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This review has been accessed times since July 7, 2006

Alsup, Janet. (2006). Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Pp. vii + 234
ISBN 0-8058-5853-9

Reviewed by Elizabeth Smolcic
Pennsylvania State University

July 7, 2006

In the field of teacher education, many have observed that the “skills” of teaching and knowledge of disciplinary content, although important, are not enough to help students develop into successful teachers. In this book, Janet Alsup draws attention to the critical need for preservice teachers to develop satisfying professional identities and the role that teacher educators might play in that process. The author reports on a two and a half year study of six preservice teachers in which the teachers’ narrative, metaphor and philosophy statements on teaching are analyzed. Alsup argues for teacher education programs to facilitate student engagement in transformative identity discourse and seeks to develop “a theory about the intersection of various types of discourse within the process of professional identity development” (2006, p.4).

Synopsis

The first chapter details how and why the research project came to be, gives snapshot descriptions of the six teachers and describes Alsup’s concept of ‘discourse’ which is more encompassing than oral or written language and relies on Gee’s (1999) “discourse with a capital “D” to include the subjectivities that an individual brings to a discursive act. Alsup extends Gee’s (1999) metaphor of the ‘borderland,’ or a site of alternative discourse which functions to enact change in a particular community, to the preservice teachers’ experimentation with a professional teacher identity----one that is both true to their personal beliefs and will be acceptable and effective “in an institutional climate that too often rewards conformity and stagnancy (2006, xv).

Janet Alsup

Engaging in ‘borderland discourse’ facilitates an integration of personal and professional identities and includes the integration of the intellectual, emotional and physical aspects of the teacher’s life.

Alsup emphasizes that discursive identity development is essential for university students to become successful teachers as well as to stop the large numbers of young teachers who leave the field after their first few years in the school system.

In Chapter 2, Alsup explores the cultural model of teacher in the United States and the meanings that the media and politics bring to the profession. One pervasive ideology is the rhetoric of educational failure and reform which began in the early 1950’s and continues to breed cynicism and top-down mandates for greater control over teachers and classrooms. Another is the binary image of teacher in our society as either hero or villain, evidenced in Hollywood films and news reports. Contemporary ideologies surrounding the educational system in general and teacher in particular are rooted in historical notions of the teacher and the feminization and marginalization of the profession since the early 19^th century in the United States. Then, in greater detail, Alsup offers her definition of ‘borderland discourse’ and reviews the teacher education literature on identity development and narrative analysis. The chapter ends with the methodology of the study; a qualitative content analysis of the teacher’s written discourse and interview data.

The third chapter of the book delves into the first of five thematic categories of narrative, narratives of tension, all of which Alsup has identified in the data. In preservice teacher narratives, tension originated in conflict between 1) the ‘student’ and ‘teacher’ selves; 2) personal beliefs and professional expectations; and 3) ways of thinking about teaching that come from the university and academia versus the practical considerations of public school classrooms. Significantly, the three students who had the highest number of narratives of tension were those who decided not to take traditional teaching positions after graduation and expressed a lack of clarity about their future careers. For these three students ideological and discursive conflicts were not overcome. They were not able to integrate conflicting identities, nor see how what they learned in the university could be modified to successfully implement in the secondary classroom.

The subject of Chapter 4 is narratives of experience, or those stories relating to life experiences of being a student or a new teacher in field teaching placements. Alsup groups these narratives as either positive or negative and observes that the student teachers with more positive stories overall, were those that ended up continuing a professional life in the classroom. She reflects on Dewey’s caution that experience by itself is not inherently educative and reminds teacher educators that experience is only helpful when it is subject to critical interrogation.

Chapters 5 and 6 examine two more categories of narrative from the data; narratives about the ‘embodiment’ of teacher identity and narratives about family and friends. Alsup describes ‘embodiment’ as the critical awareness of the physicality of human life, a view reflecting Lakoff and Johnson’s (1999, p. 4) claim that “Reason is not disembodied, as the tradition has largely held, but arises from the nature of our brains, bodies and bodily experience.…the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment.” Alsup explains that the difficulty of embodying a teacher identity was dependent on the amount of similarity between the perservice teacher’s body and that preferred in the discourse community of secondary school teachers (p. 90), asserting that the body of the teacher is culturally defined as White, female, middle-aged, politically conservative and heterosexual. On the other hand, the ‘home’ discourses expressed through stories about family and friends sometimes created bridges and sometimes impeded the student teachers’ identity development.

Chapter 7 provides the reader with an analysis of ‘borderland discourses’ often referred to as ‘transformative’ and according to Alsup, the key to preservice teachers’ initial development of a professional identity and personal pedagogy. Additionally, Alsup argues that if we want students “to become socially conscious, critical educators who question the system and make substantive changes when necessary” (p. 144) then borderland discourse is essential. Here she relies on Bakhtin’s (1986) ideas on speech genres and their role in discourse communities and Gee’s (1990) contention that changes in discourse can open up ways for resistance to domination and hegemony.

In the last two chapters, Alsup offers specific commentary on the use and analysis of metaphor for students to reflect on the intersection of divergent discourses or senses of self. Alsup sees the use of metaphor as a particularly powerful way to raise awareness of ideological change and to assist students to engage in borderland discourse. She focuses on a genre of discourse familiar to teacher educators, the ‘statement of teaching philosophy.’ Alsup argues that philosophy statements alone, without connections to narratives or metaphor, often do little to push forward identity development because they are simply reproduced or imitated educational discourse.

A summary of ten general themes that emerged from narrative analysis of the preservice teacher discourse and which were discussed in detail in previous chapters concludes the book. It provides a concise compilation of insights that relate to teacher education and provide guidance to teacher educators as they structure learning experience for preservice teachers. The book culminates with a useful Appendix which provides specific assignments to enact some of the guidance offered throughout the book and a brief glossary of terms.

Critical Evaluation

This book makes a valuable contribution to the study of teacher narrative and teacher identity development. Significantly, Alsup has clearly made the case that forming (or failing to form) a healthy professional identity is central to the process of learning to be a teacher. The role that teacher educators play in guiding preservice teachers to examine their personal identities and build congruent professional ones is an essential one. This book outlines a number of ways in which teacher educators may engage their students in this process. Unmistakably, the book moves the reader to critical reflection on teacher education, beginning a dialogue with questions such as: How can we lead student teachers to delve deep into the social and familial ideologies they bring to the classroom? What are the ideologies that form a backdrop to our own teaching identities? What is the ideology of the public school and how do young teachers interact within it or choose to resist it?

The longitudinal nature (2.5 years) of this study with its specific focus on teacher learning is an important contribution to a field in which it is difficult to follow teacher learners over long periods of time. Further, the emphasis on the role that teacher educators can play in helping new teachers develop a healthy professional identity is well-articulated and substantiated with data from the study. However, Alsup’s work would benefit from an examination of the teacher educator’s role in shaping the prospective teachers’ experience in their education program. Understanding how students’ and teachers’ stories are interconnected is worth exploring. While Alsup refers to Wortham’s (2001) notion of a performative construction of the self through narrative, she has not taken his lead to analyze both the representational meaning of the text and the positioning of the teachers in relation to the researcher as the interviews are conducted.

In respect to technical aspects, the author and subject indexes and glossary are useful, reflecting the rich content between the covers. While key terms are adequately defined, in some cases explanations are repeated in several different chapters and the text can feel slightly repetitive. However, because the volume offers numerous excerpts from the interviews with preservice teachers, their voices are clearly heard.

In sum, the book is a useful addition to the literature in two key areas: 1) identity development of new teachers and 2) the use of discourse analysis for exploring narrative text. Indirectly, but insightfully, the voices in the volume speak to us about the power of ideology in our schools and the imperative to “know oneself” both as teachers and as individuals within society.

References

Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays. (V.W. McGee, Trans.) Austin: University of Texas Press.

Gee, James Paul. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London: Routledge.

Gee, James Paul. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. (2nd ed.) New York: Routledge Falmer.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.

Wortham, Stanton. (2001). Narratives in action: Strategies for research and analysis. New York: Teachers College Press.

About the Reviewer

Elizabeth Smolcic is a doctoral student in Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research is concerned with preparing teachers for diverse classrooms and application of activity theory and sociocultural approaches to learning and teacher development. She is an ESL teacher and director of an intensive English program at Juniata College.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

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