Discursive constructions of student midwives’ professional identities: A discourse analysis

The aim of this article is to achieve greater understanding of the relationship between professional teacher identity and agency. From our perspective, agency is a necessary consequence of the process of construction and development of professional teacher identity. On this basis, we conducted a qualitative study involving analysis of the subjective learning experiences of three future teachers engaged in their final year of training. We analysed these experiences using a previously published analytical model based on the positional changes that occur as a consequence of the evaluation of certain objects that are key to professional identity. Our results allow us to confirm that in the case of subjective learning experiences involving positional changes, agency is key to the consolidation of an enabling professional identity.

THE EARLY CHILDHOOD SECTOR HAS in recent times engaged in processes of professionalisation. The expectations associated with engagement in professional relationships is one element of such processes. Another element is an expectation of ethical practice. The paper considers how particular representations of relationships and representations of ethics contribute to the construction of the professional identities of early childhood teachers. Discussion is presented of the ways early childhood teachers experience relationships with parents and colleagues. Possibilities of ‘new’ constructions of professionalism are explored through disruptions to taken-for-granted discursive practices which shape relationships between teachers and parents and between teachers and colleagues. To engage in such disruptions, a theoretical framework of poststructuralism is used to analyse early childhood literature, which works to construct particular identities for early childhood teachers. This analysis identifies possible challenges to a binary response of either acceptance of, or resistance to, dominant discourses at work in identity constructions. One outcome of this challenge is to argue the possibility of holding opposites together in the work of identity construction. Holding opposites together makes possible new, socially and contextually informed ways to think, speak and do constructions of these identities. Representation of ethics as a relational construct is located within these new possibilities of professional identity constructions.

BackgroundTeacher emotions are sometimes underplayed in the research field of teaching and teacher education. Also, teachers often undergo transformations in their professional identities during education reforms. However, very few studies explore the connections between teacher emotions and their professional identities against the background of education reforms, especially in Asian contexts. There is an increasing emphasis on STEM as an education reform in China and the world, and a deep understanding of STEM teacher emotions and professional identities is necessary in the fast development of STEM education. This study examined how a STEM teacher emotionally constructed her professional identities under the STEM education reform.MethodsThis is a 3-year longitudinal case study employing a narrative inquiry approach with one STEM teacher in China. Data collection included one in-depth, semi-structured interview, three conversations, personal emotional diaries, and correspondence records. A four-step data analysis was conducted.ResultsThree major themes reflecting the participant’s emotional professional identities emerged, including “an interested but confused learner”, “an enthusiastic but nervous explorer”, and “an excited but unsatisfied mentor”. In the participant’s experiences as a learner, explorer, and mentor, positive and negative emotions were always intertwined. These helped construct and shape her professional identities and encouraged her to be the best STEM teacher that she could be.ConclusionThis study provides a series of vivid and dynamic pictures of a STEM teacher’s emotions and professional identities against the background of STEM education reform in China from a 3-year longitudinal perspective. It also indicates the personal, social, cultural, and contextual factors that could have strong effects on teachers’ emotional experiences and the construction of professional identities. Furthermore, this study reveals that three processes (i.e., the process of education changes, the process of creating new or multiple professional identities, and the generation process of teacher emotions) could be intertwined and developed together.

Although the construction of language teacher professional identity is situated in a social, political, and ideological context, scant attention has been paid to tensions emerging from the nexus between identity construction and these contextual variables. To address this gap, this study drew on English language teachers’ collaborative reflection to provide an emic perspective on the role of the socio-cultural context in the formation of teachers’ professional identity. Eight novice and experienced English language teachers participated in two separate collaborative reflection panels (four teachers in each panel) to reflect on the role of the socio-cultural context in Iran in their professional identity construction and identity tensions. Analysis of teachers’ reflection showed that three sets of interrelated socio-cultural variables impacted the participants’ professional identity tensions: (1) macro state-level variables; (2) meso institutional-level variables; and (3) micro individual-level variables. The findings also indicated that the participating teachers took different positions to resolve the tensions they experienced between their personal ideologies and external expectations at these three levels. The main implication of this study is for institutional administrators and teacher educators to devise plans to lessen the degree of tensions that teachers might experience in their process of professional identity construction and to afford them the agency to resolve these tensions.

Introduction: Professional identity in nursing has been defined throughout history, rooted in its essence: care. However, this concept remains abstract in academic training, disconnected from students' identity construction. Objective: To reveal how care is conceived from the experiences of nursing students. Methodology: Qualitative design using Straussian Grounded Theory at a public university in Peru. Fourteen intern students participated. In-depth interviews and focus groups were used. Systematic-interpretive analysis: open coding (25 codes), axial coding (5 subcategories), and selective coding (1 integrative category). Rigor ensured through multiple triangulations. Results: Five subcategories emerged: Care as a central phenomenon integrating all dimensions of identity formation in Nursing; Progressive cognitive construction of care (technical, humanized, holistic, ethical); Recognition of complexity that strengthens professional identity; Emotional burden that validates professional choice; Formation of identity through concrete experience of care. These converge into one integrative category: care as an existential organizer of professional identity in nursing. Conclusions: Care functions as a cognitive, ethical, emotional, and professional purpose axis. Curriculum design should position care as a central transversal element. Teachers and mentors are crucial in facilitating this identity formation through modeling and reflective accompaniment.

The way initial teacher education is designed for foreign language teachers of early years varies from context to context. While some scholars defend a greater concern with the content, others emphasize the importance of knowledge about the context, learners and the curriculum. In all cases, programs for future language teachers aim to prepare them to educate for plurilingualism and interculturality. To understand the profiles that are being drawn up for teaching a foreign language in elementary school, this study analyzes how the process of teachers’ professional identity construction is perceived in recent research. The text starts with the notion of professional identity and moves on to identify the determining aspects in the construction of the professional identity of foreign language teachers. Using a literature review methodology, it analyses a corpus of 11 texts published over the last 10 years in the European Journal of Teacher Education. The analysis of the corpus was based on dimensions of language teachers’ professionalism to develop plurilingualism and interculturality. The results show that these dimensions are covered and that foreign language teacher education programs need to include activities to build a teaching professional identity capable of responding to the challenges of 21stcentury schools.

Objective:to analyze the process of professional identity construction in undergraduate nursing students during their education.Method:qualitative research, anchored in the Historical-Cultural framework. Twenty-three undergraduate nursing students took part. Data were collected through individual interviews, with a semi-structured script. Thematic Analysis was used to analyze the data.Results:the following four themes were obtained, “The subject in movement to become a nurse: from previous experiences to entering the courses”; “The nursing professor in the construction of the undergraduate’s professional identity: a two-way mirror”; “Pedagogical relationship: instrument for constructing the student’s professional identity” and “Historical-cultural conditions: space for the construction of the student’s professional identity”.Conclusion:the construction of the students’ professional identity is limited to the material conditions of existence, translating appropriation to the intrapsychic scope of elements that occur, first, in the inter-psychological space of interactions. Nursing professors can become a paradoxical mirror, with one face to be imitated and the other, which materializes meanings of a model not to be followed. This construction is also influenced by the conditions of professional practice and university education.

To make explicit the attitudes and values of a community of surgeons, with the aim of understanding professional identity construction within a specific group of residents. Using a grounded theory method, the authors collected data from 16 postgraduate surgeons through interviews. They complemented these initial interview data with ethnographic observations and additional descriptive interviews to explore the attitudes and values learned by surgeons during residency training (2010-2013). The participants were attending surgeons and residents in a general surgical training program in a university teaching hospital in the United Kingdom. Participating surgeons described learning personal values or attitudes that they regarded as core to "becoming a surgeon" and key to professional identity construction. They described learning to be a perfectionist, to be accountable, and to self-manage and be resilient. They discussed learning to be self-critical, sometimes with the unintended consequence of seeming neurotic. They described learning effective teamwork as well as learning to take initiative and be innovative, which enabled them to demonstrate leadership and drive actions and agendas forward within the health care organization where they worked. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to systematically explore the learning of professional identity amongst postgraduate surgeons. The study contributes to the literature on professional identity construction within medical education. The authors conclude that the demise of the apprenticeship model and the rise of duty hours limitations may affect not only the acquisition of technical skills but, more important, the construction of surgeon professional identity.

In the face of cross-cultural and institutional challenges, transnational language teachers must construct a clear and stable professional identity to support their development and role adaptation. Drawing on Conservation of resources (COR) theory and Identity theory, this study proposes a context-sensitive model to examine how psychological capital, perceived organisational support, and role stress jointly influence professional identity. Data were collected from 421 transnational language teachers, and structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesised relationships. Results show that psychological capital positively predicts professional identity. Both perceived organisational support and role stress function as independent mediators, and a significant chain mediation pathway was also identified. These findings suggest that identity construction is shaped not only by the accumulation of psychological resources but also by the organisational environment and ongoing identity verification. The study offers an integrative framework for understanding identity development in multilingual and multicultural educational contexts and provides empirical insights for strengthening institutional support. Practical implications are discussed, particularly regarding how fostering psychological capital, enhancing organisational support, and mitigating role-related stress can help maintain identity stability and promote the professional well-being and retention of transnational teachers.

Drawing on narrative and positioning theories this dissertation attempted to elucidate how foreign EFL teachers working in kindergarten and primary levels in Shenzhen, China construct their professional teacher identity. Interviews with eight foreign teachers revealed that the educators draw on similar subject positions to talk about their experiences of what it means to be a teacher in Shenzhen. Results show that combining subject positions and locating themselves differently towards them, the teachers create and negotiate multiple identity constructions. The identity constructions identified in the teachers’ narratives are: ‘foreign teachers claiming authenticity’, ‘foreign teachers bridging host and home country culture’ and ‘foreign teachers providing a positive English experience’. These findings are illuminating, because they expose how foreign teachers think about their international teacher experience. Empowering, because they give teachers the possibilities to listen to themselves and others and to respond to what is heard. And helpful as they reveal some significant issues that suggest the importance of collaboratively talk as a way to support and enhance the teachers’ experience in China.

Defende como tese a necessidade de uma formação de atitudes de pesquisa por parte dos docentes ligada à construção de uma nova profissionalidade e de novas identidades pessoais e profissionais. A identidade passa a ser uma categoria estruturante no novo agir profissional, no qual a pesquisa se constitui num de seus elementos. Analisa ainda os saberes e os espaços que contribuem para a configuração das identidades, em especial a formação inicial e a escola, sendo esta última considerada como focus da formação continuada e do de¬senvolvimento profissional. A temática tem sido objeto de estudos do Grupo Formação e Profissionalização Docente, do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Educação, da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), criado em 1995 e coordenado pelos autores do artigo

This paper explores the perceptions of school learning mentors with respect to their professional development and emerging professional identity. Although tentative, the emergence of two distinct professional identities is reported in this study: first, an instrumental technical identity characterized by compliance; and second, a creative professional identity characterized by an active involvement in the creation of one’s own professionality. Emerging differences in identity appear to be influenced by feelings of security in school learning mentors’ role definition and sense of purpose and by the power differential they perceive between themselves and qualified teaching staff. The findings have implications for the present workforce remodelling agenda in England and Wales, intended, in part, to facilitate the work of teachers via greater professionalization of learning support assistants. It is suggested that the leadership and management of schools hosting learning mentors and other learning support assistants should further consider their approach to the professionality of this important group of workers if frustrated identity claims, dissatisfaction, poor morale and their exit from the education service is to be avoided.

Spiritual care is increasingly seen as a task of all health care professionals. This is challenging for chaplains working in health care, who hold spiritual care at the heart of their profession but don’t feel rooted in a strong professional identity. In this article we discuss a participatory action research that aimed at strengthening the professional identity of health care chaplains by forming collaborative learning communities of chaplains and general practice mental health. The focus is on the ‘boundary work’ and how participatory action research contributes to this. Relational professionalism, Dialogical Self Theory and Boundary Theory are combined to interpret the complex relational-dialogical processes of negotiating one’s identity within the relationships with diverse others: clients, mental health nurses and society. The result is a more articulated and at the same time flexible professional identity for healthcare chaplains. Participatory action research contributes to these boundary processes by stimulating reflection, explicating, eliciting or encouraging different voices and facilitating the dialogue between these professionals.

Studies of EFL teachers’ professional identity have experienced a sociological turn. As a result, much research attention has been showered upon exploring EFL teachers’ identity construction under the multiple interactions of individual and social factors. However, there are few documented studies concerning the EFL teachers at tutoring institutions, as a marginalized community of teachers. To this end, the present study drew on the narrative inquiry and case study to indicate the dynamic trajectories of identity construction among EFL teachers at tutoring institutions under the “Double Reduction” policy. 8 EFL teachers were recruited from Chinese tutoring institutions to participate in the semi-structural interviews. The analysis elucidated identity construction of EFL teachers at tutoring institutions from a sociocultural perspective. The construction path could fall into three-story constellations: the initial stage (idealized and flat), the exploratory stage (unstable and insufficient) and the renewal stage (thoughtful and far-sighted). Meanwhile, identity construction has also undergone four changes: enthusiast, victim but explorer, and aspirant. These outcomes may offer critical implications for policymakers and teacher educators to recognize and support the professional development of teachers at tutoring institutions amid policy shifts and contextual challenges.

The construction of professional identity of an entrepreneur involves many factors. In this chapter, the case study of a Chinese female immigrant entrepreneur in Sweden illustrates the complexity of professional identity which intertwines with the gender identity and the cultural identity in all levels from personal, professional and socio-cultural. The methods of participant observation and discourse analysis are used. The results reflect the impacts of gender and culture factors in the construction and communication of professional identity, which can contribute to the integration process of Chinese immigrants in Sweden.