Teachers have been the focus of many studies and one of the most common concepts that increasingly gain interest in this field is teacher’s identity. In Finland, teacher identity has been one of the cornerstones in teacher education and development.
At the same time, there has been an increase of interest for people outside of Finland to participate in international teacher education programmes organised by Finnish universities. The programmes itself invite diverse reactions while studies on the impacts of such programmes are not conclusive and portray complex realities. Master of Arts Satia Zen explores the impacts of one such programme from the perspective of teacher identity.
Teacher identity, used in this study to describe the impact of participation in this programme, which is more than increased competence and skills, is also related to changes on how they view themselves and how they perceive their profession as teachers.
“When participants told me about the stories from the programme , I get a sense that these changes , it also influences how they view educational needs where they live and work,” Satia Zen says.
The study frames these changes using the framework of teacher identity reconstruction as a narrative process. From this perspective, teacher identity is not described in the set of universal characteristics. It is a storied version that describes and includes such elements as beliefs, values and stance that reflect the context where they live and work.
Narratives spaces are used in identity making
The Finnish international teacher education programme stimulates participants from Indonesia to redefine and reformulate who they are as teachers. Exposures to Finnish contexts and interaction with Finnish educators was described by the teachers as important elements in the programmes, in addition to the contents they learn from university courses.
“Teachers of this programme are negotiating these new ideas in light of their own context and experiences, revealing a complex negotiation process," Zen describes.
The negotiation process is termed as dialogical repositioning in the study and the findings further identified three narrative mechanisms that participants of her study used in their narratives. Narrative space as one of the mechanisms, for example, is represented in Birland, a term coined by the participants based on where they study during the programme in Bireuen (Aceh) and Finland.
Other mechanisms include increasing narrative capital and positioning along evolving plot. These mechanisms indicate narrative identity is continuously changes in response to teachers’ experiences and interpretation of these experiences.
"The dialogical repositioning and narrative mechanisms that are used by participants reveal possibilities for teachers to continuously evolve, adapt to challenges and renew their sense of mission, but they need support and more opportunities in constructing their identity," she emphasizes.
The importance of supporting teachers and future teachers by becoming aware of their own identity construction process may be timely in light of many disruptions in their educational context, ranging from technology, disasters and wars. This awareness should be part of teacher education and development, including those organised as international programmes.
Public defence on Friday 13 October
The doctoral dissertation of MA Satia Zen titled Teacher Identity Construction: Indonesian Teacher experiences in Finnish International Teacher Programme will be publicly examined at the Faculty of Education and Culture of Tampere University in the Linna K103 auditorium of the Linna building, at 12 o’clock on Friday 13 October 2023. The Opponent will be Professor Minna Uitto, University of Oulu, Finland. The Custos will be Professor Eero Ropo, Tampere University, Finland.
The doctoral dissertation is available online.
The public defence can be followed via a remote connection.
Photograph: Sahlan Hanafiah