Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25

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Teaching and Teacher Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tate

How teachers become teacher researchers: Narrative as a tool for

teacher identity construction
Laura A. Taylor
Language and Literacy Studies, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station D5700, Austin, TX 78712, USA

h i g h l i g h t s

 Instructor and teachers constructed identities as teacher researchers through talk.

 Instructor used narratives as a tool to co-construct the teacher researcher identity.
 Narratives were also used to discursively position teachers as teacher researchers.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: While scholarship on teacher research suggests the value of this work for teaching and learning, there
Received 18 January 2016 are challenges in sustaining it beyond teacher education, in part because teachers may not envision
Received in revised form themselves as researchers. Drawing on sociocultural theories of identity, this paper uses discourse
6 August 2016
analysis to consider how an instructor in a graduate course on teacher research supported inservice
Accepted 16 September 2016
teachers in constructing identities as teacher researchers. The analysis identifies the ways the instructor
Available online 1 October 2016
used personal narratives as a tool to intentionally position teachers as teacher researchers as participants
discursively negotiated these identities.
Keywords:
Teacher professional identity
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Teacher researchers
Discourse analysis
Inservice teacher education

1. Introduction extend beyond the teacher education classroom, allowing teachers

Just as many teachers seek to shift their pedagogy from trans-
mission or banking models (Freire, 1993) towards more inquiry-
based approaches, some teacher educators have looked to teacher
research, a form of practitioner inquiry, as an effective tool for
teacher learning (Zeichner, 2009). By engaging teachers in research
on their practice, teacher education can move away from the
teacher-centered positioning of transmission models towards more
student-centered approaches, thus shifting the positioning of
teachers from receivers of pedagogical knowledge from outside
authorities into creators of such knowledge (Cochran-Smith &
Lytle, 2009). Teacher research provides not only an instructional
tool for teacher educators to engage in student-centered, problem-
posing pedagogy (Souto-Manning, 2012), but also a tool for
teachers to inquire into tensions or problems of practice within
their classrooms and schools (Baumann & Duffy, 2001). These tools
E-mail address: l.taylor@utexas.edu.
to continue their professional development after completing their
formal coursework, providing opportunities for teachers to
improve teaching and learning (Blumenreich & Falk, 2006; Lysaker
& Thompson, 2013; Moran, 2007), explore questions of power and
social justice (Fecho & Allen, 2011; Friedrich & McKinney, 2010),
transform their understanding of their students (Ballenger, 1999,
2009; Hankins, 2003; Parkison, 2009), and build their sense of
agency (Christenson et al., 2002) and professional voice (Whitney,
2012).
Yet, research from both the United Kingdom and North America
have identified challenges in moving teacher research from teacher
education spaces into teachers' own classrooms (Reis-Jorge, 2007;
Schulz & Manduk, 2005). Participation within communities of
teacher researchers can support teachers in learning about and
sustaining this often difficult and time-consuming work (e.g.,
Phillips & Gallas, 2004; Wells, 2001), and teacher education pro-
grams could potentially provide a space in which these commu-
nities are developed and supported (Baumann & Duffy, 2001).
However, in considering how teacher education might support

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.09.008
0742-051X/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
teachers in engaging in teacher research, there is a lack of empirical
work that explores how teachers might be supported in con-
structing identities as teacher researchers.
Sociocultural theories of identity suggest that, in order to
develop new practices, one must construct an identity that sup-
ports those practices (Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 2001).
Because an identity can span contexts, it can allow practices to be
transferred from one space to another. It follows that in the case of
teacher research, the development of teacher researcher identities
can support teachers in taking practices of teacher inquiry learned
in teacher education programs into their classrooms. To encourage
teachers to continue engaging in research, then, teacher education
might not only introduce the tools and practices of teacher
research, but also intentionally encourage the development of
teacher researcher identities. While there has been increasing
attention to teacher identity within the academic literature inter-
nationally (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2011), there is not yet substantial
research on how teacher educators might support teacher identity
development (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Izadinia, 2013), and
this is particularly true for work in teacher research. To further
explore the role teacher education might play in teacher researcher
identity development, I draw on case study and discourse analytic
methods to explore how a group of six inservice teachers and one
teacher educator co-constructed (Jacoby & Ochs, 1995) identities as
teacher researchers across two graduate education courses. Given
the role of discourse in the development of teacher identity (Cohen,
2010; Sfard & Prusak, 2005), I attend closely to the language of the
teachers and their instructor to consider the following research
question: How does the course instructor use her interactions to
support teachers in co-constructing identities as teacher
researchers?
2. Theoretical framework and review of literature
First, I situate this study within sociocultural perspectives on
identity, considering how these perspectives understand the
development of new identities and the interaction between iden-
tity and practice. Then, I examine how existing research has
considered the process of teachers becoming teacher researchers,
including how such work has approached questions of identity
development.
2.1. Sociocultural approaches to identity
Early research on teacher identity tended to view the construct
of identity as a singular and static one (Day, Kington, Stobard &
Sammons, 2006), an approach challenged by more recent
research drawing on varied disciplines to frame their explorations
of identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). One such approach, a
sociocultural framework, understands identity as an active,
ongoing process constructed through social practice. This approach
views identity not as a set of inherent characteristics, but as a
continual process of construction and negotiation by people in
interaction (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005).
Within scholarship on teacher identity, a variety of terms have been
used to describe these shifts, including ‘developing’, ‘forming’,
‘shaping’, and ‘building’, with each term reflecting slight differences
in approach to identity (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). Consistent
with a sociocultural approach, I use the terms ‘construction’ and
‘co-construction’ to highlight this notion of identity as always being
in process.
Sociocultural approaches to identity draw on positioning theory
(Davies & Harre
, 1990), which posits that individuals take on
identities by using language to position themselves within partic-
ular categories. Typically, these identity positions are not claimed
17
explicitly through language (e.g., “I am a woman”, “I am a teacher
researcher”) but instead are inferred through on a person's activity
(Ochs, 1993). Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain (2001) work in
particular attends to the connections between action and identity,
recognizing identities as “bases from which people create new ac-
tivities, new worlds, and new ways of being” (p. 5). Identities allow
individuals to envision new worlds, and in the process new iden-
tities for themselves within those worlds, thus providing space for
“improvisation and innovation” (Urrieta, 2007, p. 108). In addition,
although identities may be constructed in one setting, individuals
can carry these identities into new discursive contexts, allowing
identity to serve as a resource that travels over space and time
(Bloome et al., 2005).
Within the literature on teacher identity, this connection be-
tween identity and activity has been purposely explored, consid-
ering how identity might impact teaching practice (Beauchamp &
Thomas, 2009). Research in Britain has found that teachers'
commitment, effectiveness, and resiliency are all interrelated with
their identities (Day, Elliot, & Kington, 2005; Gu & Day, 2007).
Engaging in new activities, such as entering the teaching field - or in
the case of this study, taking courses on teacher research - can lead
to changes in identity (Flores & Day, 2006). Thus, in considering
how teachers might engage in new or different practices, socio-
cultural theory suggests attention to identity development is a
necessary component.
While sociocultural approaches to identity allow for an under-
standing of how identity constructs and is constructed by individ-
ual activity, attention must be paid to the role of discourse within
this relationship (Scollon, 2001). Bucholtz and Hall's (2004, 2005)
framework for the discursive production of identity builds on this
work from a linguistic anthropological perspective by categorizing
different ways identities are constructed through social interaction.
Their framework focuses on the construction of identity occurring
at the level of talk, arguing identity is continually emerging through
social positioning within interaction. This approach attends to both
“identity-in-discourse and identity-in-practice” (Varghese,
Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005, p. 39), recognizing how iden-
tity is discursively constructed with others in the context of activity.
Within their framework, Bucholtz & Hall identify “‘tactics’ for the
‘interactional negotiation in the formation of identity’” (2004, p.
382), including the use of adequation and distinction in order to
position an individual as similar to or different from a particular
identity position.
They define adequation as working towards “socially recognized
sameness… potentially salient differences are set aside in favor of
perceived or asserted similarities that are taken to be more situa-
tionally relevant” (2004, p. 383). Thus, adequation does not require
that the individual exactly matches a particular identity position,
but rather that the two are enough alike within the particular
discursive context. Conversely, distinction highlights the differ-
ences between an individual and an identity position. In using this
tactic, similarities are ignored while disparities between the two
are highlighted, often through the establishment of “a dichotomy
between social identities constructed as oppositional or contras-
tive” (2004, p. 384). Both adequation and distinction, as interac-
tional tactics, point to the partiality and context-dependent nature
of identity, recognizing both the multiplicity of identity and the
construction of greater saliency of certain identities within a
particular context. By attending to the use of these tactics in social
interaction, researchers can analyze how identity construction oc-
curs in practice. It can be especially useful in cases where an indi-
vidual desires to become part of a new social group, such as in this
exploration of teachers constructing identities as teacher
researchers.
18 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
2.2. Teacher research and identity development
An analysis of teacher researcher identity construction requires
attention to the unique aspects of that identity. Labaree (2003)
argues that becoming an educational researcher can be chal-
lenging for teachers, because the two roles e researcher and
teacher e require potentially conflicting perspectives. In acting as a
teacher researcher, then, an individual is disrupting established
boundaries between teacher and researcher. Cochran-Smith and
Lytle (2009) have suggested the boundary crossing work of
teacher research, which they refer to as “working the dialectic” (p.
87), can create “generative and productive tensions rather than
dichotomies” (p. 123) from which to work. In the process of
“working the dialectic,” an individual becoming a teacher
researcher begins to merge the perspectives of teacher and
researcher into a single dynamic one. Considering the complexity
of this particular identity, however, there is a lack of research
exploring how it might be constructed.
Existing literature does provide important insights into how
teachers begin to engage in the practice of teacher research, in
some cases through the self-study of this process by teacher re-
searchers. Mehta (2009) is one such teacher researcher who used a
cultural hybridity lens to explore her work within the space be-
tween practitioner and researcher, leading her to question the need
for separate categories for teacher, researcher, and learner and
instead arguing for the possibility of inhabiting each of these
identities at once. Schaffel (1996) also explored her own journey
into teacher research, recognizing that through the process of
conducting research, her teaching practice shifted towards more
process-based and developmental approaches. For U.S. scholars
Schaffel and Mehta, these shifts are not simply ones of practice e of
engaging in different activities e but shifts of identity as well. The
experience of engaging in teacher research changed the way they
viewed themselves and the world, an experience shared with other
teacher researchers (e.g., Ballenger, 2009; Banegas, 2012; Somekh,
2009). While these self-studies contribute to our understanding of
how teachers develop as teacher researchers, they do not allow for
an examination of identity construction in practice, thus preventing
an exploration of how this process might be better supported by
teacher educators.
In addition to these self-studies, university-based research has
examined this experience, finding that becoming a teacher
researcher can be lengthy process, one that benefits from the
support and collaboration of colleagues (Chandler, 1999). Similar to
the self-studies discussed earlier, Snow-Gerono (2005) found
teachers' engagement in inquiry within a professional develop-
ment school in the United States changed not only their classroom
practices, but also their stance towards teaching, suggesting that
the process of becoming a teacher researcher involves shifts in both
activity and identity. Additional research has explored these
questions within the context of teacher education coursework in
Britain, Hong Kong, United States, and Canada, finding that even
small-scale research projects allowed teachers to develop new
understandings about the research process (Gray, 2013; Trent,
2010), about their selected topic of study (Goodnough, 2010;
Megowan-Romanowicz, 2010), and even about themselves
(Blumenreich & Falk, 2006; Freese, 2006; Reis-Jorge, 2007). By
engaging in the research process while being supported by expe-
rienced teacher educators, U.S. teachers shifted their views of
research away from positivistic conceptions that felt distant from
their teaching (Topping & Hoffman, 2002) and developed more
positive attitudes towards research that strengthened their self-
efficacy to engage in such work in a Dutch university (van der
Linden, Bakx, Ros, Beijaard, & van den Bergh, 2015).
Research has also considered more explicitly the ways that
engaging in the research process can influence teacher identity,
finding that participating in such inquiry can increase teachers'
confidence in their teaching practice (Goodnough, 2011), encourage
them to consider how their teaching aligns with competing
educational discourses (Trent, 2010), and support their construc-
tion of identities as leaders (Vetter, 2012). While existing research
demonstrates that the process of engaging in teacher research in-
volves shifts in knowledge, practice, and identity, few studies
attend explicitly to the teacher researcher identity. Two exceptions,
both based in U.S. universities, focused more closely on teacher
researcher identity. Christenson et al. (2002) found that, within a
group of 32 teachers, the number identifying as researchers rose
from 16 at the beginning of a teacher research course to 24 at the
end. In addition, Slapac and Navarro (2011) traced teachers' expe-
riences within a teacher action research course and found a number
of students “acknowledged growth along the process of becoming
researchers and better teachers” (p. 418) by the end of the course.
This body of research suggests that as teachers are supported in
engaging teacher research across varied national contexts, their
views of teaching and research may shift. However, the literature
has focused primarily on shifts in behavior and knowledge, with
little attention paid to the construction of the boundary crossing
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) teacher researcher identity. Even in
research documenting shifts in identity, there has not yet been
close attention to how teachers construct identities as teacher re-
searchers nor to how teacher educators might support this con-
struction. To build upon existing literature, I take a
microethnographic approach (Bloome et al., 2005) to more closely
attend to the process of identity construction as it occurs in the
social interactions between teachers learning about teacher
research, considering how one teacher educator uses her talk to co-
construct these identities.
3. Methodology and methods
This analysis is situated within a case study (Yin, 2014) of the
experiences of six graduate students and their instructor, Sarah,
during a course focused on teacher research and classroom
discourse. Sarah, a university-based researcher and teacher
educator at a large public university in the Southwestern United
States, had taught this course numerous times. The graduate stu-
dents were all elementary classroom teachers concurrently pur-
suing master's degrees in curriculum and instruction at the
university. To add clarity to a context where participants held
multiple roles simultaneously (e.g., teacher, student), I refer to
Sarah as the instructor and the individuals taking the course as
students. This was the third course these six students had taken
together as part of a innovative graduate program focused on lit-
eracy instruction, mentoring, and leadership, but none had previ-
ously worked with Sarah or myself. A theme explored across
courses in the program was a careful attention to language,
including students' engagement in discourse analysis of their talk
as teachers and mentors (Mosley Wetzel et al., 2015). This partic-
ular course was selected for two principal reasons: (a) my shared
interest with Sarah in examining how teacher education might
support beginning teacher researchers, and (b) Sarah's reputation
within the university as a skilled teacher educator.
In this course, Sarah used an “inquiry as stance” perspective
(Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) to support students in using
research to explore problems of practice in their classrooms. Stu-
dents read and discussed texts both by teacher researchers and
about teacher researchdusing Shagoury and Power's (2012) Living
The Questions as a key work to guide their explorationdwhile
concurrently engaging in the research process through class ac-
tivities and assignments, culminating in a research proposal to be
 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
implemented in the following academic year. Following the
completion of the course, five of the six students elected to
participate in an independent study with the course instructor and
a second faculty member to support their research projects. During
this semester, students met less frequently, writing about their
research projects regularly on a shared blog between five group
meetings while working on a research paper about their classroom
inquiry.
My interest in this particular topic stemmed from my experi-
ences engaging in teacher research as an elementary school
teacher, which illuminated for me both the benefits of the work for
myself and my students as well as the challenges faced doing so
within the current educational context. As a participant-observer
(Glesne, 2011), I attended all class meetings. Although my pri-
mary focus was the collection of fieldnotes, I regularly participated
in discussions, including sharing examples of study design and data
collection from my own research (including both previous research
and the present study). While the decision to share aspects of this
work made salient my ongoing research on their experiences, the
examples shared were typically general, indicating my broad in-
terest in their initial experiences with teacher research. My specific
focus on teacher researcher identity was one developed during data
collection and was not shared with student participants. As part of
this process, I collected the following data:
 Audio recordings and fieldnotes. Fieldnotes and audio recordings
were collected during each of the thirteen, three-hour class
sessions for the first semester, with audio recordings used to
expand the fieldnotes and transcribe pertinent sections. In the
second semester, fieldnotes were taken during each of five class
meetings.
 Course blog and other artifacts. Students' weekly discussions of
readings and progress reports on their research projects on a
course blog were collected as data, as were research proposals,
final papers, and other texts created within the courses.
 Interviews. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the
course instructor during the mid-point of the first semester and
with students at the completion of their second semester. All
interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed.
Data from class meetings and the course blog allowed for an
analysis of how identity was constructed in interaction, while in-
terviews provided data on how this construction was understood
by participants. I began analysis during data collection with
reflective memoing and weekly reviews of fieldnotes. In addition, I
met several times with Sarah outside of class meetings to discuss
initial impressions of the students' experiences in the course, with
meetings serving as a space both for initial data analysis and for
Sarah to reflect on her teaching in this course. It was through these
conversations, as well as my ongoing data analysis, that identity
emerged as a focus.
Following the completion of the first semester, I used inductive
methods (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) to identify themes related to the
development of students' identities as teacher researchers, which
allowed me to identify and transcribe relevant portions of field-
notes for further analysis of identity construction. I analyzed these
resulting transcripts using Bucholtz and Hall's (2005) dimensions
of relationality to understand how identity was being constructed
through interaction. Following the completion of the second se-
mester, I analyzed this new data again with an inductive approach,
then I combined themes that emerged from the analysis of first and
second semester data.
Through that analysis of the data, Sarah's frequent use of per-
sonal narrative emerged as a relevant theme. Narratives are perti-
nent to questions of identity because they act not only to represent
19
past events but in doing so can also position both the speaker and
the audience of that narrative (Ochs & Capps, 1996; Wortham,
2001). To explore how these narratives were used to position
Sarah and her students, I reviewed fieldnotes from each class ses-
sion to identify all portions that included narratives told by Sarah,
using Labov's (2006) definition of narrative as, minimally, “a
sequence of two clauses which are temporally ordered” (p. 208) to
identify talk as such. From this search, I located and transcribed 15
narratives Sarah told during the course; these narratives, all
focused on aspects of the research process, included examples from
both her elementary teaching and university experiences and
ranged in length from 108 to 416 words. I drew on an interactional
approach to narrative discourse analysis (Rogers & Mosley Wetzel,
2014), first inductively coding to identify how the concept of
research and researcher were discursively built, with particular
attention to pronoun usage and repeated words. In the second
phase of coding, initial codes were revised and consolidated to
identify the multiple aspects of “researcher” represented within the
narratives, and the narratives were coded using Bucholtz and Hall's
(2005) tactics to identify how the narratives positioned the speaker
and audience. Though discourse analysis inherently involves some
degree of subjectivity (Erickson, 2004; Gee, 2012), I sought to
strengthen the internal validity (Merriam, 2002) of my in-
terpretations by tracing identity construction across multiple
sources of data and attending to the prevalence of different ap-
proaches to identity construction in the data.
4. Findings
Whether consciously or not, teachers play a crucial role “in
creating the social rules for claiming, challenging, and defending
the social identities claimed” (Bloome et al., 2005, p. 121) in the
classroom. Throughout her interactions with students, the course
instructor Sarah used language to both construct the identity of
teacher researcher and to position her students as teacher re-
searchers. Although analysis revealed a variety of strategies Sarah
used to do so, it was her use of personal narratives that emerged as
a particularly significant strategy for co-constructing her students'
identities as teacher researchers. These “pedagogical stories” (Rex,
Murnen, Hobbs, & McEachen, 2002) not only introduced students
to the practices of teacher research, but also served to support
students in taking on identities as teacher researchers in two ways:
by constructing a particular identity of teacher researcher and by
using tactics of positioning to situate the students within that
identity.
As I report on Sarah's use of narratives in these ways, I include
examples of student talk relevant to their ongoing construction of
teacher researcher identities within the course. Identity construc-
tion, of course, is a complex process, and thus, this inclusion of
student talk is not meant to imply that Sarah's narratives alone led
students to construct identities as teacher researchers. Instead,
these examples are included to highlight the students' identity
construction across the experience, providing insight into how
their understandings of themselves as teacher researchers devel-
oped alongside Sarah's narratives.
4.1. Constructing a teacher researcher identity
Sarah's ability to use narratives to construct a teacher researcher
identity was reliant on her own identity positioning in the class.
Because her identity as a researcher and a former teacher was well
established in the classroom community, not only through her
narratives but also through the students' engagement with her
published research in this course and previous courses, she was
able to use her own experiences both to construct the identity of
20 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
teacher researcher and to position her students as teacher re-
searchers. Through these narratives, Sarah engaged in what
Bucholtz and Hall (2004) term performance, in which she deliber-
ately enacted an identity of researcher that transformed that
prestigious, and thus potentially unattainable, identity position
into a more accessible one for students. In her interview, she named
this identity work as particularly necessary in working with class-
room teachers:
Teachers in a class on classroom discourse and research aren't
necessarily in a place where they're ready to view themselves as
researchers, so I do view part of my role in this particular class as
making research accessible to them. Making the idea of research
accessible, like disrupting that notion of “we do research, and
teachers teach.” And bringing in my own experience is a part of that
accessibility.
Sarah recognized the need to make research, and by extension
the identity of researcher, available to the students she was work-
ing with, and she intentionally drew on her own experiences as a
researcher in order to do so. Although she did not explicitly discuss
issues of teacher and teacher researcher identity during class
meetings, she was conscious of these topics in her teaching prac-
tice. Using discourse analysis frequently in her own research, she
was well aware of the power of language and attended carefully to
how her language constructed identities in the classroom.
Student talk at the beginning of the first semester confirmed
Sarah's assertion that students in this course did not enter it
viewing themselves as researchers. As students were introduced to
teacher research, they tended to use distinction to position them-
selves as different or separate from the identity of teacher
researcher. As the tactic of distinction often involves creating a
dichotomy between two identities (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004), stu-
dents positioned themselves as teachers in opposition to the
identity of researcher. They did so through several interactional
tools, including referring to teacher researchers (and researchers in
general) in the third person and highlighting contrasts between the
practices of researchers and their practices as teachers. An example
of this can be seen in a comment from Janine during a discussion of
teacher research in the first week of class. Responding to a prompt
from Sarah to share their “thoughts about this idea of research,”
Janine contrasted her approach as a teacher to that of a researcher,
using one of Sarah's articles the class had read as an example of
research. Summing up the disparities she saw between these two
activities, she stated: “Because y'all are thinking about that stuff all
the time. You have a mindset already that ours is not in that
framework yet.” Through her use of “y'all” and “you”, Janine
referenced Sarah, and by extension other researchers, to juxtapose
these two different ways of thinking, and in doing so she made a
distinction between the identity positions of teacher and
researcher. Her use of “ours” positioned not only herself but also
her fellow students as teachers, matching similar tactics by other
students who positioned themselves as teachers e in opposition to
the identity of researcher e during the early weeks of the semester.
However, Janine's talk here also differs slightly from the talk of her
classmates earlier in the semester in her use of “yet”, which sug-
gests that, although she did not presently view herself as a
researcher, it was an identity she was considering adopting in the
future.
To respond to this initial distinction between teacher and
researcher from Janine and others in the course, Sarah used per-
sonal narratives to position the identity of researcher as accessible
to the students, in part by disrupting notions of research as a linear,
uncomplicated process. By sharing stories of challenges she faced in
her own research, she made space within the identity of researcher
for those that experienced difficulties in that process. For instance,
during a discussion focused on data analysis, she described
previous challenges encountered while engaging in analysis:
I always go through this period of time where I think, “I don't
have anything to say. I've just spent months working on this and I
don't have anything- There's nothing there. I don't have anything to
say.” … And I've learned that I just have to push through that phase.
I just have to keep working on it.
This narrative depicted experiences of uncertainty and ambi-
guity in the analysis process, while in other narratives she
described additional challenges, including difficulties with col-
lecting data unobtrusively, organizing collected data, identifying
salient themes during data analysis, and writing reports of
research. By describing her own struggles as an experienced and
successful researcher, she constructed an identity position of
researcher as someone who faces challenges or uncertainties, thus
interrupting notions of research as a direct, step-by-step process.
This disruption was particularly important for students just
beginning in the research process, because it allowed them to
maintain the identity of researcher even while experiencing diffi-
culties in that work.
Students in the course, in turn, shared their own difficulties
engaging in research as they took part in different aspects of the
research process through classroom assignments, including the
development of research questions and the collection and analysis
of data. Often, they referred to these activities as “trying out” or
“trying on” research, and by extension, these activities served as
spaces to try on the identity of teacher researcher. Kelly's discussion
of her first experience collecting data on her students' talk, which
occurred near the mid-point of the first semester, provides an
example of the challenges she faced, as well as her developing
identity as a teacher researcher:
So I tried, you know, I had a notepad to the side, and I would jot
down. It just felt so unnatural to me, at that moment. Like it felt like
it broke the flow of conversation…I hated to stop the flow of con-
versation so I could write something down. And I didn't want them
to keep talking because I was afraid I was going to miss something
else incredible.
She began her description of the experience with the verb
“tried,” suggesting she viewed this activity as practice or rehearsal
for more authentic teacher research. Here there seem to be in-
dications of Kelly's attention to what a ‘real’ teacher researcher does
and is, which Bucholtz and Hall (2005) refer to as authentication
and denaturalization. In particular, she named the experience as
feeling “unnatural,” indicating that although she was engaging in
the work of teacher research, that work e and the concurrent
identity of teacher researcher it suggested e did not yet feel
authentic or comfortable.
In the second portion of her turn, she identified a tension be-
tween the two roles she was playing in this conversation: that of
teacher facilitating student talk and that of researcher documenting
their talk for future analysis. This tension perhaps speaks to both
the potential discomfort and the potential value of taking on the
hybrid identity of teacher researcher. There was discomfort for
Kelly in trying to bridge these two typically separate positions, and
yet she saw value in both positions as she worked within the
teacher/researcher dialectic theorized by Cochran-Smith and Lytle
(2009). It suggests that as teachers take on the activity and iden-
tity of teacher researcher, there are likely to be moments of un-
certainty, as Kelly indicates here. Had she not been supported in
this endeavor by Sarah's course, Kelly might not have continued to
pursue this work or this identity. Instead, she was encouraged to
continue this work by an instructor who made it clear through her
narratives that challenge was inherent to the process of research,
and thus the identity of teacher researcher. In part because of this
support, she and her classmates persevered through experiences of
uncertainty, eventually shifting towards more explicit positioning
 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
of themselves as teacher researchers by the end of the semester.
In addition to normalizing challenge within research, Sarah used
narratives to demystify the research process, and hence the posi-
tion of researcher, by relating it to practices teachers were already
engaged in, such as reflective writing and observation of students.
These narratives often referenced her use of ordinary supplies, like
sticky notes and binders, as important tools in her research process.
By relating the work of research to everyday tools and practices
with which students were already familiar, she created a vision of
researcher that departed from the popular image of scientists in lab
coats, hunched over complicated technology. Instead, the identity
position of researcher was constructed as an ordinary person using
common tools to explore their research questions, an identity that
was accessible for students. For example, in one narrative she
described her use of scissors and paper e staples of any classroom -
as key tools in the initial analysis of her dissertation data:
When I was doing my dissertation, there were little pieces of
paper all over my apartment. Because I would say, “Okay, for my
literature discussion groups, this is an example of a follow-up
question. This is an example of asking for evidence.” So I had all
these different strategies. I cut them up and then I started sorting
them into piles. And what that helped me see was how salient that
code was in the data.
Here, Sarah constructs her research process as a visual and
physical process, while in other narratives she described other as-
pects of the research process in similar ways, discussing her use of
“a million index cards,” “bulletin boards I put all over my house,”
and concept maps drawn on napkins. The research process in these
narratives is represented as complex and recursive, while at the
same time remaining attainable for teachers.
In their own discussions of these narratives, students described
how they shifted their views of research and researchers. For
instance, Donna responded to Sarah's narrative in class by saying,
“You make research not so scary … It's not the big bad wolf that it
feels like.” In an interview, Amy described how Sarah's narratives
changed her view of her research process: “Whenever I would have
all these sticky notes, I didn't feel crazy because I knew that she
does it too!” The shift towards both more complex and more
confident views of research represented here was essential for
students as they constructed identities as teacher researchers.
Because they were able to reconceptualize the role of researcher
through Sarah's narratives, they could view that identity position as
one that was accessible to them.
However, one danger in using personal experiences to construct
an identity position is the possibility of a narrow construction of
that identity, allowing only one way of ‘being’ a particular kind of
person. Sarah combatted this potential challenge by consistently
presenting the multiple ways an individual could approach the
research process, thus constructing multiple ways of ‘being’ a
researcher. Throughout her narratives, she referred to various ap-
proaches used by researchers and encouraged students to find the
approaches that worked best for them. In one narrative describing
her use of reflective writing as a classroom teacher, she noted the
multiple ways a researcher might approach such writing:
For me, just reflecting back on many years when I was in the
classroom, I can't imagine being able to sustain writing daily. Plenty
of people can do that, I for whatever reason was not very good at
that. But once a week was more manageable to me. So it's really
something that works for you.
As in previous narratives, here Sarah spoke openly about a
challenge that she faced as a researcher, in this case with respect to
engaging in consistent writing. However, she was careful not to
position her own experience as standard, instead remarking,
“plenty of people can do that.” After naming her solution to this
challenge as writing weekly rather than daily, she closed the
21
narrative by highlighting the variability in approaches to this aspect
of the research process (“it's really something that works for you”).
In doing so, she widened the understanding of what a researcher
could be, thus further opening the position e in this case, to both
those for whom daily writing comes easily and those who struggle
to maintain a regular writing practice. In other narratives, she cited
variation across researchers in other aspects of the process,
including multiple approaches to data analysis and the influence of
the researcher's particular interests and experiences. Rather than
using her narratives to present a single way of ‘being’ a teacher
researcher, Sarah emphasized the flexibility within this identity by
regularly naming how the experiences of other researchers some-
times differed from her own.
This flexible construction of the researcher identity allowed the
possibility for students to construct different versions of a teacher
researcher identity to match their unique purposes for engaging in
teacher research. In interviews at the end of the second semester
students described definite plans to continue engaging in teacher
research, either by extending their current inquiry or beginning a
new one. However, there was divergence in these interviews
regarding how students positioned themselves within the identity
of teacher researcher, particularly with respect to their identifica-
tion with the label of teacher researcher. Anne, for instance, readily
claimed that label, stating, “If I were talking to somebody or
describing myself, or if I ever went you know on another job
interview, I would talk about myself as a researcher” while pro-
fessing her desire to publish the findings of her inquiry in the near
future. Janine, in contrast, while describing engaging in inquiry
practices similar to Anne, expressed a preference for the label
“teacher inquirer” rather than “teacher researcher.” She described
her distinction between these two labels by explaining that the
term “researcher I feel like brings on this formality that I don't like
or don't agree with or don't feel.” Equating the role of “researcher”
with a focus on publishing research, Janine instead expressed more
enthusiasm for using tools of teacher research to inquire into her
teaching practice. Diverging from both Anne and Janine, Abby
claimed a third label e “kid researcher” e to describe her identity.
She explained this approach as focusing on learning more about
particular students, similar to Ballenger's (2009) research focus on
“puzzling children and puzzling moments” (p. 4), rather than
considering questions more focused on teaching.
Although these students used different labels to describe their
teacher research practices, each of them constructed an identity as
a teacher who engages in sustained inquiry into their practice, or
what could be considered a teacher researcher identity. Identities
and labels are not synonymous; one might claim a label without
adopting an identity, or one might construct an identity while
resisting the formal label (Holland et al., 2001). In selecting
different labels e kid researcher, teacher inquirer, teacher
researcher - to describe their teacher research practices, these
students emphasized aspects of teacher research that were
particularly important to them: Abby concerned with better un-
derstanding and supporting her students through research, Janine
interested in using research to develop her practice, and Anne more
focused on sharing her findings with others through publication. In
doing so, they represented the multiple ways of “being” a teacher
researcher, an approach that was encouraged by Sarah's use to
narratives to emphasize the flexibility within that identity.
4.2. Positioning teachers as teacher researchers
While her narratives constructed a more accessible teacher
researcher identity, Sarah also used tactics of adequation (Bucholtz
& Hall, 2004, 2005) within these narratives to directly position
students as teacher researchers. Through careful usage of pronouns
22 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
and other discursive tools, she drew attention to similarities be-
tween researchers e including herself e and the students in order
to construct all parties as researchers. One resource she used
consistently was the pronoun ‘we.’ When used to address the class
during discussions, this became a tactic of adequation that con-
structed herself and her students as fellow researchers, such as in
this statement: “One of the things we worry about as a qualitative
researcher, or any researcher, is obtrusiveness.” Through this
repeated use of “we” to position the students and herself as similar,
she contributed to their positioning as teacher researchers. In other
cases, she accomplished this positioning through the shifting use of
pronouns in her talk, such as in this discussion of the creation of
theoretical notes during transcription. Responding to a student's
question about this process, she said:
You know when you're stopping,
you're trying to transcribe a part of it,
that's- for me,
that's when some of my best theoretical notes happen,
because I'm sort of immersed in the data
Sarah's pronouns are bolded here to draw attention to how she
uses these specific words to position. Rather than beginning with
her own narrative through the use of “I”, she used the second
person pronoun “you.” Because Sarah's turn was a response to a
student's question, the use of “you” could be interpreted as refer-
ring to that particular student (singular ‘you’) or more generally to
all students (plural ‘you’). In either interpretation, this pronoun
usage invited the student(s) into the scenario by acknowledging
their experiences with transcription. Her shift to first person pro-
nouns (“my”, “I'm”) then constructed the experience of transcribing
data as a shared one that she and the students faced as researchers,
while providing a concrete strategy for students to use in gener-
ating their own theoretical notes.
In addition to using adequation to position students as fellow
researchers, she also used this tactic to position them as similar to
other researchers. For instance, Sarah used this tactic to compare
researchers' analytical writing to the students' writing:
Some people do daily writing. Some people do once a week
writing…Which is not unlike what I've asked you to do with
coaching today. I gave you five minutes, you reflected back on the
past week, and you got some decent writing down, just from 5 min.
In this example, Sarah used her turn to not only name writing as
a research tool but also to position the students as researchers by
associating their work with the work of researchers. Within the
context of a discussion on researchers' use of writing for reflection
and analysis, her use of “some people” referred to other researchers
in their use of writing. She then compared that writing to writing
students had done earlier in class using the phrase “which is not
unlike”. By selecting this particular phrase, she does not completely
equate the students' five minute writing exercise with researchers'
writing. Instead, her phrasing “establishes sufficient sameness”
(Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, p. 383) between the work of the students
and that of researchers, thus suggesting that by engaging in this
writing practice, students were acting as researchers. Of course,
while a single instance of adequation would be unlikely to
construct a lasting identity, Sarah's repeated use of this tactic in
narratives across the semester contributed to ongoing co-
construction of students as teacher researchers.
This co-construction can be observed in shifts in student talk
across the first semester, moving from the use of distinction to
separate themselves from the teacher researcher identity towards
the use of adequation to position themselves as within that iden-
tity. This more confident, explicit positioning of selves as teacher
researchers was particularly evident during the final week of the
course, when students shared research briefs outlining their plans
to conduct expanded studies in their classrooms the following year.
For example, departing from her earlier tension with the teacher
researcher identity, Kelly confidently described her plans: “I'll just
start with my research question, or topic. It's basically student-led
classroom discussion…I want to figure out ways to let them be the
drivers of discussion, not me.” Here, Kelly named her question
explicitly as a research question, positioning her work as teacher
research and herself as a teacher researcher. This positioning was
common across all six students as they situated themselves as
teacher researchers through their description of their planned
research.
As students continued to engage in teacher research as part of
an independent study the following semester, their newly devel-
oped teacher researcher identities continued to be constructed.
Although the decreased number of course meetings in this se-
mester provided less opportunity for identity to be co-constructed
in face-to-face conversations, their written postings to the course
blog as well as their final research papers and interviews indicated
that identity construction continued to occur across this second
semester. In their writings on the course blog, they frequently
positioned themselves as researchers, speaking authoritatively
about their decisions in the process. For instance, early in the sec-
ond semester, Donna described a change in her proposed topic: “I
decided to change my research focus from ‘agency and fixed versus
dynamic stances’ to ‘Professional Learning Communities’.” Echoing
Kelly's usage of “my research question” in the previous semester,
Donna referred to her work authoritatively as research, and by
extension herself as a researcher. This usage of first-person pro-
nouns to describe one's research process was common across the
teachers' writing in blog postings and research papers, indicating
increasing comfort in positioning themselves as teacher
researchers.
This identity construction, however, was not always linear, and
there were instances even late in the first semester when students
returned to their earlier use of distinction. For example, while
engaging in a sorting activity that mimicked the coding process
during the tenth week of class, Sarah asked students in which
category a particular piece of data should be placed. Anne
responded, “We'll trust you, you're the researcher…You've been
published.” In this turn, Anne not only explicitly labeled Sarah as a
researcher, but by referring to Sarah's status as a published
researcher, she also drew on external powers e journal reviewers
and editors e to authorize Sarah as a researcher. Similar to Janine's
use of distinction early in the semester, Anne's phrasing sets up an
opposition between “we” (the students) and “you” (the researcher).
This positioning in turn implicitly positioned herself and her
classmates, who had not published research, as lacking the cre-
dentials to claim identity positions as researchers.
In its attention to the importance of publishing research, this
instance also indicated a distinction between Sarah's identity as a
university-based researcher and the students' construction of
identities as teacher researchers. Although Sarah primarily relied
on tactics of adequation that emphasized the similarities between
herself and her students as researchers, there were a few instances
in which she uses distinction to differentiate herself as a university-
based researcher from the students as teacher researchers. One
such example occurred when she told the class she would bring in
the binders used to organize her data during her dissertation study:
“I'll bring in a binder of my dissertation data, which is way more
than what you'll need.” In this turn, she made a distinction between
the amount of data she collected for her dissertation and the
 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
amount students would need for their own research projects,
which implied a distinction between her work as a university-
based researcher and their work as teacher researchers. Unlike
Anne's use of distinction, which counterposed teachers and re-
searchers, Sarah positioned both groups as researchers who collect
data, with the distinction being made with regards to the amount of
data they would collect. While this distinction between university-
based research and teacher research could be read as a way to
diminish the work of teacher researchers, understood within the
context of her consistent positioning of students as teacher re-
searchers, it might instead be understood as aligned with her desire
to support students in constructing teacher researcher identities.
Because Sarah was a university-based researcher rather than a
teacher researcher, she could not directly use her own narratives in
order to position students as teacher researchers. Instead, she used
adequation primarily to situate her students as fellow researchers,
and she complemented this adequation with distinction to position
them as not simply as researchers, but particularly as teacher
researchers.
Through her narratives, Sarah used identity positioning in two
ways. First, she constructed a particular understanding of the
identity of teacher researcher in order to make that identity posi-
tion an attainable one for students in the course who initially did
not align with such an identity. While constructing such an identity,
Sarah also drew on tools of positioning e primarily adequation but
also thoughtfully used distinction e to construct her students as
teacher researchers.
5. Discussion and implications
In outlining his principles for preparing individuals to become
teachers, Bullough (1997) begins not with knowledge or practice
but instead with identity: “teacher education must begin, then, by
exploring the teaching self” (p. 21). Yet despite increasing attention
to teacher identity within educational research across national
contexts (Hamilton & Clandinin, 2011; Meijer, 2011; Rodgers &
Scott, 2008), important questions remain in how teacher educa-
tion might attend to identity construction (Izadinia, 2013). While
Rodgers and Scott (2008) have identified some exceptional teacher
education programs in the United States that incorporated oppor-
tunities for students to develop their identities as teachers, teacher
education coursework does not inevitably focus on this work
(Meijer, 2011). Teacher identity development “cannot be taken for
granted” (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009, p. 185) by teacher education
programs under the assumption such identity development will
automatically occur. Instead, research must explicitly consider the
role that teacher education programs can and do play in teacher
identity development.
In doing so, research must also take up new perspectives for
considering identity formation, departing from the cognitive per-
spectives common in much of the teacher identity literature
(Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). In taking a sociocultural
perspective that recognizes the role of social interaction in identity
construction (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004; Holland et al., 2001), this
analysis allows for a consideration of the role of the teacher
educator in this process, engaging in negotiation of identity
(Akkermann & Meijer, 2011; Bloome et al., 2005) with teachers
within courses. As is common, and even potentially productive,
within identity development, this work included moments of
tension as teachers considered their relationship to the new iden-
tity of teacher researcher (Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, &
Fry, 2004; van der Want et al., 2015). However, because this iden-
tity construction was taking place within the context of teacher
education coursework, Sarah was able to support teachers during
these moments of tension through both her conscious construction
23
of an accessible researcher identity and her consistent positioning
of teachers as researchers.
Palmer and Martínez (2013) have theorized teachers might use
tactics of positioning deliberately as a pedagogical tool to guide
students in taking on new identities supportive to their learning.
Sarah's discursive moves, situated within her personal narratives,
provide us with one approach teacher educators might take in
doing so. Although narrative has long been considered important in
identity development (Choi et al., 2016; Connelly & Clandinin,
1999; Sfard & Prusak, 2005), this work has typically focused on
the ways that such narratives support the speaker's identity
development. The analysis of Sarah's pedagogical use of personal
narratives in her teaching builds on that work, considering how
personal narratives could be used in constructing the identities of
others, including one's students. Sarah performed (Bucholtz & Hall,
2004) a more accessible version of the researcher identity, in large
part through her narratives, thus opening space for students to
envision themselves within that identity. These narratives served to
demystify what it meant to be a teacher researcher, allowing stu-
dents to view themselves as capable of becoming teacher re-
searchers. At the same time, Sarah's use of positioning tactics
within her narratives supported this identity construction by
directly positioning those students as teacher researchers. This
analysis makes visible the ways Sarah intentionally positioned her
students as teacher researchers, using both her experiences and her
identity as a teacher and researcher to do so. In doing so, it suggests
an approach teacher educators might take towards co-constructing
with their students teacher identities that support teacher
commitment, effectiveness, & resiliency (Day & Gu, 2007; Gu &
Day, 2007). While the teachers in this study were engaged in
constructing identities as teacher researchers, this process of
identity construction might be used to support teachers in taking
on a variety of new identities. In learning about constructivist or
critical approaches to pedagogy, for instance, teacher educators
could use their classroom interactions to not only introduce new
practices, but also to construct parallel identities of constructivist or
critical teacher. This conscious attention to positioning as well as
pedagogy could allow changes in both activity and identity, sup-
porting teachers in transferring these new identities and practices
across contexts, from their coursework to their classrooms.
Attention to teacher identity is particularly relevant in the cur-
rent educational context, not only in the United States where the
study took place but in the many countries in which teachers are
facing neoliberal educational reforms. While the exact nature of the
reforms differs across contexts, reforms in the United States (Lasky,
2005), Britain (Hall & McGinity, 2015), New Zealand (Charteris &
Smardon, 2015), and Finland (Va €h€asantanen, 2015) have been
found to influence teachers' agency and commitment, typically in
negative ways. Yet, in their research with Australian and English
teachers, Day et al. (2005) have found teacher identity to be a
crucial factor in maintaining teacher commitment in the midst of
educational reforms.
Not only does research support the importance of attending to
teacher identity across current educational contexts, but it suggests
the development of teacher researcher identities might be both
particularly valuable and particularly challenging. The challenge
stems from the decreases in teacher agency that often result from
these neoliberal educational reforms. In these contexts, the op-
portunities to engage in pedagogy that departs from the mandated
curriculum, including the recursive inquiry and practice cycle at the
heart of teacher research, are decreased. Given one purpose of
teacher research is “to make practice problematic” (Lytle, 1993, p.
21) as teachers engage in problem-posing (Souto-Manning, 2012)
around teaching and learning, the work of teacher research dis-
rupts the traditional knowledge hierarchies that position teachers
24 L.A. Taylor / Teaching and Teacher Education 61 (2017) 16e25
as receivers of educational knowledge constructed by university-
based researchers (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Across a num-
ber of national contexts, then, teachers who seek to construct
identities and practices as teacher researchers often do so in con-
flict with local and national educational policies that limit their
agency and professional decision-making.
At the same time, however, teacher research, can serve as one
strategy for teachers to contest the constraints of these neoliberal
reforms (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009; Zeichner, 2009) and build
agency to enact pedagogies that depart from those mandated by
such reforms (Christenson et al., 2002; Somekh, 2009). In its focus
on reflection and ongoing learning, teacher research might be
considered one way that teachers can act as change agents (van der
Heijden, Geldens, Beijaard, & Popeijus, 2015), in part because such
inquiry can allow teachers to be “positioned as expert in the field”
(Gray, 2013, p. 34) who construct educational knowledge that ex-
tends beyond their individual classrooms (Fecho & Allen, 2011). In
addition, this inquiry work can act to build teacher resilience
(Mansfield, Beltman, Broadley, & Weatherby-Fell, 2016) while
developing the capacity for teachers to be successful in supporting
students even in challenging educational contexts (Stosich, 2016).
Thus, despite the challenges of constructing a teacher researcher
identity, there are many reasons why engaging in such challenging
work is imperative; not only does it allow teachers to better sup-
port student learning but it also allows them to challenge educa-
tional reforms that do not serve that goal. It is both these problems
and possibilities that make the development of teacher researcher
identity an important task for teacher educators. In co-constructing
teacher researcher identities with their students, in part through
discursive moves like those practiced by Sarah, teacher educators
can better prepare teachers to work in effective and transformative
ways in their schools and classrooms.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Beth Maloch for her feedback and
support in the development of this manuscript.
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