Teachers as Professional Learners: Contextualising Identity across Policy and Practice

Abstract

Drawing upon data from an Australian study, this book gives voice to beginning teachers navigating their way through their first year of teaching and discovering what it means to be professional learners. The chapters within provide rich insights into the ways in which beginning teachers make sense of the new and challenging experiences they face during the first year of teaching, and how these influence the development of their learner identities at this formative time of their careers. Professional learning, in response to teacher standards and associated accountability measures, often fails to acknowledge the importance of internal motivation and attitude to beginning teachers’ sense of a professional learner identity. This book offers policy makers, teacher educators, school leaders, mentors and teachers a way of thinking about how beginning teachers can be supported to grow professionally and construct their identities as professional learners.