ABSTRACT

Becoming a teacher involves not merely the accumulation of disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical techniques, but also significant transformations of identity. A sensitive and research-based appreciation of the nature of these transformations, and their significance for beginning teachers, is potentially valuable for both pre-service teacher education and early-career teacher support practices. Drawing from a recent empirical study this article examines liminality, or paradoxical in-betweenness, as an inherent, and inherently difficult, experiential quality of becoming a teacher. Analysis of four individual case studies of beginning teachers reveals three concrete manifestations of liminality: ‘being-a-stranger’; ‘being-a-fraud’; and ‘dancing in the disequilibrium’. The findings show how these unstable, in-between spaces of identity-making present complex challenges, but also constitute sites of agency and productive identity-work, for beginning teachers. The discussion provokes questions regarding how teacher educators and school administrators can account for, and respond to, liminality.

摘要

成为一名教师不仅涉及学科知识和教学方法的积累，而且还涉及身份的重大转变。对这些变革的本质及其对初任教师的意义的敏感且基于研究的理解，对于职前教师教育和职业早期教师支持实践都具有潜在的价值。从最近的一项实证研究中得出的结论是，本文检验了合法性，或自相矛盾的中介性，作为成为老师的一种内在的，内在地困难的经验。对初任教师的四个个案研究的分析揭示了刑法学的三种具体表现：“陌生人”；“欺诈”；和“在不平衡中跳舞”。研究结果表明，对于初学者来说，这些不稳定的，介于身份认同之间的空间如何提出了复杂的挑战，同时又构成了代理和生产性身份工作的场所。讨论引发了有关教师教育者和学校管理者如何解释和应对合法性的问题。