1. Identity

Jump to: Reflective Activities | Further Reading | Research Briefings | Diagrams and Figures

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Reflective Activities

Understanding Ourselves as Teachers

• To reflect on your own decision to become a teacher
• To compare your personal values with the statements developed by the Teaching Councils
• To develop insight into our identity and work as a teacher
• To identify general aims which you hold for your pupils' learning
• To identify individual value-positions
• To identify value commitments and ideologies through consideration of educational policy statements
• To analyse dimensions of our ‘selves'
• To enhance your awareness of how social situations impact on your sense of self
• To adopt a courageous approach to risk-taking in our teaching and to understand the fears underlying our beliefs about barriers to change

Knowing Children and Young People as Pupils

• To explore one of the features of 'growing up': the mulitple and sometimes contradictory expectations that different people have of children and young people
• To identify how children feel about themselves in a school context
• To find out young people's criteria for a 'good teacher'
• To find out children's views on school
• To begin to construct a biographical understanding of a pupil
• To attempt to 'get into the shoes' of your pupils in order to try to understand aspects of their culture from the inside
• To understand our perceptions of 'pupils'
• To develop your knowledge and understanding of children's peer cultures
• To consider the influence of relationships in home, playground and classroom on the sense of identity and learning of a child
• To identify some needs of a selected number of children in one's class and to establish an order of priority
• To review the learning of a pupil in the light of Susan Hart's Framework for Innovative Thinking
• To encourage children to evaluate themselves and to review their work
• To provide an opportunity for children to analyse the teaching they experience

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Further Reading

Notes for Further Reading

• Overview
• Understanding ourselves as teachers
• Knowing children and young people as pupils
• Learning and teaching through life

Related articles

• Analysing ourselves and the role of ‘teacher’
• Articulating values, aims and commitments

Useful links

• Employability for Students
• Chartered College of Teaching, England
• General Teaching Council for Scotland
• Education and Workforce Council, Wales
• General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland
• Teaching Council, Republic of Ireland
• Code of Professional Conduct, Wales
• Alison Peacock's TED talk on 'Learning without Limits'

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Research Briefings

• Factors that make teachers more effective across their careers
• Consulting pupils about teaching and learning
• Learning lives: learning, identity and agency in the life course

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Diagrams and Figures

• Figure 1.1 (a) Professional values across the islands of Britain and Ireland
• Figure 1.1 (b) Professional values across the islands of Britain and Ireland
• Figure 1.2 Year 7 friendship groups
• Figure 1.3 Perspectives of Year 7 friendship groups
• Figure 1.4 Maslow's hierarchy of needs
• Figure 1.5 A framework for innovative thinking
• Figure 1.6 Social influences on learners through a school career
• Figure 1.7 Mediating mechanisms for achievement of the wider benefits of learning