Identity formation in beginning English teachers

Developing the pedagogy necessary to teach a disciplinary subject to a variety of young people, alongside the ability to use formative and summative assessment to help their students to progress, are complex developmental processes for beginning teachers. Yet just as language and thought have potential developmental functions, so context has a formative role in identity formation. Beginning English teachers face at least two contexts that impact on their social situations of development: their position as learners, within the academic environment of a university; and within the specific professional contexts of their placement schools. These social situations intersect in complex and dialectical interplay between theory and practice. The focus on the complexity of identity development in this chapter develops a view of teaching and learning as a process through which beginning teachers as learners take on what is valued in a culture and, in turn, develop the agency that allows them to begin to contribute to that culture. The chapter will use the example of beginning teachers' learning to teach English within a school and university partnership