RUME 26
2024
Omaha, Nebraska
Beginning Teacher’s Identity Trajectory in the Figured Worlds of Dialogic and Direct Instruction
Page: 1405
Our goal in this paper is to explore how beginning teachers transition between the figured worlds of dialogic and direct instruction, and how their current and desired teaching identities evolve in the process. We pursue our goal by focusing on a longitudinal case study of Olive, a beginning mathematics teacher, whom we followed for three years: as a pre-service teacher (PST), an intern (INT), and a novice teacher (NT) in her own classroom. Our findings show that as PST, Olive’s current and desired identities were coherent and aligned with the dialogic instruction figured world. This desired identity remained dialogic throughout the internship, even when she taught her own class. However, as a novice INT, Olive had to align her teaching actions with those of her cooperating teacher. Olive’s discourse reflected a tension between her current direct teaching and her desired dialogic identity. Olive continued experimenting with dialogic teaching in her own class (while still as an INT), still holding it as desirable (“letting them do the talking rather than me”). However, her teaching comprised a mix of dialogic and direct actions, which created another gap within Olive’s current identity. As a first year NT, the conflicting identities moved towards reconciling, in an interesting way. Olives’ current and desired identities differentiated: dialogic for “advanced” students and direct for “non-advanced” classes. Interestingly, Olive did not seem to be aware of potential inequities this reconciliation identities may introduce into her teaching. Our study contributes to a better understanding of the beginning mathematics teacher trajectory between two figured worlds, the specific junctions along this trajectory where identity conflicts may arise, and the types of conflicts. The findings suggest that beginning teachers may need support in negotiating their dialogic vs. direct instruction alignments beyond supervised internship into the early years of autonomous practice.