Teachers Identity

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'That's not treating you as a professional': teachers constructing complex professional identities through talk Jennifer L. Cohen a a School of Education, DePaul University, Chicago, USA Online Publication Date: 01 April 2008

To cite this Article Cohen, Jennifer L.(2008)''That's not treating you as a professional': teachers constructing complex professional

identities through talk',Teachers and Teaching,14:2,79 — 93 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13540600801965861 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540600801965861

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Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice Vol. 14, No. 2, April 2008, 79–93

‘That’s not treating you as a professional’: teachers constructing complex professional identities through talk Jennifer L. Cohen* School of Education, DePaul University, Chicago, USA (Received 10 February 2007; final version received 5 September 2007) Taylor and Francis Ltd CTAT_A_296752.sgm

Public debates about the role of teachers and teacher performance place teachers at the center of a range of national and local discourses. The notion of teacher professional identity, therefore, framed in a variety of ways, engages people across social contexts, whether as educators, parents, students, taxpayers, voters or consumers of news and popular media. These highly contested discourses about teachers’ roles and responsibilities constitute an important context for research on teachers and teaching, as researchers and educators ask how changes to the teaching profession affect teacher professional identity. This article investigates the identity talk of three mid-career teachers in an urban, public school in the USA, to better understand how the teachers used language to accomplish complex professional identities. Research approaches to teacher identity often focus on teacher narrative as a key tool in identity formation. The analysis presented here extends our understanding of language as a resource in teacher identity construction by using discourse analysis to investigate how speakers use implicit meaning to accomplish the role identity of teacher. The analytical lens draws on an interdisciplinary framework that combines a sociological approach to teacher as a role identity with an investigation of language as a cultural practice, grounded in the ethnography of communication. The analysis focuses on how teachers use specific discourse strategies – reported speech, mimicked speech, pronoun shifts, oppositional portraits, and juxtaposition of explicit claims – to construct implicit identity claims that, while they are not stated directly, are central to accomplishing teacher as a role identity. The analysis presented here focuses on the particular implicit role claim of teacher as collaborator. Findings show that, in their identity talk, the teachers strategically positioned themselves in relation to others and to institutional practices, actively negotiating competing discourses about teacher identity by engaging in a counter discourse emphasizing teachers’ professional role as knowledge producers rather than information deliverers, collaborative, rather than isolated, and as agents of change engaged in critical analysis to plan action. Awareness of how these counter discourses operate in the teachers’ conversation helps us better understand the cultural significance of identity talk as a site for the negotiation of the significances for the role identity of teacher. In addition, the notions of role identity and implicit identity claims offer an accessible way to talk about the complexity of teacher identity, which can be helpful for increasing awareness of the importance of teacher identity in teacher education and professional development, and in bringing teachers’ voices more prominently into the debates over education.

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Teachers 10.1080/13540600801965861 1354-0602 Original Taylor 202008 14 [email protected] JenniferCohen 000002008 &Article and Francis (print)/1470-1278 Teaching (online)

Keywords: discourse analysis; identity talk; secondary school teachers; urban schools; teacher characteristics; role identity

Introduction Talk about education is a dominant discourse shaping this historical moment in the USA, through highly visible national policies and debates regarding the funding, governance, and oversight of *Email: [email protected] ISSN 1354-0602 print/ISSN 1470-1278 online © 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13540600801965861 http://www.informaworld.com

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schools, characterizing what Hargreaves and Dawes (1990, p. 228) have described as ‘fundamental crises of legitimation and belief, and of motivation and purpose’ regarding the theory and practice of teaching. At the same time, often idealized images of teachers as heroes or saviors are regularly represented in popular media, such as Jaime Escalante in ‘Stand and Deliver’ and Erin Gruwell in the more recent ‘Freedom Writers.’ The persistent, public debates about the role of teachers and teacher performance place teachers at the center of a range of national and local discourses. The notion of teacher professional identity, therefore, framed in a variety of ways, engages people across social contexts, whether as educators, parents, students, taxpayers, voters or consumers of news and popular media. These highly contested discourses about teachers’ roles and responsibilities constitute an important context for research on teachers and teaching, as researchers and educators ask how changes to the teaching profession affect teacher professional identity (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Day, Stobart, Sammons, & Kington, 2006). As education research has shown, especially in studies employing a narrative and biographical analysis of teachers’ talk about teaching (MacLure, 1993; Søreide, 2006; Watson, 2006), teachers’ identities are central to the beliefs, values, and practices that guide their engagement, commitment, and actions in and out of the classroom (Day et al., 2006; Hargreaves & Dawes, 1990). It is important, therefore, to develop a range of tools for understanding and articulating the complexity of teacher identity experiences, to better understand the relationship between teacher identity and the theory and practice of teaching. The analysis presented here deepens our understanding of language as a resource in teacher identity construction by using discourse analysis to investigate the identity talk of three secondary school teachers in a pedagogically progressive urban, public school in the Midwestern USA. The aim of the analysis is to better understand how the teachers accomplished complex professional identities in conversation with each other. Discourse analysis also offers a valuable method and vocabulary for understanding and describing teachers’ experiences as professionals. As such, discourse analysis can be an empowering tool for teachers and teacher educators seeking to understand and articulate the complexity of teacher identity. In this article, I focus specifically on how explicit and implicit meanings in the teachers’ talk functioned to accomplish varied significances for the shared identity of teacher. The data presented here are part of a larger ethnographic study focused on teacher professional identity and engagement. Findings from my work with the teachers in this school show that they regularly engaged questions of professional identity as knowledge producers who negotiated competing discourses, articulated by administrators and other teachers, about teacher identity. In their talk about teaching and professional identity, the teachers accomplished complex identities that reflected the practices they felt were central to their commitment to such a demanding job. These findings contribute to our understanding of how teachers understand, define and accomplish their professional identities, which has been shown to be essential to our understanding of how teacher identity shapes engagement, motivation and practice (Day et al., 2006; Hoekstra, Beijaard, Brekelmans, & Korthagen, 2007). The data featured in this article involve teachers in one culturally diverse, urban charter school for girls in the Midwest. The school serves approximately 340 students, 70% of whom live below the poverty line. The faculty comprises 39 full-time members. Expectations for professional engagement in and out of the classroom are high. As one example, the majority of the teachers have pursued degrees and certification beyond the minimum required to teach in the school: four of the teachers are nationally board certified and four more are in the process of this certification – a highly demanding, comprehensive process for practicing teachers that enables successful candidates to teach anywhere in the country – and 20 of the teachers hold Masters degrees. Teachers’ time and professional activities in the school are structured to support collaboration and engagement. Teachers are responsible for many of the planning and governance decisions,

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and the school administrators structure time and resources to support the teachers in this work, for example through regular, weekly time to meet in content-area and grade-level teams, required reading groups to develop professional knowledge and reflection, teacher leadership on a professional development committee, and opportunities to attend workshops and conferences throughout the year. Collaboration is an important part of the teachers’ work, and formal structures are in place to support it. Such formal structures do not guarantee teacher engagement in collaboration, however. As the data presented here suggest, analysis of teachers’ identity talk shows the teachers to be defining and enacting shared aspects of their professional identity differently, and that these differences have direct implications for whether they perceive the formal structure of the school to be supporting their professional identity in ways that they value. The study Over a one-and-a-half years period, I engaged in participant observation in multiple contexts, including: classroom instruction; teacher planning meetings; smaller work groups comprising teachers and administrators; travel with the teachers to an out-of-state conference hosted by another high school; and informal events such as end-of-year parties. Part of the data collection process included conducting one-hour, in-depth, semi-structured focus groups with all faculties at the school over a period of one month. The data addressed in this article are from one focus group, conducted with three humanities teachers, all of whom had been at the school for at least five years. Participants in the focus group included: Sondra, a mid-career African American woman who has been at the school for five years; Avery, a mid-career African American man who has been at the school for five years; and Tim, a white man who has been at the school for seven years.1 The focus group was in many ways an extension of the type of conversations teachers had during the many planning meetings I observed, during which they often couched talk about assignments, assessment, or planning in terms of their goals for the students and themselves. As the teachers themselves noted, the focus group presented an opportunity to engage these questions in greater depth, without the need to move on to more procedural agenda items. Each focus group was audio-taped and subsequently transcribed using transcription conventions outlined by Deborah Tannen (1989). I took notes during the meetings to record non-verbal communication and actions (Schiffrin, 1994, 398ff.), and observer comments (Carspecken, 1996). I also engaged in peer debriefing (Carspecken, 1996) with colleagues and a research assistant, to develop a more careful and reflective analysis. Teacher identity and discourse: theoretical approaches Introduction This study contributes to our understanding of teachers’ identity development by situating the analysis of the data within two analytical frameworks that offer significant, interdisciplinary tools within education research for understanding the multi-faceted process of identity development in teachers: role identity theory and ethnography of communication. I frame my analysis using the sociological notion of role identity (Fuchs Ebaugh, 1988; Zurcher, 1983). Role identities can be formal, such as being a parent, a doctor, a teacher, and other roles defined by professional identity, and more informal and momentary such as being a member of a movie audience. Some role identities are more institutionalized and some are more emergent, but all role identities are produced and reproduced as they are negotiated through social interaction. That is, role identities do not have inherent significances, but rather carry expectations for conduct that are learned in the process of socialization, and are constantly negotiated as people work to fit what they want with

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the expectations they encounter (Zurcher, 1983). The notion of role identity offers a useful analytic tool for addressing the complexity of teachers’ identity experiences, because it highlights the tension between received expectations and individual negotiation that is at the heart of teacher identity. Like all social meaning, role identities gain significance in context from the ways speakers use discourse, as a primary semiotic system, to define and enact them (Gee, 2005; Goffman, 1959). As I will discuss in more detail, the things people say explicitly and implicitly contribute to accomplishing particular identities in context. In this study, I was particularly interested in how the teachers used language to construct explicit and implicit meanings that defined local significances for the role identity of teacher. Building on existing work on speakers’ use of implicit meaning, and on the importance of teachers’ identity experiences for their professional development and practice, I asked these specific research questions: (1) When teachers are talking about teaching, what do they communicate implicitly about how they define their role identity as teachers? (2) What common discourse strategies in teachers’ identity talk are important to how they accomplish implied meaning about their identity as teachers? (3) What does discourse analysis suggest for how we can better understand the significances of teacher identity talk as cultural work? Though in other aspects of the study I attend more holistically to the identities being constructed, in this article I am interested in the particular discourse strategies in play in the teachers’ identity talk, and how they work on an implicit level to make meaning in context. In the next sections, I discuss the theoretical frames for the study in more detail. I then address teachers’ use of particular discourse strategies within three examples from the data, before discussing implications of the analytical approach and findings for teaching theory and practice. Role identity The implications of role identities in people’s understandings of themselves have been explored in disciplines throughout the social sciences, including linguistics, sociology, psychology, and education (Cohen, 2005; Flores-González, 2002; Guilbert, Vacc, & Pasley, 2000; Moen, Erickson, & Dempster-McClain, 2000; Spencer, 1987; Widdicombe & Woffitt, 1990). Role identities are important to understand because individuals come to understand who they are by occupying particular roles in society (Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995). Role identities have different salience for individuals often, but not always, depending on how highly the individual values the role and how often she or he enacts it (Callero, 1985; Stryker, 1968). Social roles are powerful organizing structures because people get recognition, positive reinforcement from others, and other rewards when they accomplish roles successfully. Within sociological theory there is a debate over the way social roles operate in the patterning of human experience, including the degree to which social identity roles are either predetermined or negotiated through social interaction. Sociologist Louis A. Zurcher’s (1983) framing of the parameters of the debate characterizes a basic tension in a range of disciplines addressing questions of identity. Zurcher defines two fundamental schools of thought: a structuralist view, which argues that individuals fill roles that are constrained by preexisting material conditions, and a symbolic interactionist (also commonly called a poststructuralist) view, which argues that people construct identity through constant evaluation, negotiation, and discovery of new roles (Stryker, 1980; Waters, 1994; Zurcher, 1983). As Zurcher points out, though these might seem to be contradictory positions, for the most part the difference is one of emphasis, ‘The structuralist position emphasizes the effect of historical factors, power distributions, and cultural values on role enactment. The symbolic interactionist view assumes that roles emerge from or are significantly shaped by interactions in specific social settings’ (1983, p. 14). These schools represent

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differing analytical foci that exist in tension with each other, however, rather than mutually exclusive arguments (Fuchs Ebaugh, 1988; Zurcher, 1983). This tension echoes what ethnographers Richard Bauman and Joel Sherzer characterize as ‘the heart of the deepest problem in the social disciplines: the dynamic interplay between the social, conventional, ready-made in social life and the individual, creative, and emergent qualities of human existence’ (1989, p. xix; also Ortner, 1996). Discourse studies My attention to the teachers’ talk is grounded in an understanding of discourse as a cultural practice that constitutes a tool in organizing social relationships in the construction of a ‘shared world’ (Cassirer, 1961, p. 113, quoted in Hymes, 1981, p. 9; also Saville-Troike, 1989). The linguistic construction and negotiation of role relationships is key to this process, as a central way individuals’ pattern knowledge and behavior in mutually recognizable ways (Gee, 2005). There is a significant literature on the role of language in constructing specific social roles an individual can occupy (Bauman, 1977; Bucholtz, 1995; Cook-Gumperz, 1995). These studies argue that identity is a socially constructed, relational performance rather than a stable, inherent quality within individuals. One is not free to perform any identity, however. Identity possibilities are constrained by normative beliefs and practices, as well as material conditions, that functionally limit the range of possibilities for a given identity. In fact, it is often an individual’s ability to conform to the normative beliefs, values, and behavior associated with a particular role identity that allows her or him to demonstrate competence within the role, and thereby to get recognized by (and recognition from) others (Gee, 2005). When an individual’s beliefs about the significance of a particular role identity are at variance with these norms, tensions arise. To negotiate the complex terrain of identity, speakers use specific features of discourse to communicate key aspects of their identities (Gumperz, 2001; Gee, 2005; MacLure, 1993; van Dijk, 1987). To explicitly state all the information a speaker wants to express explicitly would require so much time and effort that communication could not proceed. Instead, a great deal of important information is communicated indirectly, through implicit cues and information that must be interpreted by the listener and may be employed as a strategic decision (Gumperz, 2001). In research on teacher identity, the importance of implicit meaning is suggested in studies of teacher biographical narrative, for example, which show that in constructing professional identities, teachers may paint oppositional portraits describing who they are not, and in the process implicitly delineate who they are or how they would like to be seen (MacLure, 1993; Søreide, 2006). Implied meaning also works on the syntactic level, such as when people also use disclaimers before a controversial statement to implicitly deny possible negative interpretations the listener might make (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Methods and analysis In my analysis of the teachers’ identity talk, I attended to both the explicit and implicit meanings of what the teachers said. To stay close to the speakers’ own meaning (Saville-Troike, 1989), a research assistant and I first coded the transcripts for places where speakers made explicit role claims as teachers. I defined explicit role claims as those statements a speaker makes that refer directly to a role identity. Examples of explicit role claims include the phrases ‘as a teacher’ and ‘when we teach.’ Next, in a process that involved both coding and interpretation, we coded for implicit identity claims, paying particular attention to those claims that occurred near explicit role talk. I define implicit identity claims as identities speakers construct through various discourse strategies, without stating or naming them directly. Rather than attempting to code every discourse

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strategy used by the speakers, we paid particular attention to common strategies that could be taken to be a regular feature of these teachers’ identity talk. I also sought to build on previous discourse analysis of teachers’ identity talk, notably Melanie Sperling’s (2004) analysis of teachers’ theoretical contradictions, and Maggie MacLure’s (1993) analysis of teacher biography and life history. We identified 20 implicit role claims, ranging from adversary to mentor, across 1684 lines of transcribed dialog. We clustered the claims based on shared qualities and organized them into five more general claims associated with the role identity of teacher: teacher as gatekeeper; mentor/ expert; collaborator; outsider; and learner. The examples included in this analysis are not presented as definitive representations of teachers’ role claims across contexts. Rather, they highlight the range of identity claims made in one conversation about teacher vision, and show how speakers construct and communicate those claims using multiple discourse strategies. Finally, it is important to note that identities that are implicit claims in one context can be explicit role identity claims in other contexts, highlighting the contextual nature of identity itself. Finally, we coded for six recurrent discourse strategies that are closely relevant to the construction of role identity because they suggest ways in which speakers use language to situate themselves in relation to others: reported speech, mimicked speech, pronoun shifts, oppositional portraits, inference of others’ beliefs, and prescriptive language. In addition, we found that the teachers regularly juxtaposed explicit statements to create implicit meaning that must be interpreted by the listener. This was a recurrent strategy across speakers, and one that also situates the speaker in relation to others (in this case the listener). Therefore, we remained attentive to the speakers’ juxtaposition of claims in our analysis. Here I offer a brief example of how we analyzed how the juxtaposition of explicit claims functioned to create implicit meanings, to orient the reader to our interpretive process. Constructing an implicit identity claim of teacher as model At one point in the conversation, Tim stated, ‘you have to teach, I mean, there has to be demonstration, there has to be consistency, I mean, expecting your students to do the work, not to turn it in late.’ On the explicit level, Tim’s statement makes an identity claim as a teacher (‘you have to teach’) and attaches particular qualities to that identity by associating it with explicit statements regarding actions and values. Tim’s explicit statements include the actions of demonstrating and being consistent, and the value of expecting students to complete the work on time. By putting these statements one after the other, Tim puts them in relation to each other, juxtaposing them to create an implicit meaning about what it means to be a teacher. There are many ways to teach and many beliefs about what makes a good teacher. There is certainly more than one possible implicit meaning here. For example, depending on other interactions the speakers have had, or perhaps recent events at the school, Tim’s statement might be taken as an indirect criticism of some teachers at the school. In fact, on other occasions, Tim has suggested that teachers at the school are not consistent about expecting students to turn in work on time. Tim’s use of prescriptive language here (‘have to’ and ‘has to be’) also suggests that he is appealing to a norm in order to strengthen his claim, something he does elsewhere in the data. For this analysis, however, I am interested in how Tim’s statements create an implicit identity claim, because, I argue, this is an important way speakers give meaning in context to role identities. The implicit identity claim here becomes clearer when the explicit statements are interpreted in relation to each other. I argue that this string of explicit statements accomplishes the implicit identity claim of teacher as model, because someone who holds recognizable values and expectations, and whose actions demonstrate those values and expectations, is commonly recognized as a model, though the particular values and expectations will change depending on context.

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Using implicit meaning to construct complex identities Analysis of speakers’ discourse strategies requires close reading and explication. For space considerations, therefore, I have focused the analysis in this article on one implicit identity claim, that of teacher as collaborator. Collaboration was overtly emphasized as a valued professional practice at the school, and each teacher made this identity claim more than once, and in a range of contexts, suggesting that they regularly engaged this part of their professional identity, regardless of whether they felt they were able to collaborate as they would have liked. Below, I analyze one representational example from each teacher in the focus group. In the first extract, Tim introduces the notion of teacher communication. Each of the other teachers picks up on this topic and elaborates on it shifting context and emphasis to bringing differing, but related, significances to the shared role claim, highlighting the ways in which language works as a social process through which identities are named and constituted (Bloome, Carter, Christian, Otto, & Shuart-Faris, 2005). I discuss these strategies in the analysis that follows. Throughout the analysis, portions of talk that will be the focus of discussion are in bold within the transcribed portion presented. Teacher as collaborator Example 1: Tim First, I consider Tim’s response to a question I asked about the nature of interactions among teachers at the school.2 I’m really glad you asked that question, because I have talked about that in my grad class? I’ve talked about it in my reflection I wrote for the end of the year. Is that [here pounds the table on each of the next words in the sentence] we don’t do enough, in the school, of sharing. What we’re doing in our classrooms, ideas we have for our vision. I mean I don’t really know what, until today I didn’t know what Sondra’s vision was or what Avery’s vision was, or what [the administrator’s] vision is, but, I really feel that we need to do more sharing. And I go back to [the principal at the school we visited], and the point he mentioned about teachers need to have a shared sense of purpose. And how do you do that? Well, you have to be able to converse. The best professional development you can possibly have is the conversations you have with the people you work with on a daily basis. That’s where true professional development is, in my opinion.

Analysis Tim accomplishes an implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator by juxtaposing explicit claims about teacher interaction. He uses the discourse strategies of prescriptive language and reported speech to strengthen that implicit claim and give it weight within the conversation. This is important because Tim is arguing for what he thinks the teachers at this school need, rather than describing what they have. There is a persuasive aspect to his words, in other words, that highlights identity as a negotiated accomplishment. I will begin by working out the implications of his explicit statements. Tim begins by setting up the importance of the topic of teacher interaction. His first statements (lines 1 and 2) establish that he has addressed this topic in two other professional contexts, a graduate class and his end-of-year written reflection (which teachers are required to submit to the school administration). Tim’s next statement introduces the notion of sharing. Here, he uses non-verbal communication to emphasize the importance of what he is saying, pounding the table with each word (line 3). Right away, Tim takes teacher identity beyond the classroom context by locating sharing in a larger professional context that encompasses both classroom practice and professional vision. In the second half of his turn, Tim asserts that ‘you have to be able to converse,’ in order to have the best possible professional development, and juxtaposes explicit

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statements that take the goal of professional development beyond classroom practices, which traditionally are more individualistic, to emphasize teachers developing ‘a shared sense of purpose.’ Teachers might experience classroom instruction and vision as more individual or more collective practices, depending on their particular characters and situations. So, it is notable that Tim makes a specific argument that goes beyond idiosyncratic practices and preferences, to locate professional growth in teachers’ need to share information daily, in order to build a shared sense of purpose. His emphasis on teachers having ‘a shared sense of purpose’ goes beyond more typical teacher conversations about particular students, lesson ideas, or administrative concerns. Furthermore, Tim’s choice of words, ‘sharing’ and ‘converse’ (lines 7 and 10), emphasizes communication defined by a give-and-take, rather than one person imparting information to another, as is commonly the practice for teacher professional development. Though teacher professional development is often organized and led by outside experts, Tim shifts the expertise to the teachers themselves by arguing that teacher conversation is ‘the best professional development you can possibly have.’ In sum, Tim’s explicit statements situate, and thereby define, teacher identity in two important ways. By emphasizing professional development, Tim engages a debate about what it means to be a highly qualified teacher. He challenges a banking model of professional development by defining teachers as knowledge producers building a shared vision. He accomplishes this by: (1) locating expertise in the teachers themselves, (2) defining the best professional development as daily conversations about classroom practice and vision generated by the teachers, and (3) characterizing desirable, needed teacher interaction in terms of sharing and conversing, two models of communication that emphasize give-and-take over information delivery. Taken together, Tim’s explicit statements resist both a cultural model and pervasive working conditions that tend to isolate teachers within their own classrooms and limit expectations for their professional engagement to delivering information and improving test scores. His identity talk accomplishes the implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator by representing teachers as experts engaged in building a shared sense of purpose by regularly sharing knowledge of daily practice and professional vision. But, as has been posited by a range of identity theorists (Gee, 2005; Goffman, 1959; MacLure, 1993), identity is an ongoing argument we make to others through a range of semiotic systems, rather than a static quality we possess, and arguments need to be strengthened to be persuasive. Thus, in addition to understanding how Tim’s explicit statements work to accomplish an implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator, it is important to understand how specific discourse strategies strengthen that claim. Here, I will focus on two strategies present in Tim’s talk. Both discourse strategies strengthen Tim’s implicit identity claim by taking what he says beyond his personal opinion, to give it more authority. First, in lines 7 and 10, he uses prescriptive language, including the modal verbs ‘need’ and ‘have’ to assert the importance of his argument. Though Tim hedges what he says in two instances, saying ‘I really feel’ (line 7) and ‘in my opinion’ (line 13), the overall effect of his turn – punctuated by his pounding the table – is one of strong assertion. By using prescriptive language, Tim strengthens what is in fact his opinion by presenting it as a more generalized ideal. Second, Tim uses reported speech when he says ‘I go back to [the principal at the school we visited], and the point he mentioned about teachers need to have a shared sense of purpose.’ Employing multiple voices through reported speech lends credibility to Tim’s argument by marshaling the support of an expert educator outside the school. Reported speech, like prescriptive language, generalizes and normalizes Tim’s claim of teacher as collaborator, situating it more as a reference to accepted practice than personal opinion. At first glance, using reported speech might seem to undermine Tim’s implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator by shifting

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expertise to an outsider. I see something different in the way Tim uses reported speech here, however. Tim doesn’t bring in another’s voice as an authority giving instructions, but instead evokes an educator all three teachers respected, who shares his beliefs. By using reported speech here, Tim enacts a key practice of collaboration, which is to locate knowledge in others and engage with them to think through a situation, strengthening his implicit claim of teacher as collaborator. Tim makes an initial claim of teacher as collaborator through explicit statements that emphasize teachers working together toward a common goal, such as ‘we don’t do enough, in the school, of sharing,’ and vocabulary such as ‘converse.’ He strengthens and gives credibility to his claim, however, through specific discourse strategies that contextualize his claim strategically, and enable him to enact a key practice of collaboration within the conversation. Example 2: Sondra Analysis After Tim’s turn, Sondra and Avery voiced their agreement. In the next turn, Avery responded, ‘yeah, I’ll be you’re amen corner real quick on that one,’ and Sondra laughed and responded, ‘Hallelujah!,’ followed by Tim’s laughter. Avery responded to Tim’s more general assertion that teacher collaboration is the best professional development by modifying it with a caution that the structure, setting, and topic determine the quality of the interaction. Avery made this assertion more than once in the conversation, and I analyze one of his statements, below. First, however, Sondra brought a contrasting experience of teacher collaboration into the conversation that echoed, but modified, Tim’s assertion: I have a lot of frustrations coming out of this year because I don’t feel we were very collegial….Sometimes some of that might be the result of that getting bigger. I mean I’ve been in organizations that when we were small, it works great, but as you grow, then that communication factor, or that collegiality if that’s the word, starts to fall off because it occurs just more break offs, more little cliques and groups that go off in their own little offices or rooms and do their own thing.

Sondra begins her turn by expressing frustration about teacher interactions at the school in the past year (line 1). She suggests that there has been a change for the worse in teacher communication, and then paints a short verbal portrait (lines 6 and 7) of the kind of teachers who contribute to the breakdown in communication. In the example of Tim’s talk, he constructed an implicit identity claim by juxtaposing explicit statements, and used specific discourse strategies to strengthen and lend credibility to his claim. In the example of Sondra’s identity talk presented here, by contrast, she accomplishes the implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator primarily through two discourse strategies: painting an oppositional portrait of teachers who are problematic, and using pronoun shifts to position herself in relation to those teachers, as someone who is apart from them. Sondra’s implicit identity claim contextualizes collaboration in terms of building community, accomplishing a slightly different meaning for the identity than the one Tim defined. Sondra begins by signaling that teacher communication is important. A failure in communication isn’t something she could easily overlook; it caused her ‘a lot of frustrations.’ She then underscores the idea that the change in what she calls ‘the communication factor’ is a problem by associating it with negative images of something falling off and breaking off (line 5), in other words, with disintegration within the organization. Within this turn, Sondra identifies two possible causes for a breakdown in communication: growth of the organization; and teachers who do not make communication a priority. The school has grown steadily since it opened, adding a new grade each year for the first seven years. Sondra addresses this directly when she says, ‘some of that might be a result of getting bigger.’ She comments on the significance of getting

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bigger indirectly in the next sentence by referring to other organizations where she has worked that suffered problems as they grew (lines 3–5). This indirect statement is important because it validates Sondra’s argument by generalizing it as a normative statement based on her prior experience in other groups, rather than simply a personal opinion about this school. Then, in the next sentences, Sondra shifts the focus to the people within the organization, identifying those who form ‘little cliques and groups,’ as the source of the problem because their actions negatively affect communication. Sondra’s description of people who work in ‘little cliques and groups’ occupies relatively little discursive space, but serves an important function as an oppositional portrait, by assembling a list of negative actions and dispositions associated with other teachers (lines 6–7). In this oppositional portrait, Sondra describes teachers who ‘break off,’ form ‘little cliques and groups,’ ‘go off to their own little offices or rooms,’ and ‘do their own thing.’ She uses the diminishing word ‘little’ to further signal her negative value judgment of this dynamic (line 6). Sondra’s oppositional portrait describes teachers who attend to work that is separate from the group, breaking down communication. Her explicit talk refers to ‘that communication factor,’ but attention to the specific actions and dispositions described in the portrait gives us a clearer picture of how Sondra makes the implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator, rather than communicator. As is commonly the case, dispositions are tied up with the actions through which they are shaped and expressed. In this case, the actions of teachers who work in separate spaces and interact with certain people and not others can be associated with an individualistic, exclusive disposition, someone who does not identify with the whole group and is not attentive to the needs of that group. By sketching out the ‘(virtuous) mirror image’ (MacLure, 1993, p. 316) of this portrait, we get a picture of a teacher who is oriented toward the whole group, rather than a clique, seeks to work with that group, rather than going off into her own office, and prioritizes group projects or needs, rather than ‘doing her own thing.’ In this mirror image, the teacher goes beyond the goal of communication to align herself with the organization and work with others on common projects – in other words to collaborate. Second, Sondra uses the discourse strategy of shifting pronouns to position herself against the oppositional portrait and align herself with the implicit role claim of teacher as collaborator that she has constructed. She begins with the pronoun ‘I,’ suggesting that her frustrations position her outside a group, ‘we’ (line 1), that was not very collegial in the past year. In line 3, she again uses ‘we’ to position herself as an insider in organizations in the past. In the next sentence, Sondra shifts to the pronoun ‘you,’ which adds validity to her claim by generalizing it as something that describes common knowledge, rather than simply a personal opinion. Using first- and secondperson pronouns, Sondra positions herself as someone who is within the organization, but who also has certain criticisms that set her apart. In the oppositional portrait, however (lines 6 and 7), Sondra shifts from ‘we’ and ‘I’ to the third-person pronoun ‘their’ to signal greater distance and position herself outside the practices she describes. Thus, Sondra uses implicit meaning to accomplish an identity claim and align herself with that claim. Sondra accomplishes an implicit role claim of teacher as collaborator using the discourse strategy of painting an oppositional portrait, and implicitly defines a collaborator as someone who identifies, communicates, and works with the larger group on common projects. In fact, Sondra underscores these key features of collaboration by defining the common goal as building community in the later statement that, ‘the reason why I joined this school, why I left the school I was at, is because I wanted to be a part of being a part of building a community, and I feel like that community is breaking down.’ Like Tim, she uses specific discourse strategies to strengthen her implicit identity claim. In her emphasis on commitment to the group, Sondra’s definition of collaborator is slightly different than Tim’s, which emphasized the need for teachers to learn from each other and share a common vision, but did not attend as much to concerns about the dynamics

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of the larger group within the organization. In contrast, Sondra suggests that being a collaborator extends beyond a work relationship to include a stronger identification with the group as a community.

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Example 3: Avery Analysis As I mentioned above, Avery modified Tim’s assertion by bringing up the notion that the usefulness of teacher collaboration depends on the content and structure of the interaction. Here, he continues to build on Tim’s and Sondra’s comments to emphasize this point. In this example, I focus on two discourse strategies used by Avery, a mid-career African American teacher who has been teaching at the school for five years: inferences of others’ beliefs and mimicked speech. [sharing] is one of those things where I think you need to create a forum and I think that how you create those forums and what’s the plan, that depends upon the quality of that interaction. Does that make sense? And it’s like, if we have this things to do list then it’s going to be very limited and it’s not going to be as quality as it could be, but when we sit down here in a pretty informal way and just get open-ended questions thrown at us, look at the quality of the conversation we have and that we should take it another step further and figure out now what would we do with that information and process that information? that needs to happen more than perhaps um having a things to do list or having something that’s so structured, I think a lot of time the feeling is if we don’t have the structure then people are going to piss the time away excuse my /?/ but that’s what I believe the perception is, and to me that’s not treating you as a professional and that’s not treating you as somebody who wants to work with your colleagues.

Avery begins by building on Tim’s call for more sharing by specifying certain conditions necessary to make sharing valuable. He refers explicitly to the institutional practice of creating forums to structure teacher interaction (lines 1 and 2), but specifies that the quality of the interaction will depend on how the forum is structured (lines 2 and 3). In his next statements, Avery contrasts two possible ways forums for sharing can be organized: with a ‘things to do list,’ which results in limited interactions, and with ‘open-ended questions,’ which enable ‘quality’ interaction. Like Tim, Avery uses prescriptive language marked by the modifying verbs ‘should’ and ‘need’ (lines 7 and 9) to support his statements. He modifies Tim’s talk about sharing, however, by specifying that teachers should take that sharing a step further to ‘process that information,’ and ‘figure out now what we should do with that information’ (lines 7 and 8). In other words, teachers should interact by sharing information, analyzing it, and planning action. Avery’s implicit identity claim includes features found in Sondra’s and Tim’s definitions, in particular an emphasis on teachers sharing ideas and vision. His emphasis on teachers engaging in analysis to plan action introduces the notion of praxis, however, which is not found in their identity talk, and is key to his implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator. By emphasizing praxis and rejecting a ‘things to do list’ (line 4), Avery clearly locates expertise in the teachers, situating them not only as knowledge producers, but also as agents of change. Like Tim, he uses prescriptive language (‘that needs to happen more,’ line 9) to normalize his statement by appealing to an ideal, which strengthens his implicit identity claim. His emphasis on the importance of creating a forum for sharing situates teacher role identity within the larger context of institutional practices that can support or inhibit teachers’ capacity to act as knowledge producers and agents of change. In the second part of this extract, Avery intensifies and lends credibility to his implicit role claim using the discourse strategies of inferring others’ beliefs and mimicked speech. Avery uses the discourse strategy of inferring others’ beliefs when he says, ‘I think a lot of the time the feeling is’ and ‘that’s what I believe the perception is’ (lines 11 and 12–13). He uses mimicked speech

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when he says, ‘if we don’t have the structure then people are going to piss the time away’ (lines 10–11), which puts those beliefs into words attributed to another. Together, the strategies of inferring another’s beliefs and mimicked speech allow Avery to evoke and then animate another participant in the conversation. He can then locate negative beliefs about teacher motivation and commitment in that other, and argue actively with that voice, strengthening his implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator. Avery’s first statements represent teachers as collaborators engaged in praxis. He associates these statements with himself, but also normalizes them as a more generally held ideal through prescriptive language. He then infers others’ beliefs to more directly engage a dominant discourse of accountability that represents teachers as disengaged employees who will ‘piss the time away’ without structure and supervision. Once Avery has animated this belief through mimicked speech, he can argue with it directly. His argument constructs a counter discourse that accomplishes an alternate teacher identity as professionals who want to work with their colleagues. Mimicked speech also makes Avery’s statements appear more objective by positioning him as simply representing another’s words rather than giving his opinion of their beliefs. In this way, Avery gains additional credibility as a speaker. Mimicked speech intensifies Avery’s implicit identity claim as a counter discourse about teacher identity by allowing him to take the other part in an active dialog. In lines 13 and 14, Avery directly responds to the speaker and discourse he has constructed by saying ‘and that’s not treating you as somebody who wants to work with your colleagues.’ He juxtaposes two explicit statements that make a counter claim, positioning teachers as professionals who desire to collaborate with their colleagues. It is also important to note that, like Tim, Avery enacts a key aspect of his identity claim through his identity talk. Specifically, he engages in analysis by identifying specific institutional practices that function as obstacles to teachers’ engagement as professionals, and thus shape teacher identity in specific ways. Summary The aim of this study was to better understand how teacher identity, as a social role identity, gets defined and enacted in local contexts through talk. The research questions guiding the study built on previous work about implied meaning and teacher identity to ask how teachers use explicit and implicit meaning to accomplish a role identity as teacher in a particular context and how teacher talk functions as cultural work. I found that the teachers participating in my study constructed implicit identity claims through which they were able to accomplish more complex role identities. These implicit identity claims function as a counter discourse to administrative claims about teacher identity and collaboration. Using the method of discourse analysis, I examined the discourse strategies that were important to how teachers accomplished the implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator, to extend our understanding of how the teachers accomplished complex significances for the shared role identity of teacher, through talk. My interest in teachers’ talk is grounded in the understanding that discourses do more than describe things. As linguist James Gee reminds us, discourses are complex and powerful social processes that communicate particular perspectives on the world in terms of what is possible, what is right, desirable, and normal, and have ‘deep implications … for how we act’ (2005, p. 2). The notions of role identity and implicit identity claims offers an accessible way to talk about the complexities of social identity, and how people negotiate the many possible significances of shared identities through language. The analysis in this article focuses on how teachers accomplished the implicit identity claim of teacher as collaborator. I found that each of the teachers made this implicit identity claim and linked it with professional identity, but they defined it differently, using a range of discourse strategies to construct, and sometimes enact, the qualities they associated with collaboration. The

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teachers situated teacher identity in relation to other people and institutional practices. They used conversation as a site for negotiating existing social practices regarding teacher identity, including work structures and beliefs about teacher competence and motivation. Tim defined collaboration in terms of professional development by emphasizing the need for teachers have a common sense of purpose, which they build by regularly sharing information about daily practice and vision. Sondra emphasized the need for teachers to identify with the group as a whole, and collaborate in non-exclusive ways that build community. Avery argued that collaboration is at the heart of a teacher professional identity committed to praxis. In other words, a single implicit identity claim takes on differing significances in terms of professional identity. In this case, collaboration can define professional identity itself, enable professional growth, and build a community. The implicit role claim of teacher as collaborator functioned in the teachers’ identity talk as a counter discourse emphasizing teachers’ professional role as knowledge producers rather than information deliverers, collaborative, rather than isolated, and, for some of the teachers, as agents of change engaged in critical analysis to plan action. Awareness of how these counter discourses operate in the teachers’ conversation helps us better understand teachers’ identity talk as cultural work through which teachers negotiate significances for the role identity of teacher. Within this conversation, the teachers often addressed the values and practices of others as important constraints and resources in accomplishing professional identity. To accomplish their implicit identity claims, teachers drew on resources and talked back to certain constraints – sometimes explicitly through mimicked or reported speech – to argue for the importance of alternative practices and dispositions. In doing so, the teachers demonstrated how role claims can be understood as dynamic arguments that engage participants in a creative process through which new significances may be accomplished. As Zurcher and others suggest, the teachers are not free to completely recreate this role identity, nor are they completely constrained by the effects of existing or prior social structures. Though they clearly responded to existing social and material constraints, the teachers used discursive strategies to make distinctions and arguments about the role identity of teacher, often locating teacher identity in multiple contexts, including graduate school, other high schools, outside organizations, classroom practice, planning meetings, and institutional practices such as professional development. The teachers also located teacher identity in relation to the range of other people indexed by their discursive strategies. Analysis of speakers’ implicit role claims offers an important analytical tool for understanding how teachers engage in the everyday construction and reconstruction of the role identity of teacher, in both conventional and creative ways, through talk. Conclusion Analysis of the teachers’ identity talk offers a strategy for bringing to the discursive-level dynamics related to identity and practice that might otherwise remain implicit. As an analytical tool, discourse analysis helps us appreciate the sometimes subtle distinctions teachers make in accomplishing the role identity of teacher. This helps us understand teacher identity as a process, and suggests implications for how teachers prioritize aspects of their professional practice. The work presented here focuses on teacher identity talk during planning time, an important site of professional engagement that receives relatively little attention compared with work on classroom practices. The findings presented here suggest a need for more work on non-classroom sites for teacher professional involvement. A fuller understanding of the discourses shaping teacher identity and practice also requires that this analysis be integrated with analysis of data gathered on institutional discourses operating in the school and beyond, to get a better understanding of how teacher identities are negotiated in broader contexts. Finally, the many discourses around teacher identity are complex and contradictory. It is consistent, however, that teachers’

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own voices are rarely part of the debate. The teachers’ active, critical engagement in theorizing professional identity suggests that ample opportunities to engage in identity talk should be an important part of teachers’ professional environment, in order to support teachers’ ability to accomplish reflective professional identities. Continued attention to this identity talk will be helpful for increasing awareness of the importance of teacher identity in teacher education and professional development, and in bringing teachers’ voices more prominently into the debates over the priorities and practices of formal education.

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Acknowledgements I thank Tiffany Benson, Katie Van Sluys, and Christopher Worthman for their help in conceptualizing and preparing this article. This research was supported by a DePaul University School of Education Research Grant. Notes 1. To preserve the anonymity of the participants, all names in this article are pseudonyms. 2. Line breaks and numbering are for reference only.

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