Teacher professional learning is frequently dominated by discourses about standards, skills acquisition, and teacher quality and is intended to address a wide range of educational problems. However, a growing body of research suggests that conceptualizing professional learning and development as identity work, is a powerful means of supporting teacher professional learning. Identity work uses teacher narratives and reflection to align teachers’ aspirations with professional practices. Such identity work involves interactions between the psychological, relational and behavioral domains of teachers’ experience. In doing identity work, teachers express discursive determination as they “argue for themselves” and develop a sense of ethical agency within somewhat paradoxical aspects of their identities.

As educational systems change, teachers may need to engage in identity work to reconstruct their identity by using identity talk together with emotional and intellectual strategies in which they reconcile competing discourses that characterize their work. The need for identity work is frequently prompted by “fateful moments” that involve identity adjustment: As teachers become aware of their taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs and fears about themselves and their practice, they experience metacognitive shifts that enable reflection and growth.

This research seeks to understand the nature of identity work that South African pre- and in-service teachers engage in as they progress through a postgraduate course on teacher identity, and how it lays the foundation for ongoing professional development. At a time when education systems are changing globally and often undermine the work of teachers, this course intends to offer conceptual resources that strengthen the self-awareness and agency of teachers. Although a growing research interest in teacher identity, it is predominantly located in the global north and focuses on subject specializations at the expense of a broader focus on teachers’ professional lives.

This research analyses narratives and reflections of 10 postgraduate students to identify and continuities and discontinuities in their aspirations and notions of professionalism. The study explores interaction between psychological, relational and behavioral dimensions of the participants identity work.

Keywords: Teacher Identity, Identity Work, Reflection, Narratives.