The Formation of Teacher Identity through Video Reflections during Teaching Practicum

This study aimed to investigate the identities of pre-service teachers and the effects of teaching practice and video reflections on the identities of pre-service teachers enrolled in the Turkish Language Teaching Department. In this study, a qualitative research design, mainly a case study, was employed. This study was conducted based on the voluntary participation of six senior pre-service teachers enrolled in the Teaching Practicum course in the spring semester of 2019. The data were collected through video reflections, pre-practice and post-practice teaching focus-group interviews. The data were analyzed through a cyclical – reiterative analysis process. The results showed that the identities of pre-service teachers could be grouped under three sub-identities: the subject-matter expert, didactical expert, and pedagogical expert identities. Also, pre-service Turkish Language teachers saw their identity at the beginning as being more cue-based and exemplar-based. However, at the end of the practicum, they heavily displayed rule-based identities due to the requirements of the Turkish educational system or schema-based identities that mainly emerged with the impact of contextual factors and conditions of the practicum schools. The findings of the study were discussed in detail and implications for practice and future research were provided