individual complexity
with links to structural determinants is also echoed in Moreira et al.’s study
(in this volume) where the focal teachers support problematizing neoliberal
attempts, which generalize teaching images and underscore the necessity of
“making informed decisions and negotiating them with students in histori-
cally and culturally situated contexts” (p. 57). Otherwise, they believe that
disadvantaged students, who are in need of overcoming “their failures,” tend
to lose their connections to the schooling practices and, therefore, to the life
chances. Gümüşok (in this volume), in a similar vein, notes how her focal
participant, Nergiz, makes efforts to contribute to social justice in, at least,
her immediate communities. Gerson (in this volume), too, in his teaching
journey resisted mainstream practices usually through connecting curricula to
students’ everyday experiences and interests, and, therefore, his students were
provided creative opportunities to reflect on their learning processes and pro-
gress without being reduced to assessment scores in comparison to their peers.
These voices, overall, seem to be sensitive and responsive to social justice
in education despite the marginal status of such egalitarian discourses in edu-
cational domains nowadays and despite dealing with possible dissonance and
tension brought by dissent (McInerney, 2007). These teachers seem to be
reminding themselves constantly of the importance of culturally or locally
relevant pedagogies for student achievement as opposed to universalizing,
dehumanizing attempts of neoliberal discourses that opt to isolate teachers
from other people and local communities. These teachers indeed remind us
of the importance of developing close connections not just among teachers
but also with students and parents and, therefore, the importance of empha-
sizing collective agency that can be conducive to social justice.
To note some further examples that emphasize collectivity as part of the
teaching profession, Nergiz, the focal teacher in Gümüşok (in this volume),
highlights the importance of interacting with the immediate communities
in which she strives to tackle social environmental or gender-related issues.
She, therefore, goes beyond “teaching to the test,” which might be the
main expectation by dominant educational discourses. Similarly, Hannah, in
Högberg (in this volume) believes in the power of interacting with the stu-
dents through a community spirit. Although she does not seem to establish
direct connections with the communities outside the school environment,
she attempts to build a strong community in her own classrooms, which
may seem an extra task to many teachers who, willingly or unwillingly, com-
plete minimal procedures and self-regulate with official expectations. Melissa
in Longaretti and Toe (in this volume) also stresses the importance of her
“open-door policy” for parents and tries to promote family-school relation-
ships, which she believes contributes to the learning processes of the stu-
dents who live under disadvantaged conditions. Anna, from the same study,
values building relationships with her students, parents, and the school com-
munity, as she also seems to believe that community support is a crucial
component of teaching in a disadvantaged rural school. Along the similar
lines, the teachers in Moreira et al. (in this volume) stress the importance
of community-based practices or collective agency in the teaching profes-
sion. Focusing on creating teacher communities, the focal teachers in Asaoka
(in this volume) find collaborative ways to learn from each other, empower
themselves, and develop “effective” teaching practices. In a way, they find
ways to escape the limits and create new collective spaces of learning.
These examples from this book tell us that these teachers value collec-
tive conditions despite the isolating influences of neoliberal policies and, at
least, try to help students grow despite their disadvantaged backgrounds.
They seem to be inspiring learners, and by doing so, they seem to inspire
themselves too. Depending on our close reading of teacher narratives in this
book and our resulting discussions, we can offer these patterns as discernible
good sense discourses emerging from this book: (a) an explicit recognition
of the complexity of students with connections to larger socioeconomic and
sociopolitical contexts, (b) no complete internalization of imposed standards
and effects of high-stakes testing, (c) highlighting possible links between
educational domains and social justice, and (d) valuing collective agency in
the teaching profession such as community relationships and teacher collab-
oration. These patterns of counter-narratives that are grounded on teacher
voices deserve to be expanded into larger, unified counter-narratives against
neoliberal common sense in education.
Conclusion
In this chapter, inspired and informed by the paradigm of CDS, we mainly
discussed how schooling practices cannot be evaluated outside the political
and economic developments led by the neoliberal ideology. Since the book
focuses on “successful” teachers’ professional learning narratives, we nar-
rowed our focus particularly to the neoliberal influence on the construction
and perception of “successful teaching” and, accordingly, linked our discus-
sions to the teacher narratives in this book. In addition to a detailed review
and analysis of the neoliberal influence on “successful teaching,” we delin-
eated several patterns of counter-narratives against the neoliberal common
sense in the teaching conduct.
While reading other chapters and writing this chapter, once again, we real-
ized that it is impossible to generate a single image of “successful teaching’,
as the teaching profession is, in the first place, bound to the locality that is
home to the diversity of the students and their communities. Further, the
vast universe of human learning cannot be limited to a single understanding
of teaching and measurable knowledge. But neoliberal mechanisms, which
appear to mask rising inequalities and vulnerability in education, constantly
attempt to define and measure “excellence” or “success” in teaching (and,
through a subtler agenda, also the “failure”) by usually relying on positivist
paradigms that tend to appear as objective or neutral but serve dominant polit-
ical and economic positions. Considering such neoliberal influence that turns
teachers into technicians and students into “human capital,” alternative ways
of understanding “success” in the teaching profession seem to be a necessity.
While striving to re-imagine humanizing processes against the dehuman-
izing neoliberal conditions, we choose to listen to the teachers who do not
seem to have surrendered to the neoliberal assault. Relying on the patterns of
counter-narratives that emerged from such narratives, we can suggest, first of
all, that we need to eschew supporting isolating approaches to the teaching
profession, as neoliberal education is currently obsessed with self-analysis
and micro events of the classroom that are usually seen as the bridge to tests
and measurable outputs. However, we do not discard any forms of self-re-
flection but draw attention to how ideologies and policies may permeate
into the ways teachers understand and evaluate themselves and their work.
Therefore, we believe in the necessity of expanding the scope of reflections
into wider realms (see also Mooney Simmie, in this volume). In an adverse
situation, dominant discourses of self-development and reflexivity may place
teachers at a position where they can be complicit without their consent.
Therefore, they can be attracted to subject positions that are “dominated
yet free” (Perryman, Ball, Braun, & Maguire, 2017, p. 755), thereby (re)
producing dehumanizing conditions in societies.
Through counter-discourses and acts, teachers can creatively and justly engage
students coming from various backgrounds in educational processes. Therefore,
as most teachers in this book also signaled through their willingness to involve
in a collective agency, they can contribute to the struggle against the silencing
forces of neoliberalism and, therefore, to social justice. In that regard, to chal-
lenge the neoliberal common sense that induces several unequal conditions in
human lives, teachers need to go from being neoliberal workers, who regularly
account for their actions and seek self-interested opportunities, to advocates for
social justice and critical democratic systems (MacDonald-Vemic & Portelli,
2020). These discussions, which emerged mainly from the teacher voices,
deserve to be connected to larger counter-narratives in which they can be made
stronger or more coherent. In other words, these good sense discourses deserve
“to be made more unitary and coherent” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 328). Perhaps
teachers themselves may want to forge further links with some other groups or
organizations that involve in human rights, public good, and welfare.
While coming closer to concluding this chapter, we would like to make a
few notes also on the ambiguous climate of the COVID-19 pandemic. As we
are typing the final draft of this chapter, the first summer following the global
outbreak of the pandemic is about to be welcomed in the Northern Hem-
isphere. Similar to the warm feelings induced by the early days of summer,
we feel hopeful for the future of humanity that seems to be more connected
than ever. We are hopeful because, amid and in the wake of such immense
crises, change is highly possible, especially also in these times of increasing
critique of neoliberal mantras. How educators will respond to the reflective
opportunities emerging in this fruitful climate is still uncertain. More free-
dom and touch with the moral, inclusive, and liberating dimensions of edu-
cation can emerge. Good sense discourses can continue to enlarge the cracks
within the neoliberal common sense for the emergence of conditions that
may yield a just, democratic society. Our hopeful voice, however, should not
be confused with a naïve optimism (McInerney, 2007). We feed our hope
with several emerging counter-narratives that have also been documented in
this book. Although the ideal of a just society and radical democracy may still
be seen as a utopia, hegemony is not complete, and struggling for emancipa-
tory conditions, in education and societies, is a worthy effort.
Note
1 Our discussions in this section draw largely on our research that we conducted
for the first author’s doctoral dissertation supervised by the second author at
Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
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Conclusion
Context, interconnectedness, balance, and risk
in teachers’ narratives
Silvia Edling and A. Cendel Karaman
The intention with this concluding section is to provide with some overall
themes and patterns generated from the rich narratives fleshed out in this
volume in order to contribute to the discussion about exploring what it
means to be a (really) good teacher. The chapters in the book discuss the
situated meaning(s) of a successful teacher in relation to teacher identities
and professional learning patterns from a range of different perspectives.
Indeed, narratives of teachers regarded as good or successful have been
fleshed out from various contexts in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Portugal, Ire-
land, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States. Hopefully, these narratives
can provide teachers, teacher educators, educational leaders, and educa-
tional researchers worldwide with a deeper understanding of the condi-
tions and complex processes that being a “successful” teacher involves
(c.f. Clandinin & Husu, 2017; Li & Craig 2019; Craig, 2019).
Although a wide range of settings are represented in the book, it is impor-
tant to stress that the conclusions cannot be used as general summaries of
what it means to be a good teacher in these countries. Contrary to this, the
chapters provide with in-depth profiles of teachers from unique sociocultural
contexts that can raise thoughts of patterns and connections that can help
enhance teacher judgment and professional development all over the world.
In order to do so, we make an effort to reconnect to the discussions about
excellent teachers found within this field of research.
/…/complex thinking is not omniscient thinking. It is, on the contrary,

a thinking which knows it is always local, situated, in a given time and
place. Neither is it a complete thinking…
(Morin, 2008, p. 97)
So what does it mean to be an excellent teacher?

Research shows that teachers’ competences hold a key position to increase
students’ achievements. Currently terms like excellent, accomplished, or
expert teachers are circulating in debates and research about education with
the hope to pin point the exact qualities that separates the perfect teacher
Conclusion 191
from those deemed as less perfect (see for instance Bluteau & Krumins,
2008; De Corte, 2003; Gosling & Hannan, 2007; Hattie, 2003, 2012).
In this context, there is often a separation made not just between novice
teachers and experienced teachers, but between experienced and excellent
teachers as well. The excellent (accomplished) teacher has qualities that are
superior to experience, as such, and the quest is to locate what these exact
abilities are:
A major thrust of our work has been to ascertain the differences between
expert from experienced and novice teachers. Too much of the current
work has been contrasting expert and novice, which while interesting,
ignores the confound of experience, too often compares new with older
teachers, and does not get to the heart of the matter – which is to allow
for experience and then ask what makes the difference between excel-
lent, or accomplished, and experienced.
(Hattie, 2003, p. 5)
The wish to find this holy grail has gained a lot of attention from politi-
cians and stakeholders all around the world and several publications have
attempted to capture excellent teacher qualities from a broad manner and
as such avoiding human complexity.1 Approaching the teacher profession
as a simplistic division between excellent and non-excellent teachers in
a dual sense is common not the least in media coverages about educa-
tion. This tendency to simplify and divide complex phenomenon gives the
impression that there is such a thing as a perfect teacher meaning that
every shortcoming is a signal about teacher failure. In the long run, this
trend risks harming the teaching profession and teachers as a group, since
it overlooks task complexity and the fact that the immaculate teacher does
not exist (Edling, 2014).
At the same time, and perhaps paradoxically, many of the general prin-
ciples about what it means to be an excellent teacher, generated through
research, tend to illuminate the ways excellent teachers are contextually sit-
uated. As such, there is on one level an awareness about task complexities.
Moreover, principles aiming to capture qualities also show that teachers
do not merely react based on evidence-based methods but need to reflect
and think first based on deep knowledge about the field of education. In
other words, accomplished teachers have built a repertoire of knowledge
over time, have the ability to interpret the educational practice, and are
able to oscillate between what they know and what they see in a way that
constantly shapes education in a desired direction. Hattie (2003) captures
this tension as follows:
“Because of these deeper representations, expert teachers:
• can spontaneously relate what is happening to these deeper sets of

principles
192 Conclusion
• can quickly recognize sequences of events occurring in the classroom
which in some way affect the learning and teaching of a topic.
• can detect and concentrate more on information that has instructional
significance.
• can make better predictions based on their representations about the
classroom.
• can identify a greater store of algorithms that students might use when
solving a particular problem, and therefore are able to predict and deter-
mine what types of errors students might make
• can be much more responsive to students/.../
I find it fascinating that experts take more time than experienced teachers
to build these representations, have more understanding of the how and why
of student success, are more able to reorganize their problem solving in light
of ongoing classroom activities, can readily formulate a more extensive
range of likely solutions, and are more able to check and test out their
hypothesis or strategies. Expert teachers are VERY context bound, and
find it hard to think outside the specifics of their classrooms and stu-
dents. Generalization is not always their strength”.
(Hattie, 2003, p. 5–6, the italics are ours)
In other words, while meta studies generally gather broad and distant
principles about what it means to be an excellent teacher, these principles
show how the skills of these teachers cannot be separated from their well-
grounded and deep understanding and interpretations of the contextual
practice they are involved in—adding a more intimate dimension. Con-
sequently, they underline the need for a bridge between research drawing
on positivism and interpretative research (see also Edling, forthcoming;
Edling, 2020; Thiessen, 2000).
The belief in the excellent teacher’s ability to predict outcome appears to
be widely spread and gives the impression that future events can be more
or less controlled. This image however requires some caution. While it is
stated that a teacher deemed as good have a deeper understanding of their
profession than others, it is also important to bring the notion of milieu
into the discussion. Indeed, there is a massive amount of research stressing
that learning is not solely anchored in methods or a particular individuals
learning behavior but takes form in a learning environment where various
factors stand in relation to one and other (Allodi, 2010; Elen & Clark, 2006;
Håkansson & Sundberg, 2012). From this way of reasoning teaching and
learning inevitably, involve a dimension of risk due to the triad: human
differences, web of relations, and a constantly changing flow of practices
(Edling, 2020). These and similar elements are visible in the narratives of
“good” teachers in this volume.
Conclusion 193
An awareness of change, relations, and complexity in
everyday practice
The aim of this book has been to provide a complement for meta-studies by
highlighting transnational narratives of what it means to be a good teacher.
Complements and questioning of meta studies of teacher excellence are far
from new (see for instance Fanghanel, 2007; Rostan & Vaira, 2011; Strike,
1985; Teichler, 2003). However, what this volume contributes with is con-
sequently a concentrated set of narratives of teachers’ voices spread around
the world. So, while the meta-studies provide with some pieces of the puz-
zle, they cannot exchange the deep knowledge solely possible to generate in
narrative forms (e.g. Kelchtermans, 2009, Craig 2019).
Whereas all of the chapters in this volume bring something new to the
overall content, for example an awareness of intercultural approaches in
teaching and learning, transformative teaching, pedagogical rhythm, and
teaching particular subject knowledge, they also tap into each other. It is
particularly these patterns that cross between chapters that we will pres-
ent here. Within these overall patterns, there are also differences to be
found, but these will not be discussed here. Following themes are briefly
addressed below seeing that they occur in the majority of the chapters,
namely:
a) the importance of paying regard to various purposes and contexts

b) the interconnectedness of entities
c) the importance of balancing various often dilemmatic aspects in educa-
tion, and
d) the presence of risk.
The importance of paying regard to various purposes and contexts

To begin with, all of the chapters describe in one way or another how teach-
ers deemed as “good” pay regard to various purposes always situated in par-
ticular human contexts, involving different students and groups of students.
Purpose in this case does not merely refer to objectives within the teaching
profession but an awareness that education needs to ask what kind of society
teaching addresses. For example:
Claiming to be educated needs to say something about what kind of

society one wants to live in, to build and to develop.
(Mooney Simmie, in this volume)
Learning with students and responding to each of them with the pur-
pose of inclusion of all/.../To these teachers, being a successful teacher in
poverty-stricken contexts /.../, is not about obtaining good results in
standardized tests. They are more concerned with how to reach every
194 Conclusion
single student/.../(Alfredo Moreira, Anunciato Moraes, & Aparecida
Viana, in this volume).
Care for an extrovert is different than care for a more introverted

student; care for a first generation Latinx student is different than care
for an African American student; care for a student with autism is dif-
ferent than care for a student with dyslexia.
(Gershon, in this volume)
From interviewing Hannah, a single educational situation aligned

with her expressed overall ambitions can give validity to what is a repre-
sentative educational situation.
(Högberg, in this volume)
She aimed for not only her students’ academic achievement but also
their personal development and moral stances in life, which further
contributed to her transformative efforts/.../ Each teaching context
is inherently unique; yet, it might be concluded that teachers’ refined
communication skills with humility and openness towards dialogue,
aspirations for societal improvements in addition to students’ academic
achievements, and leadership roles in the broader wellbeing of the com-
munity/.../ ).
(Gümüşok, in this volume)
Accordingly, it matters if education, for instance, is located in a poor

area and includes students from various backgrounds. It also matters
which purposes the teachers are supposed to address within the frames
of their profession, but also the purposes they feel responsible for in
a unique situation born as a response to an immediate need (compare
Edling & Frelin, 2013). The way the teachers are aware of different pur-
poses and the uniqueness of context is related to the second dimension,
which we want to highlight in this concluding section, namely the ways
the teachers are conscious about the interconnectedness of various enti-
ties in education.
The interconnectedness of entities

Central in all of the teacher narratives and perhaps also as a consequence
of the narrative methodology as such is an awareness that various units
in education are interconnected and influence outcomes. This can also
be described in terms of a relational dimension in education (see also
Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004, Edling, 2020; Frelin, 2010). The teachers
particularly highlight the importance of paying regard to ways in which
learning and approaching knowledge are interlaced with human conditions
Conclusion 195
(see also Edling et al., 2020). As such, they draw attention to the link
between knowledge, social justice, and ethical issues which are deemed as
important to pay regard to when shaping education in a desired direction.
For instance:
Anna, here, signals her alignment with social justice discourses in teach-
ing, therefore she seems to support helping disadvantaged learners
achieve a significant level of accomplishment through schooling.
(Çiftçi & Karaman, in this volume)
She mentions the term “engine”, which symbolizes an independent self-

sufficient attitude towards schoolwork. She wants her pupils to develop
an attitude characterized by curiosity intertwined with an open mindset
in relation to all kinds of new knowledge as well as new abilities. To
make this possible a certain climate, a specific shared morality, needs to
be established/…/ .
Subsequently the relational dimension is not merely about what takes place
between humans, for instance teacher-student relations, but also involves a
mindfulness about what conditions education itself, like the increase of neo-
liberalism, embodiment, the lack of technology or other artefacts, etc. and
how they impact on outcomes:
In reality, making use of technological resources in her instruction was

something indispensable for Elif as she said, “you cannot reach that gen-
eration if you do not have the technology.”
(Yeni-Palabıyık, in this volume)
Within this climate, teachers’ roles have been largely framed by techni-
cal, managerial, and instrumental understandings of education.
(Çiftçi & Karaman, in this volume)
I liked to keep up-to-date with my subject area and to share in soli-

darity with other teachers for improvement in working conditions,
in particular for access to resources to teach in new and interesting
ways.
However, prior to this study, both were feeling isolated and frustrated
without an environment of an active professional community at their re-
spective workplaces. They reported they were well aware that developing
expertise and becoming a quality teacher are essential for the improve-
ment of English language education in Japan).
(Asaoka, in this volume)
196 Conclusion
Entrenched in the midst of contextual situation where various aspects are
influencing education the teacher narratives return to the importance of
balance.
The importance of balancing various often dilemmatic aspects in

education
The teachers in the book describe in different ways how they are forced
to negotiate and balance various different demands as well as possible.
Accordingly, teaching is never straightforward but requires an ability to
navigate in a terrain that often involves dilemmas and tensions (Edling &
Mooney Simmie, 2020; Fransson & Grannäs, 2013).
Such seeking, however, is a delicate balance between remaining open

to such possibilities, actively letting others know where one stands and
one’s openness to hearing such information, and working to not impress
one’s views on others in ways that turn trajectories of access into further
oppressions
Her persistent, proactive and well-balanced attitude is something her

principal and other teachers identify in her.
(Longaretti & Toe, in this volume)
Upon a decade of teaching, she could easily handle these problems. She
arranged her teaching duties in a balance.
In order to do a democratic and transformative work, teachers confront

themselves with a wide diversity of student needs and the need to com-
pensate for the imbalance created by huge social and economic inequali-
ties that requires personal commitments that go beyond professional
responsibilities.
(Alfredo Moreira, Anunciato Moraes, &
Aparecida Viana, in this volume)
Of course, it’s an act of balance. When I become so … I take my job very

seriously, but maybe sometimes I lose … well, we have to play together.
[---] My God, do I run them over? I wonder if I’m responsive enough
when I have my agenda? [---] I figure there are disadvantages linked to
having a very clear agenda. I might lose something. This [episode] really
got me thinking.
(Hanna in Högberg, this volume)
Conclusion 197
She arranged her teaching duties in a balance. For instance, she prepared
her tasks at night after her son went to sleep. Nergiz’s sensitivity to work
ethics and her sound willingness to do her best in teaching drove her to
be a problem solver and maximize her energy and efforts even in a hectic
schedule.
The very need to handle the presence of uniqueness and dilemmas also
tend to make education vulnerable and brings with it a dimension of risk in
education.
The presence of risk in education

Although the word risk is not mentioned explicitly in the narratives, all
chapters touch upon a sense of uncertainty where teachers have to live with
the fact that outcomes and even one’s own position are never certain—but,
merely a hope and possibility (see also Macrine, 2020). Teachers who engage
too much in their students are according to recent studies also those teach-
ers who get “burnt out” (Nordhall et al., 2020). As such, the question of
balance is also about how to balance the exceedingly complex and human
environments without sacrificing one own health.
She is able to acknowledge that being a dominant teacher and having

close relationships with her pupils might be a problem. Hannah says that
there is a risk that “they can become a little passive and too responsive to
what they think are my preferences.
It is a pedagogy of hope, joy and agonistics that I have experienced at

first hand in the field of practice as a teacher and teacher educator.
However, after a while, he soon noticed, to his surprise, that it was quite
tough for many of them to skim or scan the texts by sight or listen to
the content of the texts to grasp the main ideas without preparing in
advance. Although he thought that they were at quite high levels of
English and could handle those tasks, many of them turned out to have
difficulty with the in-class tasks or had to spend quite a bit of time on
them in class.
(Asaoka, in this volume)
It is suggested that the struggles during this transition and readjusting

phase tends to be at its peak level at the beginning and decreases slowly
with time/.../. While the feeling of estrangement gradually subsided, it
198 Conclusion
Figure 11.1 Inquiring into identities in narratives of teachers
never really disappeared. Instead, it left itself to a state of in-between-

ness, as I constantly had to negotiate my positionings.
(Elmas, in this volume)
Considering all these contextual challenges, how do teachers in different

contexts reflect and enact various identities in their professional growth and
teaching? The narratives that were explored in this book point to four major
domains that were prevalent in the representation of teacher identities in
various contexts.
The existence of multiple and holistic teacher identities

Teacher identities that could be observed in the narratives of teachers in the
studies in this volume were mainly emerging in the affective, ecosystemic, inter-
personal, and professional domains. Figure 11.1 presents how the narratives in
these studies identify multiple teacher identities. These select representations
need to be understood as dynamic—not as complete, prescriptive static labels.
Ecological and critical systems lenses can help further explore the contextual
layers and interconnections across microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and mac-
rosystems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Karaman & Tochon, 2007, Karaman, 2010).
In their inquiries, some educators highlight the centrality of being an
emancipatory teacher, researcher, and academic in their identities (Mooney
Simmie, in this volume). Some teachers underscore professional ethics, care,
Conclusion 199
love, leadership, being transformative, dialogical, and having empathy (hav-
ing prior shared experiences with students at an urban school) (Gümüşok, in
this volume). As exemplified in the narratives of Moreira et al., there is also
an emphasis on the teachers’ identity development and professional learning
within facilitating contexts for the emergence of successful teaching. The
contextual elements teachers underscore are as follows: continuous personal
and professional investment, a collaborative culture (peers and families), and
ongoing structured reflection. Elements that are then associated with success-
ful teaching include learning with students, responding to each student, inclu-
sion of all students, contextualized curriculum, and assessment at the service of
learning (Moreira et al., in this volume).
The complexity of identifying the notion of teaching success and the devel-
opment of teacher identities would also need to be inquired into. In exploring
teacher identities and professional learning trajectories, some studies bring to
fore the role of teachers’ confidence, empathy, a deep understanding of content
and pedagogy, strong relationship building and supportive schools (Longaretti
and Toe, in this volume). Collegiality, communication flows, reflective practice,
communities of practice, professional growth based on motivation to learn and
change, knowledge, and multiplicity of identities are also underscored in this
regard (Asaoka, in this volume; Yeni-Palabıyık, in this volume).
As exemplified in the narratives of Nergiz, a teacher’s journey in under-
standing the lives of her students, her openness to non-judgmental dialogue, and
caring for social relations with everyone involved in education: students, col-
leagues, administrators, parents, and community influenced her teaching can
reveal how being transformative and ethical emerge as important features of a
teacher’s identity (Gümüşok, in this volume). The importance of “professional
responsibility” has also been explored in a school context in Sweden where a
teacher who “enables her pupils to be part of a community and extends their
experience of a shared morality of respectful and ethical concerns” (Högberg,
in this volume). The criticality of “fostering intercultural awareness, sensitiv-
ity, understanding, and communication.” in professional growth and identity
negotiations has also been researched (Elmas, in this volume).
Brief summing up
This volume Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching: International
Narratives of Successful Teachers does not aim to cover all dimensions about
what it means to be a “good” teacher, but hopefully it has contributed in
nuancing some aspects that reoccur in narratives of teachers regarded as
“good” by the social community they exist in. Whereas meta-studies about
excellent teachers are important to acknowledge they are solely done so from
a distance. At the same time, the distant principles or characteristics which they
provide emphasize that one central features of “excellent” or “expert” teaches
is their ability to understand the complexities of their profession on a deeper
level and being able to “zoom” in and “zoom” out between knowledge and
practice (cf. Håkansson & Sundberg, 2012). In other words, they stress the
200 Conclusion
importance of interpretation, which narratives can contribute with. What is
vital to stress from various directions is thus the need to avoid narrowing down
education to atomistic and technical issues but allowing the interpretative
knowledge more space in the debate.
Note
1 See for instance: https://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/quality/learning/educa-
tional-development/the-merit-value-of-teaching/excellent-teachers/; https://
education.gov.gy/web/index.php/teachers/tips-for-teaching/item/2665-
how-to-be-an-excellent-teacher; https://enqa.eu/index.php/about-enqa/;
https://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/TappingThePotential.pdf
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Index
Page numbers in Italics refers figures and page numbers followed by “n” refers note
numbers
affinity perspective (A-identities) 22, 73; NETDS program 72, 74–77;

25, 30 OECD programme 73; sustained
Alt-Right nationalism 23 engagement 74
American Educational Research Australian Professional Standards for
Association (AERA) 15n1 Teachers 73
Amy Cuddy 104n6 autoethnography 39–40; definition 139;
analytical autoethnography 140 English language 141–144; football
Anna—“Everyone in it together” 82–85 144–145; habitus 142–143; identity
Anunciato, Rosa Maria Moraes 11, tensions 145; imagined community
54–68, 174 144; kıraathane 143–144, 151n1;
aristocracy of birth 55 language teaching 138; limitations
aristocracy of talent 55 140; migrants 145; peripheral to
Aron, J. 46 central participation 148–150; post
Asaoka, Chitose 12, 89–104, 182, 185 sojourn implications 148; pre-sojourn
assistant language teacher (ALT) 94 aspirations 146–147; research report
Association for Secondary Teachers of 140; self-analysis 140–141, 141;
Ireland (ASTI) 27 separation strategies 144; sojourn
audio-lingual method 160 147–148; subject-based qualification
audit culture 180 142; third space 145–146
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and avowed and ascribed identities
Reporting Authority (ACARA) 73 145, 149
Australian graduate teachers: ACARA
73; Anna—“Everyone in it together” Ball, S.J. 24, 29
82–85; Australian and State Basic Principles of Curriculum 41
government funds 72–73; Australian Becker, G.S. 179
Professional Standards for Teachers Benoliel, P. 1
73; Bracks Report 73; Community Ben’s reflective journal practices 84
of Practice model 85; education Berkovich, I. 1
revolution 73; Fair Go project 73; Bernstein, B. 23
Gonski report 73; High Affective Bettez, S.C. 23
classrooms 74; High Cognitive Biesta, Gert 31
classrooms 74; High Operative bio-psycho-neuro-socio-cultural model
classrooms 74; ICSEA 73; Max— 22, 24
“Short sharp and shiny” 79–81, 84, Bloom’s taxonomy 162, 166, 168
85; Melissa—“tune into the signs” Bobbitt, F. 41
77–79, 84, 85; My School website Bobbitt, J.F. 42
204 Index
Bolívar, A. 60 discursive perspective (D-identities) 22,
Bonner, A. 76 25, 28, 30
Bourdieu, P. 143
Bracks Report 73 economic capital 142
British Council (BC) 160, 165 Eda 9, 15n6, 15n7
Bullough, R.V. Jr. 103 Edling, Silvia 1–15, 30, 190–200
Burnett, B. 74 Edmodo space 163
educational domains 178–180
Campbell, E. 124 educational ecology 46
Central Council on Education educational policies 4
in Japan 92 educational process 133–134
Çiftçi, Emrullah Yasin 14, 172–187 Educational researcher at university
Clandinin, D.J. 58, 60, 110 30–31
Clark, J.S.B. 143 EFL teachers see english-as-a-foreign-
Coach-Therapy 97 language (EFL) teachers
Cochran-Smith, M. 6, 55 Elmas, Tugay 13, 138–151, 183
Collay, M. 118 english-as-a-foreign-language (EFL)
communication 115–116 teachers 107, 158; co-constructing
community of practice (CoP) 85, 149, meaning 97–98; collegiality 90–91;
156–157 journal postings and interviews 92;
competent craftpersons 89 Kenta’s case 96, 98–100; Kenta’s
Connelly, F.M. 58, 60, 110 initial concern and teacher beliefs
consensualism 25 96–97; Masato’s case 94, 100–102;
“consensualist” dynamics 28 Masato’s initial struggle and teacher
Continuing Professional Development beliefs 94–95; narrative research 91;
(CPD) 27 online journal forum 92; participants
conversational skills 162 and contextual background 92–93
counter-narratives 182–185 English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)
Creswell, J.W. 110 paradigm 159, 164
critical discourse studies (CDS) 174–176 English Language Teaching (ELT)
Critical Pedagogy 21, 26 159–162, 164, 168
cruel optimism 25 environmental issues 4, 110, 113,
cultural blocks 147–148 116–119
cultural capital 142, 144 epistemological authority 136
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP) epistemological lenses 10
project 39 Erasmus 146–148
cultural threads 147 Erasmus Student Network (ESN) 147
culturegram 140–141, 141 European Educational Research
The Curriculum 41 Association (ECER) 15n1
evidence-based methods 5
Darling-Hammond, L. 56 evocative autoethnography 140
Day, C. 74 exceptionalism 24, 25
“Debate Society” 162, 165
deconstructing “grand” narratives Fair Go project 73
55–56 Fenstermacher, G.D. 7
democratic spirit 26 Fielding, M. 24
Department of Education and Skills focus group interview (FGI) 104n4
(DES) 29 Foreign Language Teaching
Dervin, F. 143 Assistantship (FLTA) program
Dewey, John 20, 37, 125, 130, 133 148, 149
Diagonal Mentoring™ 97 Foucault, M. 177
diagonal mentors 12, 97–99, 103 free economy 179
Dickens, C. 106 free speech 26
dilemma-management 29 Freire, P. 26, 65, 119
Diniz-Pereira, J.E. 59 Friedman, Milton 176
Index 205
Garrison, J. 133 Kenta’s initial concern and teacher
Gee, J.P. 21, 22 beliefs 96–97
Gerring, J. 76 Kiilakoski, T. 119
Gershon, Walter, S. 11, 36–50, 174, Klafki, W. 129, 130
183, 184 Kliebard, H.M. 41
Giroux, H. 108 Korthagen, F.A.J. 57
Glissant, E. 49
Global Education Reform Movement Lampert, J. 74
(GERM) 11, 28, 31 Lanas, M. 119
global professional competence Latent thematic analysis 61, 61
frameworks 10 Lave, J. 91, 141, 149
Gonski report 73 Lawn, M. 20
grammar-based exams 162 learner-centered pedagogies 29
grammar-translation method 102 Lieberman, A. 6
Gramsci, A. 172, 175 linguistic capital 145, 146
Gümüşok, Fatma 12–13, 106–120, 184 Longaretti, Lynette 12, 72–86, 181,
183, 184
habitus 142–143, 147 Lortie, D.C. 57
Håkansson, Jan 3 Loughran, J. 57
Hansen, D.T. 127, 128
Harari, Y.N. 145 Macrine, S.L. 21
Harvey, D. 176 Marzano, R.J. 72
Hatch, J.A. 8 Masato’s case 94, 100–102
Hattie, J.A.C. 73, 191 Masato’s initial struggle and teacher
Hattie, John 2, 3 beliefs 94–95
Hernández-Ramos, P.F. 91 Matsuda, Paul Kei 162
Higgins, Michael, D 28 Max—“Short sharp and shiny,” 79–81,
Högberg, Sören 13, 123–137, 183, 184 84, 85
homo economicus 178–181 McDermott, R. 43
Hong, J. 74 McLaren, P. 31, 108
human capital theory 23, 179 McTighe, J. 41
Hunter, M. 41 Mead’s social psychology of action 15n4
Melissa—“tune into the signs” 77–79,
“identity as an English teacher” 9 84, 85
identity-in-practice 156–157 member checking 111
in-depth knowledge theory 5 Miller, L. 6
Index of Community Socio-Educational Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports,
Advantage (ICSEA) 73 Science and Technology in Japan 92
industrious frameworks 5 Ministry of National Education
institutional perspective (I-identities) (MoNE) 159, 162, 164, 165
22, 25, 30 Moodle software 163, 165
instructional planning 129 Mooney Simmie, Geraldine 11,
International Monetary Fund 176 20–32, 174
interpretive system 23 moral and apolitical endeavor 21
Irish Science Teachers Association moral and political endeavor 21
(ISTA) 27 moral authority 135–136
Moreira, Maria Alfredo 11, 54–68, 174,
Jackson, P.W. 130 183–185
Johnson, K.E. 90 Morin, E. 2
joint examination procedure 160, 161 My School website 73
Karaman, A. Cendel 1–15, 172–187, narrative inquiry 14

190–200 narrative knowledge 8
Kenta’s case 96, 98–100 narratives of teachers 8–9
206 Index
National Exceptional Teaching for 132–133; moral authority 135–136;
Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) moral dimension 132; rationale
program 12, 72, 85; analytical 125–126; shifted objectives 133–135;
capacities 75; deep content and short-term objectives 128–131; visit
pedagogical knowledge 75; diversity to classroom 131–132
strategy 76; geographical diversity pedagogy of hope 26–27
76; methodology 75–76; multiple performativity in teacher education,
case study approach 76; preservice Ireland 24–26
teachers 75; principles 75; role of Pillow, W. 22
researcher 76; sub-questions 77; Pinnegar, S. 103
success criteria 76 Practical Eugenics 42
National University of Ireland practice-oriented approach 5
(NUI) 27 practicum courses 160, 161
nature perspective (N-identities) 22 pre-Covid-19 world of education
neoliberal/elite governance ideology 23 policy 20
neoliberal governmentality 177–178 preservice teachers (PSTs) 75
neoliberalism: counter-narratives problem posing education 107–108
182–185; critical discourse studies professional development and identity
174–176; definition 176; educational 8–9
domains 178–180; Foucauldian professional development and training 6
governmentality 177–178; free professional development trajectories
market and trade 176; global and identities 5–7
inequalities 172; Marxian political professional identity 109–110;
economy 177–178; skill-sets 173; competence 166; features 155; global
social inequalities 178; stagflation and local relations 167; identity-in-
176; teaching profession 180–182 practice 156–157; learning trajectory
NETDS Community of Practice model 167; multimembership 166; narrative
81 inquiry 158–160; participation 166;
NETDS program see National professional development 160–164;
Exceptional Teaching for reification 166; teacher identity
Disadvantaged Schools (NETDS) construction 164–166; transformative
program teacher professionalism 167–168;
No Child Left Behind Act 1 see also pedagogical rhythm`
non-native English speaking teachers “professional identity as a teacher” 9
(NNESTs) 158 professional learning narratives 11
progressivism 107
online collaborative community of
practice 12 Race to the Top program 1
oral summary 98 radical democracy 182–183
Organization for Economic Reagan, Ronald 176
Cooperation and Development’s reflective practitioners 89
(OECD) programme 1, 73 regional support officer to schools 29
Ortner 47 reverse culture shock 146
Ozga, J. 20 Richardson, V. 7
Ritter, J.K. 91, 103
parroting technique 160 “Riverdance” of techniques 26
Patrick, F. 90 Robinson, Mary 28
pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) Rodgers, C.R. 109
181
pedagogical rhythm 13; ambitions Sachs, J. 156
126–128; communication themes Sant, E. 21
124; emerged intentions 131; ethical Santoro, D.A. 24, 31
intentions 124–125; interviews Sawyer, W. 74
124–125; long-term-perspective Scholes, L. 74
Index 207
The School America Builds 43 deconstructing “grand” narratives
Schubert, W.H. 41 55–56; of democracy 54; dilemmas
Scott, K.H. 109 and tensions 196–197; dogmatic
Seawright, J. 76 schooling 63; educational inequalities
secondary school teacher 27–29 55; expert teachers 190–192;
semi-structured interviews 110 good teacher 57; hegemonic forces
shared morality 127, 128, 136 54; inquiry-based teaching 55;
short-term objectives 128–131 interconnectedness of entities 194–
situated learning theory 141 196; interpretive and hermeneutic
Skourdoumbis, A. 4 perspective 60; latent thematic
social capital 142–144 analysis 61, 61; learning with students
social-cultural trajectories 13, 14 62–63; narrative inquiry 59–60,
social efficiency group 42 67; narrative writing 61; neoliberal
social justice 182–184 educational reforms 56; neoliberal
sociocultural theory 90 perspectives 54; phenomenological
socioeconomic status (SES) approach 60; place of/for 58–59;
communities 111, 112 professional learning narratives 55;
Sockett, H. 135 professional trajectories 57; purposes
Springer, S. 178 and contexts 193–194; quality
stagflation 176 education 66; reflective analysis of
Steiner-Kramsi, G. 30 contextualized situations 66; risk in
structural violence 7 education 197; social justice agenda
success/failure binaries: 67; socio-political awareness 54; of
autoethnography 39–40; best standardization and meritocracy 56;
practices 41; central mode of injustice status quo 54; structured reflection
48; constructions of successful 65–66; successful teaching 57, 61,
teaching 37; CSP project 39; 66; systematic development and
deepening “the professionalization” integration 57; teacher identities
of teachers 41; educational 198, 198–199; theoretical thematic
modernisms 43–45; educational analysis 61; writing narratives 59
scholarship 43; eugenics, efficiency, Teacher Professional Learning 20
and segregation 42; experience teaching preparation 130
and education 38; immeasurability terrors of performativity 24
of learning 37; linear systems 38; Thatcher, Margaret 176
longstanding practices 50; notion of third places 147–148
sameness-as-justice 45–47; oppression Toe, Dianne 12, 72–86, 181, 183, 184
and violence demand 49; pedagogical Tolhurst, G. 76
approach 40; respect and dignity 49; Transformative Education (TE) 107, 109
responsibility 49; The School America transformative intellectuals 108
Builds 43; sociocultural norms 47; transformative teacher: communication
“valued” function 36 skills 115–116; community problems
Sundberg, Daniel 3 108; leadership 112–113; narrative
symbolic capital 143, 144, 146 inquiry 110–111; opportunity for
108–109; problem posing 107–108;
teachable moment 133 professional identity 109–110,
teacher development 5 118–119; research participant
teacher narratives 2; acceleration classes 111; research questions 107; self-
63; aristocracy of birth 55; aristocracy transformational experience 113–114,
of talent 55; collaborative culture 119; students and community
64–65; contextualized curriculum 111–112; teacher education programs
and assessment 63; continuous 109–110; transformative and affective
personal and professional investment practice 116–118; transformative
64; critical reflective inquiry 67; intellectuals 108; volunteer tutoring
cultural diversity knowledge base 57; program 118; work ethics 114–115
208 Index
Transition Year Support Service and Viana, Maria Aparecida, P. 11,
Second Level Support Service 29 54–68, 174
transnational governance ideology 31 Visible Learning 2, 3
Tsui, A. 89
Turkish language 144, 148, 149, Wenger, E. 91, 141, 149, 156,
158, 162 159, 166
Tyler, R.W. 41 Wiggins, G. 41
Williams, J. 91, 103
Universal Declaration of Human Wink, J. 107, 108
Rights 2 Wisniewski, R. 8
universality teacher identity 24 work ethics 114–115
Universal notions of transferability World Bank 176
43–44
US postal codes 42 Yeni-Palabıyık, Pınar 14,
155–169, 181
van Manen, M. 130
Varenne, H. 43 Zeichner, K.M. 56, 58, 59

(Routledge Research in Teacher Education) A. Cendel Karaman, Silvia Edling - Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching - International Narratives of Successful Teachers-Routledge (2021)

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(Routledge Research in Teacher Education) A. Cendel Karaman, Silvia Edling - Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching - International Narratives of Successful Teachers-Routledge (2021)

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“The publication of this book is a relief. Scholarly as well as ethically.

An international group of authors stands up against the worldwide

“This book, Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching: Interna-

This book explores the reflective potentialities offered by analyses of teach-

A. Cendel Karaman is Professor in the Faculty of Education at Middle East

Silvia Edling is a Professor and excellent teacher at the Academy of Edu-

Integrating Technology in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Research-Informed Teacher Learning

Europeanisation in Teacher Education

Study Abroad for Pre- and In-Service Teachers

Becoming Somebody in Teacher Education

Professional Learning and Identities in Teaching

Teacher Quality and Education Policy in India

Teacher Educators and their Professional Development

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.

Edited by A. Cendel Karaman and

1 Remaining a student of teaching forever: Critical

2 From success/failure binaries to teaching for justice:

3 Teacher narratives as counter-narratives

4 “If I can do it at this school, you can put me anywhere”:

5 Professional development of EFL teachers through

7 Understanding a teacher’s professional identity

8 Revisiting selves through a “success” perspective:

9 Path toward the construction of a professional identity:

10 “Successful teaching”: Neoliberal influences and

Conclusion: Context, interconnectedness, balance,

A. Cendel Karaman (Ph.D., Curriculum and Instruction, University of

Maria Alfredo Moreira (Ph.D., University of Minho) is an Assistant

Chitose Asaoka (Ph.D., Education, Institute of Education, University

…complexity is not only quantities of units and interactions that defy

Inquiring into constructions of successful

Situating the teaching profession in relation purposes of education

The continued contemporary education policy emphasis on teacher per-

Professional development trajectories and identities

learning or developing a teacher identity is imbued with and fuelled by

Reducing such experiential trajectories to linear narratives of progress leads to

In today’s world, policy makers, politicians, educational leaders, the

While teachers are positioned in a complex web of professional respon-

By successful teaching we mean that the learner actually acquires, to

The processes involved in confirming or developing such qualities in teacherhood

Drawing on a large amount of data indicates that excellent education and

Geraldine Mooney Simmie

Education as a field of radical possibility

Performativity in teacher education in Ireland

counterposes moralities orientated towards ethics...(where there is a)

Why teacher identities need the political

My critical insights from the field of practice

Teacher in a secondary school

Regional support officer to schools

Modes of inquiry: Autoethnography

Educational modernisms: Universal, linear, and sequential

Conclusion: Teaching for justice—access, responsibility, dignity,

Deconstructing “grand” narratives of successful teaching

In globalized, mobile societies, teachers need to develop a cultural diversity

debates about the meaning of children, families, communities, teach-

It is our contention in this chapter that teacher narratives, when devel-

The place of/for teacher narratives

In our work as teacher educators, teachers’ stories on their students, their

Midwifery in action: Giving birth to the

[n]arrative inquiry, the study of experience as story, then, is first and

Narrative (and biographic) inquiry constitutes a branch of interpretive

Figure 3.1: Results of latent thematic analysis of teacher narratives on successful

Learning with students and responding to each