Critical Issues in Developing Teachers' Identity and Extended Professional Competence

In the last decade, teachers' professional identity has emerged as an important area
of research. The connection of professional identity with quality and innovation in teaching (Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop 2004), with pupils' achievements (Sammons et al., 2007) and the development of practice in students of teaching (Bullough, 1997; Bullough and Gitlin 1995, 2001) emphasized its importance for practice. In our studies we define professional identity as a construct that includes several sub-identities referring to images of self as a professional as well as to one's beliefs about professional roles. Professional Orientation (restricted or extended professional), Task Orientation (views on pedagogical relationship, goals and instructional emphasis), self-efficacy and commitment to teaching are used as indicators.
Based on research literature and the results of our own investigations into prospective teachers' professional identity at different stages of a teacher education program (Lamote & Engels, 2010), we set out to build a framework of guiding principles for teacher education programs that support the professional identity development of their students.
The question guiding our study is: Which principles can guide a teacher education program that builds on student teachers emerging professional identities and provides opportunities for development/learning that takes hold?

A framework of 5 principles is based on cases within a one year postgraduate teacher education program that serves as an experimental institution where efforts to support teacher learning that holds, building on emerging professional identities, and the perceived effects are registered and analyzed.
The 5 principles can be summarized as follows:
Durable development of professional identity requires systematic interaction with the complexity of practice.
Meaningful learning from the complexity of practice occurs in work environments characterized by knowledge productivity and trust.
Durable development of professional identity and professional competence depends on deep understanding.
Current aspects of student teachers' identity play key roles in their approaches to new knowledge and partly define what 'the best approach to professional learning' is.
Learning about teaching should be responsive to issues of identity formation if learning is to 'take hold' but at the same time pushing the boundaries creates excellent learning opportunities