Teachers’ Identity: Choosing Profession and Adapting to School
Abstract
Despite the attention of researchers to the teaching community, the professional identity of this group remains poorly understood. In this article, the professional identity of teachers is seen through the prism of stories about the turning points of a professional biography: the choice of profession, the adaptation to the school, the experience of (temporary) termination of work and the discussion of teacher’s professional characteristics. The empirical data for the study consists of 49 interviews with teachers in schools of different type (18 schools with standard and 21 with advanced curriculum) randomly selected in the Vasileostrovsky and Nevsky districts of St. Petersburg.
Acknowledgements
The article was prepared within the framework of the project "Status Groups, Career Trajectories and Identities of School Teachers" with the support of the Russian Foundation for Humanitarian Research (grant 14-03-00582) and additional funding from the Scientific Fund of the NRU HSE supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant 15-09-0269). We are thankful to our colleagues in the project, V.A. Ivanyushina and D.A. Alexandrov, as well as L.L. Shpakovskaya, who carefully read the first version of the work.
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