Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 308e319

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Teaching and Teacher Education

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A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity

Sanne F. Akkerman*, Paulien C. Meijer
Department of Education, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80127, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 22 December 2009
Received in revised form
13 August 2010
Accepted 31 August 2010

In recent attempts to address the notion of teacher identity, scholars have stressed how identity is
dynamically evolving, intrinsically related to others, and consists of multiple identities. Though these
postmodern characterizations represent radically new perceptions of identity, they are not extensively
discussed in relation to previous assumptions on singularity or sameness of teacher identity. The
emerging theory of dialogical self in psychology offers a more elaborate approach to teacher identity,
conceived of as both unitary and multiple, both continuous and discontinuous, and both individual and
social. Based on this approach, teacher identity is re-dened and implications for research are identied.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Teacher identity
Professional identity
Dialogical self

1. Introduction
In studying how teachers work, learn and develop, there seems
to be a widespread interest in teacher identity (cf. Alsup, 2006;
Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). This can be clearly observed
when going through the number of publications about teacher
identity in SSCI journals over the last 20 years, as projected in Fig. 1.
Accordingly, identity has become one of the framing chapters in the
Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (Cochran-Smith, Feiman-Nemser, McIntyre, & Demers, 2008; chapter by Rodgers &
Scott, 2008). This growing interest goes hand in hand with an
increasing emphasis that is put on the role of emotions, passion,
commitment and courage in teaching (see for example Beauchamp
& Thomas, 2009; Day, 2004; Kelchtermans, 2005; Palmer, 1998).
This movement goes beyond the tradition of merely focusing on
teachers acquisition of assets, such as knowledge, competencies,
or beliefs as the basis of professional development. Acquisition of
assets stresses the importance of desired learning outcomes in
terms of what is meant to be learnt by teachers. This approach is
reected in developments of evaluation procedures for assessing
teachers and their development in view of predened professional
standards (Porter, Youngs, & Odden, 2001). An important limitation
of such an approach is that it presupposes accumulation and linearity in moving from novice to expert. Given large differences in
how teachers develop throughout their career, both between
teachers as well as between different expertise areas (Beijaard,
Verloop, & Vermunt, 2000), this presupposition is a matter of

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 31 30 2532141/6 23734823; fax: 31 30 2532200.

E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (S.F. Akkerman).
0742-051X/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.013

debate. Also, theories on identity development indicate that

development is a far from linear process (Flores & Day, 2006;
Geijsel & Meijers, 2005). Another limitation of such an assetsapproach is that it perpetuates a discourse about the teacher, that is,
the teacher as being the object we look at from above or from the
outside. Consequently, such an approach does not allow an
understanding of how teachers themselves make sense of their
teaching practice (Niessen, Widdershoven, Abma, Van der Vleuten,
& Akkerman, 2008).
Research that (also) includes an explicit focus on teacher identity shows a more holistic interest in what it means to be teacher. In
such research, professional development is understood as involving
questions like who am I as a teacher?, who do I want to become?
(Kelchtermans & Hamilton, 2004; Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005).
Taking account of such questions, discourse shifts towards the
teachers perspective, in which the teacher as agent becomes the
main starting point in understanding and stimulating professional
development.
Based on reviewing research into professional identity in relation to teachers and teacher education, Beijaard et al. (2004)
concluded that literature often lacks a clear denition of professional identity. Beauchamp and Thomas (2009) maintained that
dening teacher identity is one of the main challenges in arriving at
an understanding of the concept and how it inuences teachers
learning and their work. Despite the lack of denitions, we see
several recurring characterizations of teacher identity, of which the
most commonly seen are related to:

the multiplicity of identity

the discontinuity of identity

the social nature of identity

S.F. Akkerman, P.C. Meijer / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 308e319

Hits on teacher identity in SSCI journals

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Fig. 1. Number of hits on teacher identity in the social sciences citation index 1988 e
2008.

The three characterizations stress that identity is not a xed and

stable entity, but rather shifts with time and context. These postmodern characterizations represent a fundamental shift in dening
identity in comparison to earlier and more broadly accepted
psychological understandings of the human mind. For a long time,
identity was perceived as a singular, continuous and individual
entity but, as we will claim, it is untenable to replace these earlier
characterizations with their postmodern opposites. Hence, in order
to conceptualize teacher identity we need to consider carefully
what the multiplicity, discontinuity and social nature of identity
entails, as well as to consider these characterizations in relation to
their counterparts, that is, the unity, continuity and individual
nature of identity. Such an exploration enables us to provide a more
complete denition of teacher identity and provides some signicant implications for conducting research on teacher identity and
teacher development.
As the basis for this exploration we will draw on the emerging
theory of dialogical self in psychology and ask how can teacher
identity be conceptualized according to a dialogical approach? We
perceive a dialogical approach towards identity as particularly
valuable, as it explains how teacher identity can be typied as both
unitary and multiple, both continuous and discontinuous, and both
individual and social.
In what follows, we will rst position dialogical self theories in
light of the historical development in thinking about identity.
Theories of identity inescapably become more international, also
due to increasing accessibility and exchange of scholarly work. We
then move on to describe current literature on teacher identity
which mainly align with a postmodern understanding of identity,
and will assert that important theoretical questions are not (or only
partly) dealt with in this literature. By way of response to this
literature and the emerging questions, we take a dialogical
approach to teacher identity, and describe in three sections
respectively the multiplicity-unity, discontinuity-continuity and
social-individual dimensions by which identity in a dialogical
approach is understood. In these three sections, the proposed
understanding of identity is illustrated with interview fragments
and ndings we encountered in studies of teacher development by
Alsup (2006), Meijer, Korthagen, and Vasalos (2009), and Niessen
(2007) pertaining to novice teachers as well as to experienced
teachers. These studies are relevant to our reasoning as they
present in-depth cases of teachers, allowing us to see how teachers
identity is developed and constructed in a wider social context.
Though they describe teacher identity as a narrative and dynamic
construction, the authors of these studies do not explicitly present
nor discuss a dialogical approach to teacher identity. We contend
that a dialogical framework allows to make more specic sense of
these ndings. The three sections are followed by a concluding
section on the concept and denition of teacher identity. Lastly, we
will point out the implications this conceptualization has for conducting research on teacher identity and teacher development.

309

2. From a de-centred towards a dialogical approach

At the same time as post-structuralist approaches emerged in
philosophy, a postmodern notion of identity was introduced in
psychology. This postmodern notion of identity moved away radically from previous ways of thinking. Richardson, Rogers, and
McCarroll (1998) as well as Hermans (2006) described the postmodern conceptualization of identity as a reaction to both premodern and modern understandings of identity. In pre-modern
times, the individual was subordinated to the greater cosmic
whole; in this view, the individual has to live his life according to
collective norms. These collective norms were often of a religious
nature and related to one or more supernatural beings. In modern
times, with the age of enlightenment, the scientic revolution, and
industrialization, truth became centred within the individual. Wellknown in this respect is Rene Descartes, who stated [Dubito, ergo]
cogito, ergo sum ([I doubt, therefore] I think, therefore I am),
stressing how man nds his origin and justication within himself
(Hermans, 2006). Individuality prevailed, and there was an explicit
distinction between the internal united self and an external other
person. As Jameson (1988) stressed, modern thinking further relied
on a conception of identity as unique, that is, a personality able to
generate its own unique vision of the world and showing a unique,
unmistakable style.
With postmodern thinkers in mainland Europe such as Foucault,
Derrida, and Barthes, both the pre-modern belief in a single truth or
greater cosmic whole, and the modern belief in the central position
of the individual were questioned (Richardson et al., 1998). Rather,
the individual came to be seen in the context of the social environment of which he or she is a part. This postmodern turnabout is
described by Hall (1992) as follows:
The question of identity is being vigorously debated in social
theory. In essence, the argument is that the old identities, which
stabilized the social world for so long, are in decline, giving rise
to new identities and fragmenting the modern individual as
a unied subject. This so-called crisis of identity is seen as part
of a wider process of change, which is dislocating the central
structures and processes of modern societies and undermining
the frameworks, which gave individuals stable anchorage in the
social world. (p. 274)
Hence, in postmodern approaches, identity is no longer seen as
an overarching and unied framework but, instead, as being fragmented along with the multiple social worlds that people engage
in. Such a belief has been explicitly formulated by the American
psychologist Gergen (1991, 1992, 1994). Gergen can be considered
a socio-constructionist thinker, who put forward a postmodern
view on identity. He described how individuals are always simultaneously participating in different discourse communities. For
example, one is not only a medical doctor, but also a citizen of
a middle class neighborhood, a participant in a rock music band.
With his formulation of communicamus ergo sum (I communicate, therefore, I am), Gergen (1994, p. viii) emphasized the role of
social interdependence and meaningful discourse (instead of the
mind of the single individual) as the basis of our being. Consequently, as Gergen and others (e.g., Gregg, 1991) have argued,
participation in different communities causes a self that is decentralized into a multiplicity of social and situated contexts. Accordingly, in this view, self is no longer seen as having a centre or one
core, but as varied and dynamic. Gergen (1991) also talked about
multiphrenia, with which he referred to the splitting of self into
a multiplicity of self-investments. According to Salgado and
Hermans (2005), the belief in a multiplicity of identities can be
traced back to English philosopher John Locke (1689/1975), but has
only during the last three decades increasingly received serious

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attention from psychologists (e.g., Rowan & Cooper, 1999). As discussed by (Akkerman & Bakker, 2009), this increasing attention to
de-centred as opposed to centred spaces can be seen not only in
psychology, but in many social sciences and humanities. For
example, we also nd a postmodern approach in the frequently
cited work of the American linguist and philosopher Gee (1990),
who dened identity as:
The kind of person one is recognized as being, at a given
time and place, can change from moment to moment in the
interaction, can change from context to context, and, of course,
can be ambiguous or unstable.. all people have multiple
identities connected not to their internal state but to their
performances in society. (p. 99)
Another example is the work of psychoanalyst Britzman (1998)
who explored how individuals live within a larger social context
that is often conictive, informing a psychological world of individual identities that is just as conictive as the external one.
Besides a paradigmatic shift, it has been argued that postmodern
approaches particularly accommodate an accelerating globalization, leading us to participate more explicitly in multiple communities (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010).
The postmodern recognition that identity is not a xed entity,
but one that is dynamic and continuously constructed offers
a valuable and challenging perspective. It is an approach that allows
us to describe how people develop themselves through time and
position themselves differently in various situations and differently
towards other persons. Nevertheless, such a postmodern stance
towards identity also leads to some signicant theoretical problems. Firstly, an entirely de-centred characterization of identity
leads to the question of how a person can maintain and have any
sense of self through time. If one claims that people are fragmented
and in a continuous ux, how can it be that we are recognized as
one and the same person as we were yesterday? Secondly, a decentred characterization of identity raises questions about how we
are socially determined. If one claims that identity shifts according
to others and with social participation, how is it that persons can
still act as unique individuals, showing agency moving beyond the
given context? A fully postmodern stance, denying previous
modern characterizations of identity, seems to provide no satisfying answers to these questions. In this, we follow Gee (1990) in
his awareness of the need to account for modern notions as well.
Gee stated that, in addition to the aforementioned postmodern
denition of identity, this is not to deny that each of us has what we
might call a core identity that holds more uniformly, for ourselves
and others, across contexts (p. 99). This indicates the necessity to
thoroughly explore the postmodern notions in more detail and,
simultaneously, search for ways to explain how there is unity,
continuity, and individuality in identity as well.
It is for this reason that we want to draw on recently developed
dialogical views on identity (Markov, 1994, 2006; Wertsch, 1991,
1997). Dialogical views provide a theoretical viewpoint that
assumes a multiple, discontinuous and social nature of identity,
while simultaneously explaining identity as being unitary, continuous and individual. In doing so, dialogical views combine a postmodern and a modern stance. Most explicitly, Dialogical Self
Theory provides a comprehensive framework that elaborates on
these characterizations and their interrelations. Dialogical Self
Theory was developed in mainland Europe and introduced by
Hermans and colleagues (Hermans, 1996; Hermans & Kempen,
1993; Hermans, Kempen, & Van Loon, 1992), and is still being
expanded and elaborated by many others in and outside Europe. It
emerged at the interface of two traditions: American pragmatism
and Russian dialogism (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka, 2010). As
a self theory, it builds on the work of the American psychologists

and philosophers William James (1890) and George Mead (1934).

And as a dialogical theory, it is strongly rooted in the philosophical
and literary work of the Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin in the
1920s and 1930s (Bakhtin, 1981, 1986). By weaving together the
concepts of self and dialogue, the theory combines concepts that
have traditionally been associated with, respectively, the internal
space of the individual mind, and the external relations with others.
The theory is presented as a self theory, but directly addresses the
notion of identity, with self referring to the self-as-knower and
identity referring to the self-as-known. By combining modern and
post-modern views on identity, Dialogical Self Theory more fully
captures the concept of identity in the context of teaching. Before
discussing the three dimensions in characterizing teacher identity
(unitary and multiple, continuous and discontinuous, and individual and social) from a dialogical approach, we describe current
literature on teacher identity as taking a mainly postmodern stance
towards identity.
3. Teacher identity
Recent conceptualizations of teacher identity seem to reect
postmodern views on identity, describing teacher identity as
involving sub-identities (referring to multiplicity), as being an
ongoing process of construction (referring to discontinuity) and as
relating to various social contexts and relationships (referring to
the social nature of identity). We believe these characterizations
are extremely interesting and valuable as they bring forward
a radically different stance towards teacher identity from the one
existing before, when teacher identity was more or less seen as the
possession of a dened set of assets required for the profession
(e.g., Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). Nevertheless, each of the three
characterizations requires careful explanation and nuance. Current
literature on teacher identity provides some insightful theoretical
suggestions, but leaves several important questions unanswered.
Firstly, the idea of multiplicity seems to be commonly accepted
in recent literature on teacher identity. For example, Sutherland,
Howard, and Markauskaite (2010) distinguished professional
identity as one component of multiple perspectives of a persons
identity. Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington, and Gu (2007) distinguished three dimensions of identity (p. 106): professional identity, situated identity, and personal identity. Beijaard et al. (2000)
described teacher identity as consisting of three sub-identities:
the teacher as a subject matter expert, pedagogical expert, and
didactical expert. More generally, Beijaard et al. (2004) concluded
from their literature review that a teachers professional identity
consists of sub-identities relating to teachers different contexts
and relationships. Recent literature also speaks of different identities or sub-identities to denote the multiplicity of teacher
identity (Alsup, 2006; Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Rodgers &
Scott, 2008; Sutherland et al., 2010). Yet, how such sub-identities
should be seen remains vague. What makes up a sub-identity? How
does it come into existence? When introducing the idea of multiplicity, literature on teacher identity needs to address these questions in more detail.
Secondly, in relation to the notion of discontinuity, several
scholars in the eld of teacher identity described identity as uid
and shifting from moment to moment and context to context.
Based on their review of literature on teachers professional identity, Beijaard et al. (2004) stated that identity is an ongoing process
of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences. Hence, they
argued that identity can be seen as an answer to the recurrent
question: Who am I at this moment? (p. 108). In a similar vein,
Rodgers and Scott (2008) argued that identity is shifting and
unstable. In dening beginning teachers identity, Danielewicz
(2001) concluded that every person is composed of multiple,

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often conicting, identities, which exist in volatile states of

construction or reconstruction, reformation or erosion, addition, or
expansion (p.10) and indicated change as most characteristic about
selves and identities. And Gee (1990) considered a professional
identity to be a person narrativization of what consists of his or her
(never fully formed or always potentially changing) core identity as
a teacher (Sutherland et al., 2010). Basic to these statements is the
idea of a discontinuous nature of identity, which seems to be
a plausible acknowledgement of the dynamic instead of static
nature of identity. Nevertheless, in response to these statements, it
is of interest to understand what is shifting and what determines
the direction of shifting. Is every different act an indication of a shift
in identity? Is it just a lottery that determines which side of identity
pops up at a certain moment? Though probably not intending to
imply such extreme ideas, current literature on teacher identity has
not (yet) addressed such questions in detail.
Thirdly, in relation to the social nature of identity, the literature
on teachers gives different versions. For example, Flores and Day
(2006) reported a strong interaction between personal histories
of novice teachers and the contextual inuences of the workplace
in inuencing the shaping and reshaping of these teachers identities. Likewise, Rodgers and Scott (2008) theorized that identity is
formed in relationship with others. Alsup (2006) stressed that
identities are formed in social, communicative contexts and for
socially signicant reasons. Cohen (2010) discussed how teachers
negotiate their professional identity in collaborative exchanges,
concluding that colleagues constitute key actors in teachers
formation of professional identity. And in more abstract terms,
Palmer (1998) stated that identity is a moving intersection of the
inner and outer forces that make me who I am (p.13). These
statements deserve attention in conceptualizing the social aspect in
relation to identity. In particular, what seems to be unclear in these
statements is the underlying socio-genetic view explaining how the
individual and social dimensions relate. At present, most social
scientists seem to acknowledge that human psychological functions exist in close relationship with the social environment in
which they are situated (Valsiner & Van der Veer, 2000). Accordingly, the dispute has moved from choosing either the individual or
the social environment as primary unit of analysis to discussing
how the interrelatedness between the individual and the social
should be conceptualized (Anderson, Greeno, Reder, & Simon,
2000; Billet, 1996; Cobb & Bowers, 1999; Salomon & Perkins,
1998). Is the social to be considered a contextual variable that has
an impact on how a person acts? If so, how does it come to affect
identity formation? Is it because others motivate us over longer
terms to develop in certain directions and not in others? As we will
claim later on the basis of Dialogical Self theory, acknowledging the
social nature of identity implies more than only taking account of it
as a contextual factor or as an external aspect of identity
formation.
We have now briey described how current literature on
teacher identity echoes postmodern characterizations. As argued
earlier, postmodern characterizations seem plausible, but it is
problematic to completely neglect modern notions of identity.
Literature on teacher identity does seem to acknowledge this,
stating that identity is not only multiple, discontinuous and social,
but also uniform, continuous and individual. Most explicitly, we
nd such a balanced view in the chapter by Rodgers and Scott
(2008) and in the work of Alsup (2006). Rodgers and Scott denoted that there is a need for an internal arrangement and control that
holds together the shifting, multiple and contradictory aspects of
identity. Following the work of Gee (1990) and of Palmer (1998),
Rodgers and Scott and Alsup referred to the practice of narrative
and the processes of storytelling as the means for the construction
of the self. Yet, they also stress that stories change over time, across

311

contexts, and depend upon relationships. The most explicit answer

to what constitutes unity, continuity and individuality is provided
by Rodgers and Scott (2008) when distinguishing a self as an
evolving historical unity that can be seen as the meaning-maker or
storyteller, and identities as the stories being told or the meaning
made. In line with Nias (1989), and in turn the work of Foulkes
(1975) and Mead (1934), they distinguished between a substantial self (I) and situational selves (me). Based on the ideas of Palmer
(1998) and Kegan (1982), they described the self as a process rather
than an entity, an evolving yet coherent being, that consciously and
unconsciously constructs and is constructed, reconstructs and is
reconstructed, in interaction with the cultural contexts, institutions, and people with which the self lives, learns, and functions (p.
739). Alsup (2006), in her study of beginning teachers identity
discourses, pursued a similar process denition of teacher identity.
In addition, she pointed out that the ongoing identity process can
take the shape of what she called a borderland discourse seen as
a discursive act between two conicting subjectivities. Though this
understanding gives us some clue of the ambiguity of identity e
being complex and dynamic on the one hand, but stable and
coherent on the other e it does not explain in detail how this
ambiguity works. For example, when reecting on the denition of
Rodgers and Scott, how can we understand the process of
construction or reconstruction taking place? And how does interaction with contexts and with others affect this (re)construction?
What precisely is at work?
4. A dialogical approach to (teacher) identity
4.1. Multiplicity and unity
As the most elaborate dialogical approach to identity, the theory
of Dialogical Self developed an understanding of the self as
composed of multiple I-positions in the landscape of the human
mind. The conceptualization of I-positions is informed by the
theory of Russian philosopher and linguist Mikhail Bakhtin in the
1920s and 1930s (1981, 1986), who reasoned that people speak
with multiple voices. An I-position can be considered as a voiced
position, that is, a speaking personality bringing forward a specic
viewpoint and story. Each I-position is driven by its own intentions,
for example the artist in me who wants to express, the mother in
me who wants to care, or the pragmatist in me who strives for
solutions. The I moves from one to the other position and, as such,
results in an identity that is continuously (re)constructed and
negotiated. Of particular interest in this theory is the recognition
that the various positions can conict or, as Hermans and HermansJansen (2001) formulated it: The I in the one position, moreover,
can agree, disagree, understand, misunderstand, oppose, contradict, question, challenge and even ridicule the I in another position
(p. 249).
The presence of multiple, possibly conicting I-positions, can be
helpful in understanding teacher identity, especially when teachers
face dilemmas or tensions throughout their work. Niessen (2007)
showed how experienced teachers trained in problem-based
education indeed struggle with advancing not one, but multiple
conicting epistemological beliefs. For example, Robert, one of the
teacher trainers interviewed by Niessen talked about his childhood
and his father who was a traditional teacher. From his childhood
frame of reference, it appeared to make sense to talk about teaching
as telling students what they need to know. When he talked about
his teaching experiences and subsequent training in problem-based
education, he expressed the view that a teacher should also be
facilitating learning and not just tell students what to do and what
they need to know. This was a different, more contemporary belief,
which he had acquired during later training. Robert seemed to

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struggle with advancing both these conicting views about what is

good pedagogy. Similarly, Alsup (2006) showed how six student
teachers tried managing multiple pedagogical beliefs, for example
beliefs developed at home, in primary and secondary education,
during the teacher education program as a student, and beliefs
adopted while doing teaching-practice at school. She showed that
unresolved tensions between such beliefs caused student teachers
to wrestle with a sense of fulllment as a teacher, or even to leave
the profession. A quite explicit example of such an unresolved
tension can be found in the case of Carrie, who could not resolve
her struggle with being lesbian as well as being a teacher.
I am realizing that the environment I loved so much and that I
wanted to recreate is going to be very rarely recreated [in the
secondary school]. since a big aspect [of mine] is wanting to get
into my areas of interest that have developed more into the
feminist and queer theory and wanting to approach those and
being restricted [in high schools] with what books I can show to
my classes, what topics I can talk about-even if Im not doing an
entire unit on homosexuality, am I going to get yelled at or
whatever for having it come up in the classroom? Im like, why the
hell am I going to even be there? (Excerpt in Alsup, 2006, p. 65)
As Alsup explained, Carries struggle lay in the conict between
specic feminist views about education, and her perceptions of the
cultural ideal of a teacher. This struggle manifested itself not only in
the curricular decisions she made, but also in doubts about her
clothing and hair.
The recognition that identity is multiple in the sense of multiple
I-positions enables us to understand teachers varying perspectives,
but also raises the question about the unity of identity, that is, the
feeling of being one and the same person throughout various
situations. Salgado and Hermans (2005) described how assuming
multiplicity led some social constructionists (e.g., Gergen, 1994) to
reject such an internal subjective space altogether, suggesting that
an inner self is just a myth. Such a view suggests that the self is
fragmented and falls apart by its multiplicity. Salgado and Hermans
(2005) opposed this view by explaining that multiplicity does not
necessarily entail a denial of a unitary self. The existence of multiple
identities, or I-positions in terms of the Dialogical Self Theory, does
not mean that the I moves to a particular position without taking
into account any other positions. By taking turns, they are always in
a dialogical relationship of inter-subjective exchange and temporary dominance. This dialogue is not necessarily harmonious,
hence, the self is also a negotiated space. It is suggested that the
coherence of self resides in the continuous attempt to synthesize
the different parts:
The Self can be seen as a synthesizing activity, that is, as
a continuous attempt to make the self a whole, despite the
existence of parts that try to maintain or even to increase their
relative autonomy. (Hermans & Kempen, 1993, p. 93)
The natural desire of people to maintain a consistent and
coherent sense of self is what motivates a self to create a dialogical
space between different I-positions. Let us consider an interview
fragment from Meijer et al. (2009), in which Paulien-as-teacher
briey indicates a dialogical space revealing her position as
a teacher, and her position as a teacher educator and researcher:
Interviewer: Could you describe this? I nd that interesting. How
do you notice this [not feeling yourself while teaching]? What is
this noticing?
Paulien: Well, that I hear myself talking. I hear myself and then I
think something like how would she nish this sentence? Like
Im thinking about myself in the third person, something like
that.

Interviewer: So you notice that this is happening, and what

happens then?
Paulien: Then I dont panic like I used to.
Interviewer: You dont panic.
Paulien: No, then Im thinking oh, here Im doing it again. And
then I immediately think well, I dont want this, and I dont
need to, its nonsense. And then I turn around as it were. then
I start focusing on the fact that I dont want this, and sometimes I
need some time to do so, but thats okay, I do take that time now.
Earlier, I felt well, I need to nish this sentence no matter what,
or I need to nish my story, a very stressful feeling, but now I
will think okay, I need some rest now. (Excerpt in Meijer et al.,
2009, p.306).
In this dialogical space, Paulien is questioning herself during her
own teaching actions. From the position she is in while teaching,
she sometimes does not manage to nish her sentence immediately. However, from her positions as teacher educator and
researcher (used to observing teachers) she looks at herself, indeed
wonders how she will nish her sentence, but also tells herself that
it is okay to take time before continuing. This shows how she can
reassure herself and prevent herself from panicking like she
sometimes used to do.
Hermans and Hermans-Konopka (2010) pointed out that such
a dialogical space within the self should be distinguished from
inner speech. Inner speech is often used to refer to silently
talking to oneself. A dialogical space within the self, the selfdialogue as it were, is explicitly multivoiced, with I-positions
reecting different social or cultural origins. Moreover, as we will
stress later, a dialogical self is not based on a dualism of self as
being internal and the other or the social as external, but instead
includes the social.
4.2. Discontinuity and continuity
A dialogical approach to identity perceives identity as a uid or
at least as a dynamic process. This dynamic is not understood
merely as identity changing from moment to moment, along with
changes in thoughts, moods, and behavior on a day-to-day or hourto-hour basis. Building on the notion of multiple I-positions,
identity changes according to the type of situation one nds oneself
in. One can expect that particular situations evoke particular parts
of the self, because these are most appealed to in that situation. For
example, the caring position or the joker position is less likely to
be evoked in a meeting with colleagues than in a position drawing
on professional authority. Moreover, depending on the nature of
such a collegial meeting, the professional authority can take the
shape of (or be a combination of) a teacher position, a manager
position, a peer position, et cetera. Who one is at a particular
moment in time thus reects not only oneself as an isolated answer
to the question who am I at this moment?, but also includes
a responsive answer to the people and things attended to at that
moment. It is this basic belief that was formulated by Bakhtin in his
philosophy of language:
Ultimately, an utterance reects not only the voice of producing
it, but also the voices to which it is addressed. In the formation of
an utterance, a voice responds in some way to previous utterances and anticipates the responses of other, succeeding ones.
(Wertsch, 1991, p. 53)
It is for this reason that we cannot attribute someones actions
or expressions entirely to that person, as the content of what is said
or done not only represents the persons attitude towards the
object at hand, but also the persons attitude towards preceding
and potentially succeeding actions of others. Imagine a teacher

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adopting an authoritarian stance in a classroom with pupils

deciding to be bored, to talk out loud, and be ready to battle. In
such a situation, the authoritarian voice is not necessarily a sign of
a very dominant position of the teachers self, but may well reect
a peripheral I-position merely invoked in order for the teacher to
manage the classroom at that specic moment.
Whereas accounting for the discontinuous nature of identity
might lead to additional insight into the complexity of teacher
identity in relation to their work, at the same time it raises a question of the continuity of identity throughout time. Personal continuity is basic to and constitutive of a sense of self or a sense of being
a person. Based on an extensive theoretical and empirical study of
identity development of adolescents, Chandler, Lalonde, Bryan, and
Hallet (2003) showed that persons not having such a sense of
personal continuity show psychological problems. They fall into a
temporal ux of incoherence in the sense that they cannot position
themselves in relation to a personal and cultural history and an
anticipated future. The issue of continuity was already formulated
by Locke (1689/1975, cited in Salgado & Hermans, 2005) in the
question How can I be the same I was in my past? Salgado and
Hermans rephrased this as how can a multiple self still be experienced as a single and permanent person?
A rst answer to this question from a dialogical approach is,
similar to most postmodern theories on identity, that continuity of
identity is maintained through narratives. Hermans and HermansJansen (1995) described how personal continuity of self is warranted by narration, taking place both within the self and in the
form of verbal accounts to others. Through these dialogues,
meaningful experiences are organized into one narrative structured system: the self-narrative (Hermans & Hermans-Jansen,
1995). Identity can be considered as a narrative about ourselves:
I as an author of a play or novel about me, with myself as an actor
or character in it. This is comparable to the denition of identity
described by Rodgers and Scott (2008) that it involves the
construction and reconstruction of meaning through stories over
time (p.733). Aylett (2006) described how narration not only
involves structuring in time and space, but simultaneously involves
making sense of experiences. As such, it is argued that through
narration, people construct their identity, that is, they integrate old
and new experiences, identify the ordinary and the exceptional,
and give personal accounts expressing their intentions, interpretations, and evaluations in coherent chains of events (Hermans &
Hermans-Jansen, 1995). We can read the need for coherence and
continuity in teachers attempts to present their intentions and
actions in a consistent way when asked why they do what they do.
This can be observed in the aforementioned case study of Robert
(Niessen, 2007). As Niessen made clear in his analysis, Robert
resolved his dilemma by positively interpreting his fathers gift for
storytelling while at the same time distancing himself from traditional views on teaching. He did so by saying that at the time he did
not really think about issues like education and teaching. In doing
so, Robert managed to preserve continuity with his fathers story
while at the same time legitimizing his dis-involvement with it.
By re-interpreting past experiences in current conditions, a conict
between two I-positions was resolved and continuity was
maintained.
Though narration in understanding and presenting ones identity is important for continuity, it is not the only process by which
identity is held together through time. In line with socio-cultural
theories, a dialogical approach to identity acknowledges that
continuity is also maintained more implicitly by routinized
personal behavior as well as by cultural and historical mediation.
Patterned behavior is basic to human life. One cannot reinvent the
world or ones identity all the time. We continuously, and for a large
part without awareness, rely on responses and solutions that have

313

proven helpful in what we previously encountered. This mechanism is efcient and necessary for both personal and cultural
continuity (Luria, 1976).
It should be noted that patterned behavior is not only a matter of
personal constructions but is inherently supported by processes of
cultural mediation, as described in the 1970s in Russian literature.
Vygotksy (1978) explained how people use familiar tools, both
material as well as conceptual, to act. Luria (1976) showed
convincingly how conceptual tools, or categorizations, affect the
way people perceive and make sense of what they see, an idea that
was further theorized by Bowker and Star (1999). When, for
example, the concepts of teaching or learning communities are
part of ones vocabulary, one can more easily recognize or see the
phenomena one has placed in such categories. Akkerman, Overdijk,
Admiraal, and Simons (2007) called this process a matter of
disambiguating the world, as it allows reducing complexity.
In turn, it should be pointed out that processes of mediation
itself are strongly patterned and contextualized, that is, material
and conceptual tools often relate to types of situations. In the case
of teachers practices, one can think of, for example, the blackboards or whiteboards that are typical to classroom settings, suggesting that teachers in this setting present their information in
a written or visual form to students. Similarly, Bakhtin (1981)
observed that there are specic social languages, referring to
discourses related to specic strata of society (such as, for example,
professional, age, group) within a given social system at a given
time. This can be seen in dialects or professional jargons. Such
social languages correspond to what Bakhtin (1986) called speech
genres. These latter refer to types of utterances produced by types
of voices. Speech genres can be recognized by typical patterns of
verbal communication, by typical themes and meanings of words
that are addressed, such as military commands. Applied to the
teaching profession, one can expect teachers to rely on various
speech genres (related to the subject matter they teach, to the
specic school pedagogy, or, for example, to the school district
belonging to a specic socio-economic class). For example,
Freeman (1993) found that beginning teachers use local languages
and professional languages to shape their identity as teachers (see
also Rosaen & Schram, 1998). Beginning teachers start with only
local language as their primary identity kit (cf. Gee, 1990). This
language is based on their own experiences as students, and
normative ways of talking and thinking in their particular school
environment. During teacher education, beginning teachers gradually develop a professional language (sometimes felt as jargon)
built upon a set of profession-related facts, procedures, and opinions. Such languages or speech genres indicate that the continuity
of teacher identity throughout situations is also maintained by
relying on cultural or semiotic devices related to the professional
practice. This, however, does not mean that the teacher is necessarily aware of them.
4.3. Social and individual
Many social scientists agree on the social nature of cognition
and of identity. Often this social nature is understood as acknowledging how the social environment impacts on a person. Others
(individuals and groups) with whom a person interacts are then
considered signicant to the self because they motivate a person to
act as well as develop further in a certain direction, while
discouraging alternatives. A dialogical approach moves one step
further in conceptualizing the social nature of identity. As already
stated earlier, Bakhtin stressed that utterances are not only
produced by a voice, but are also concerned with who is being
addressed. It is by this addressivity that the person responds to, but
also anticipates the (re)actions of others. In Bakhtins terms, voices

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of others become woven into what one says. We can hear the
difference when a person speaks to a child, to a colleague, to a boss,
to a stranger, even if the content of the message would be more or
less the same. This shows how others literally become part of the
way we speak and act.
When others voices become a more structural part of our
thinking and reasoning, they may also become part of who I am. In
line with Bakhtin, Hermans and Kempen (1993) argued that an
individual often speaks words of the groups, social class, or society
to which s/he belongs. Many people come across this, for example,
when hearing yourself speak as if you were your mother or your
partner. In these cases, the perspectives of close relatives, their
ways of speaking, have become part of your repertoire. The effect
this has on how others perceive a persons identity can be seen
especially in rst meetings. Often, we instantly sense where
a person is coming from, be it in the sense of the area where he or
she lives, the type of profession of this person, the type of worldview, et cetera. These characteristics are aspects of someones
environment that have become part of ones identity. It is this
understanding that leads to a more profound version of the social
nature of identity: The dialogical self is social, not in the sense that
a self-contained individual enters into social interactions with
other outside people, but in the sense that other people occupy
positions in a multivoiced self. (Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2001,
p. 250). In line with this view, Akkerman, Admiraal, Simons, and
Niessen (2006) found how individual academics, while engaged
in an inter-organizational project, voiced several different positions
related to beliefs advanced in their home departments, perspectives developed in their previous jobs, and intentions derived from
family life. But in addition, over a period of two years the project
participants represented not only their own culturally informed
voices, but also started to adopt the voices of others in the group, as
well as articulating what can be seen as a group voice, expressing
a viewpoint and using words by which others can recognize the
group. This shows how the way we (come to) see the world is to
a large extent informed by signicant others, including individuals
and groups. Considering again Roberts story in the case study of
Niessen (2007), we nd an example of how Roberts father,
a traditional history teacher, was manifest in his stories as an inner
voice. Robert himself was aware of this, as can be seen in an
interview fragment selected by Niessen:
R: Well, the sad thing of course is that I really didnt have all that
many ideas about it, but just thought the term seemed outrageous, just one of those modernisms. Perhaps this had something to do with it too, or that may or may not be a relevant
thing to mention that my father is also a teacher or was, until he
took early retirement a year ago, so that he, anyway in, how shall
I put it, in a small circle, it was sort of accepted that the best
thing was to be a proper teacher.
A proper teacher indeed and in a favorable sense at that and I
think he was denitely not bad at that at all, he taught history
too. But he was a real story teller, who told stories and I think
he would tell you that pupils enjoyed listening to his stories,
but that rather reinforced, that undoubtedly played a role in
the choice, in any case the choice of my primary school. For in
those days when I started primary school he was also head of
a primary school. But, well, and when you hear such a term,
and always very .. how shall I put it, sceptical towards all
sorts of educational innovations about which one might read,
and which time and again proved to have been introduced
prematurely or did not work out or caused frustration or
whatever, then its just another term you hear and you think,
well, o.k. its probably frightfully interesting and all that, but.
(p. 68)

Robert adopts his fathers perspective of what is proper education so intuitively that he immediately dislikes specic terminology.
The next question, then, is how the presence of others in identity can be conceptualized. Continuing to build on the work of
American pragmatist William James (1890), Hermans and
Hermans-Jansen (2001) distinguished I, the self-as-knower,
showing a sense of sameness through time from Me, the selfas-known. In doing so, the Cartesian dualistic conception of self
versus other is surpassed, and the self is extended to the environment: even my enemy becomes part of who I am, as it denes Me.
James stressed that Me is composed of the empirical self in the
sense that it includes everything that can be called my own: not
only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house,
his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and
works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account (p. 291, as
cited by Hermans & Hermans-Jansen, 2001). Concluding from this,
Hermans and Hermans-Jansen (2001) argued that I-positions can
be both internal positions felt as part of myself (e.g., I as a mother
or I as an ambitious worker or I as an enjoyer of life) and what he
termed external positions within the self felt as part of my environment (my children, my colleagues, my friend John). As such, the
self is not conceived of as a pure intra-psychological process but as
a relational phenomenon that includes the social environment.
With the concept of generalized others, Mead (1934) pointed out
that positions within the self can relate not only to other individuals, but also to social groups placing social rules and conventions
in the Me. The idea of generalized others is in accordance with still
expanding educational theories on communities of practice (Lave &
Wenger, 1991) and learning communities (Brown & Duguid, 2000)
to which the individual as a (peripheral) participant is oriented. As
generalized others, communities can inform and play a substantive
role in the development of I-positions by introducing particular
ways of thinking, speaking and acting. In the work practice of
teachers, there has been an increasing interest in teacher
communities in which teachers collaborate with colleagues and
build collective repertoires (Cohen, 2010; Grossman, Wineburg, &
Woolworth, 2001; Little, 2003; Sutherland et al., 2010). For
example, Cohen (2010) examined teachers talk, grounded in an
understanding of discourse as a tool for organizing social relationships in the construction of the shared world that teaching is.
Now, the dialogical approach to identity outlined above adds the
idea that teachers implicitly construct and negotiate their identity
in relation to the various people they meet and the communities
they are or become engaged in. Cohen argued that in talk, teachers
recognize and then (re)construct and maintain their professional
identity. She discussed how teachers place identity bids in
conversations with colleagues, dening and redening who they
are as teachers and how they relate to each other. Such a view goes
beyond accounting for communities as a context factor of teachers
intentions and actions.
Hermans and Hermans-Jansen (2001) explained how internal
and external positions within the self can emerge and mutually
dene one another (I am a mother because I have children; my
team of colleagues is important to me as I have an ambitious project
in mind). Whereas others (individuals, groups, things) can come to
function as a part of Me, they can also (and even simultaneously in
the case of my enemy) come to function as dening positions in
what is not Me. Hermans and Hermans-Jansen (2001) talked about
the outside world, stating that:
Many positions are simply outside the subjective horizon of the
self and the person is simply not aware of their existence. As
possible positions, however, they may enter the self-space at
some moment in time dependent on changes in the situation.
(p. 254).

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Taking up Markovs idea of dialogicality, Akkerman and

Niessen (in press) described how even this outside world affects
identity. The outside world can dialogically contribute to selfdenition in terms of marking the boundaries of self. To illustrate
this point, Akkerman and Niessen focused on the example of
nationality as a cultural position that is part of identity. They stated
that a person, though born and raised in the Netherlands can only
be dened as Dutch by the very existence of other nationalities.
Were there no countries, with distinctive boundaries, then the
notion of Dutchness would be an empty category. Moreover, they
stated that the denition of Dutch is not denite, as it depends on
the situated comparison we make. When we situate the Dutch
person in an encounter with a Chinese individual, Dutch means
something different from when we would have situated the person
in an encounter with a Pole. One might say that we can only come
to know ourselves through and in contrast to others:
A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and
come into contact with another, foreign meaning: they engage
in a kind of dialogue, which surmounts the closedness and onesidedness of these particular meanings, these cultures. (Bakhtin,
1986, p.7)
Following from this, identity dialogically denes itself not only
based on or by including others as positions within the self, but also
by contrast with others that are part of what I am not. The following
interview excerpt presented by Alsup (2006) reveals how two
others become part of the thinking and reasoning process of
a student teacher in teaching practice:
Linda: You have to juggle the mentor teachers expectations,
then your supervising teacher, and then of course your students
who would be there anyway. And thats been stressful because
my mentor teachers thoughts are so much different from my
supervisors thoughts. Mandy [supervisor] wanted me to move
two people, and Mrs. Vanderholt [mentor] didnt. And so I didnt
[move the students] because I gured it was her classroom and I
just cant move them. I think Mrs. Vanderholt has been teaching
for so long that she sees everything. And I think in a lot of ways
its good. I mean I really do. At rst, because Ive been in college
so long, when I rst went in there I thought, this seems so
structured and stuff, but she knows what doesnt work. She
really, I think judging from all her lesson plans, she has really
tried everything over the years. And I think sometimes the
university supervisors see things from a more philosophical
standpoint. (p. 73)
For Linda, the mentor represented the community of experienced teachers in school, and the supervisor represents the
community of teacher education supervisors and programs relying
on a philosophical standpoint. The voices of both these persons and
related communities became part of the reections of this student
teacher in a particular classroom dilemma.
When acknowledging the social nature in terms of possible
(generalized) others being part of a persons identity, a question
emerges about how we can still see this persons identity as individual. If our identity comes to depend so strongly on those we
relate to, to the groups we participate in, to the epochs of our time,
one might wonder what is left in terms of individual agency.
Valsiner and Van der Veer (2000) posed this question as the basis
for their book The Social Mind, asking: How to construe persons
as being social without abandoning their obvious personal
autonomy? (p. 6). They suggest that a dialogical understanding of
self can provide the following conceptual answer to this question.
As the self is multiple and composed of dialogically related
I-positions, every self can be conceived of as unique and not utterly

315

subordinated to one single social environment. When participating

in a community, one is not only a participant of that group, but also
culturally and historically informed with positions related to others
and other groups. The multiplicity of a person is held together in
a unitary self. As we have described above, this holding together is
a continuous activity of self-dialogue. A consequence of this dual
nature (being a social participant, but also an autonomous and
unique person) is that people can introduce new voices into the
communities in which they participate. Not only can communities
offer opportunities to participants in developing new I-positions by
appropriating the communities discourse as their own, the alternative I-positions of participants can also add to the developmental
potential of communities. In the case of the teaching profession, for
example, student teachers are not merely novices that have to
adopt the norms, values and common practices of the school.
Increasingly, student teachers are also conceived of as brokers who
open up possibilities for experienced teachers and schools to learn,
for example, by asking critical questions or bringing new pedagogical ideas and insights into the school (Edwards & Mutton, 2007;
Finlay, 2008; Yoon, Pedretti, Bencze, Hewitt, Perris, & Van Oostveen,
2006; Tsui & Law, 2007).

4.4. Conceptualizing teacher identity

Summing up our answer to the question of how teacher identity
can be conceptualized according to a dialogical approach, we view
identity as simultaneously unitary and multiple, continuous and
discontinuous, and individual and social. With such a view we
move from a theoretical discussion in terms of either/or towards
thinking in terms of both/and. This forces us to explain how
seemingly opposite characterizations can simultaneously be true.
Building on the Dialogical Self theory, and dialogical theories of
identity more generally, the following conceptualization is
outlined.
Concerning the multiplicity-unity dimension, the Dialogical Self
theory speaks of multiple I-positions that are held together in the
unity of self constituted by means of self-dialogue. This selfdialogue entails a continuous relation between the I-positions
through inter-subjective exchange and temporary dominance.
Concerning the discontinuity-continuity dimension, this approach
reasons that, whereas the ongoing shifts between I-positions testify
to discontinuity, simultaneously continuity is maintained by paste
presenceefuture alignment in narrations, as well as by patterned
shifts in I-positions as mediated culturally. Consequently, a teacher is
discontinuous in the form of being an active participant with
a specic identity at a particular moment in a specic context, as well
as historically continuous in the form of the teacher being a transcendent self recognizable through time.
Concerning the social-individual dimension of identity, a dialogical approach emphasizes how (generalized) others can inform or
be the basis of I-positions within the individuals self, while at the
same time, individuals are unique and transcendent agents
precisely because of their multiple, dialogically related I-positions.
Hence, not only does the social include individuals, but individuals
also include the social.
These answers show that the value of a dialogical approach
resides in overcoming a dualist and dichotomous stance towards
identity. On the basis of this approach, we suggest dening teacher
identity, and being someone who teaches as an ongoing process of
negotiating and interrelating multiple I-positions in such a way that
a more or less coherent and consistent sense of self is maintained
throughout various participations and self-investments in ones
(working) life.

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5. Implications for future research

5.1. Implications for studying teacher identity
Taking a postmodern stance towards identity and simultaneously acknowledging modern characterizations of identity has
important implications for studying teacher identity. We will
point out several theoretical and methodological consequences
that we discern from taking a dialogical approach towards teacher
identity.
5.1.1. Cautiousness in characterizing teachers
A dialogical approach to teacher identity poses a challenge for
scholars interested in how teachers differ, for example, based on
their beliefs, their perspectives, their learning style. It is not
uncommon to nd categorizations of teachers by means of single
terms, for example stating that one teacher is subject matter
oriented and the other is pupil-oriented based on their set of
answers to a questionnaire or in an interview.
However, following a dialogical approach to identity, a single
term to denote the type of teacher can be problematic. First of all, it
can be problematic because it suggests unity, whereas, as shown by
the empirical work of Alsup (2006) and Niessen (2007), teachers
may well have multiple, possibly conicting I-positions. Second, it
assumes sameness over situations, whereas teachers may shift in
and reconstruct I-positions partly depending on the situation and
what is encountered. Third, categorizations of teachers are often
treated as attributing a set of characteristics to the teacher as an
individual, neglecting how these are informed and developed by
the social environment and perhaps maintained by cultural
conditions. Acknowledging the multiple, situated and social nature
of identity calls for care with using static and individualistic categorizations. Alternatively, it would be of interest to study the
dynamics of a teachers identity, describing in more detail the selfdialogue that is pursued by a teacher in striving to maintain
a coherent and consistent sense of self.
5.1.2. Awareness of research as a dialogical situation
A methodological implication of a dialogical approach to
teacher identity is the awareness of the effect of the researcher on
how the teacher presents him or herself. A lot of research on
teaching includes interviews, questionnaires, and/or observations
which can also be conceived of as dialogical situations. These
research instruments naturally evoke certain I-positions of
a teacher while leaving aside others simply in response to the
position of researcher studying a certain theme in relation to
teaching. When asking the teacher to answer certain questions or
reect on him or herself, the teacher always responds by anticipating what the interviewer is after. This dialogicality not only
refers to the response bias in terms of giving socially desirable
answers, as often mentioned in methodological literature. It also
means that teachers may use a specic way of talking in an
interview or questionnaire, for example using more academic,
reective or pedagogical terms. Kelchtermans (2009) also
emphasized how in narrative research techniques teachers not
only reveal how they think about themselves, but also (implicitly
or explicitly) acknowledge their audience. Researchers should
always be aware of this effect when interpreting responses.
Taking a dialogical approach also provides new methodological
opportunities. In overcoming problems evoked by doing research
about teachers identities, researchers can take a view of research as
an act of dialogue with the respective teachers, and deliberately
choose techniques that acknowledge this, for example involving
them in the process of analysis and interpretation. The study of
Meijer et al. (2009) is an example of such an approach.

5.1.3. Combining micro-analysis and macro-analysis

If we want to make statements about or nd explanations in
relation to teachers identity, a dialogical approach means studying
it in its full complexity and dynamics. We assert that this requires
both micro-analysis and macro-analysis. A micro-analysis entails
describing how, in various working situations (within classrooms,
school meetings, professional development trajectories), a teacher
takes on and shifts between I-positions in response to relevant
others (different groups of students, colleagues, school managers,
parents, et cetera). In addition, it is important to conduct a macroanalysis that goes beyond the here-and-now, and takes into
consideration the teachers self-narrative in terms of past, local and
future stories, as well as the socio-cultural conditions of the
teachers environment. Hermans and Kempen (1993) argued that
a macro-analysis is needed in addition to studying the microcontext of the dialogical self:
This means that the micro-context of concrete dialogical relationships cannot be understood without some concept of macroframes (organizational and ethnographic context). Every
utterance has a history in preceding discourses and an
embeddedness in situation and culture. (p. 73)
More important, though, is to connect both these analyses,
showing how the macro-context impinges on the teachers
patterned as well as momentary acts, and possibly, how the microcontext may have consequences for the macro-context. With
respect to the rst relation, it is relevant to see how the teachers
self-narrative (e.g., Robert with his fathers position) or the specic
material and conceptual tools common to the school culture (e.g.,
using digital portfolios or talking in terms of competencies) inform
the way a teacher acts, for example, how the teacher approaches
students or talks to colleagues about students. With respect to the
micro-context of teacher identity possibly affecting the macrocontext, one can imagine that certain critical incidents lead to
changes in school policy (e.g., certain rules of student behavior
being the result of a one-time conict between a teacher and
a student) or changes in a teachers self-narrative.
The motivation of such an in-depth microemacro analysis is
that it enables researchers to study teacher identity as a matter of
the teacher being an active participant with a specic identity at
a particular moment in a specic context, as well as the teacher
being historically meaningful as a transcendent self recognizable
through time.
5.1.4. Overcoming the dichotomy professional versus personal
identity
In addition to the above implications, a dialogical approach to
teacher identity brings into doubt the way we situate the construct
of teacher identity itself. Commonly, we nd in the literature
a distinction between personal identity and professional identity,
the latter being the basis for understanding teacher identity (see
Beijaard et al., 2004). When conceptualizing teacher identity as
being composed of different I-positions related to particular situations and communities, it may be possible to distinguish the
personal from the professional based simply on the context of
observation. However, when simultaneously accepting the self as
unitary in terms of personal and cultural continuity and in terms of
self-dialogue between different I-positions, boundaries between
the personal and the professional context become indistinct. All
that a teacher considers relevant to his profession, that he or she
tries to achieve in work, is part of the whole personal self. Vice
versa, a teacher is not merely a professional regardless of all that he
or she is otherwise; personal histories, patterned behavior, future
concerns may all inform the position(s) of the teacher as professional. This does not mean that no conicts can emerge between

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the person a teacher wants to be at work and in everyday life. We

have discussed the example from Alsups study of Carrie, who could
not resolve her struggle with being lesbian in her work as teacher.
Rather than perceiving this case as a conict between the professional identity and the personal identity, we suggest perceiving it as
a negotiated conict between a lesbian position and a teacher
position in the context of professional work and development.
Hence, teacher identity should not be subordinated completely to
the profession and the professional context, articially predening
as a researcher the boundaries of where a teacher begins and
where the teacher ends.
5.2. Implications for studying teacher development
Understanding teacher identity from a dialogical viewpoint
brings a different understanding of teacher development. In their
review, Beijaard et al. (2004) concluded that:
Professional identity formation is often presented as a struggle,
because (student) teachers have to make sense of varying and
sometimes competing perspectives, expectations, and roles that
they have to confront and adapt to. (p. 115)
This quote suggests that identity formation involves a negotiation of multiple positions in relation to a teachers self. This is also
suggested in other descriptions of (novice) teachers facing tensions
while being in a process of learning (-to-teach). We have already
referred several times to Alsup (2006), who extensively described
the struggles of six beginning teachers. From the various descriptions, it appears that these beginning teachers are expected to be
both student (willing to learn and reect, and required to demonstrate competency and ability), and teacher (able to act and know,
and accepted as a professional). Seen from the dialogical conceptualization we proposed, this reects two I-positions easily felt as
contradictory voices. These I-positions could perhaps easily coexist as long as they are physically related to different places (the
teacher education institute with peer students, and the classroom
within the school), with clearly separate speech genres. However,
tensions can arise in situations where these speech genres become
intertwined, for example, when a supervisor or mentor teacher sits
at the back of the classroom to observe the student-who-acts-inthe-position-of-teacher. In such situations, teachers literally face
the tension of being both many and one at the same time.
As pointed out by Akkerman et al. (2006), many educational
theorists have argued that tensions can be disruptive, but also fertile
for creativity and learning (cf. Meijer, 2009). Tensions can, for
example, lead to meta-cognitive awareness (Alsup, 2006), professional self-understanding (Kelchtermans, 2009), the development of
new hybridized discourse (Gutirrez, Baquedano-Lpez, & Tejeda,
1999), transformative learning (Mezirow, 2009), and comprehensive learning of activity systems involved (Engestrm, 2001).
Accordingly, tensions that teachers face may lead to identity growth
or development by means of redening existing or creating new Ipositions in response to dialogical difculties. Hermans and
Hermans-Konopka (2010) introduced the concept of positive disintegration, referring to the existence of crisis as a possibility for
progressive (more dialogical integration of I-positions) or regressive
movements (lower level of integration within the self). Alsup
showed how some student teachers, in response to difculties
within the self, engaged in what she termed borderland discourse:
.the result of borderland discourse was neither the repudiation
of one discourse nor the subsuming of one discourse into
another; instead, the result was a new discourse with characteristics of both of the earlier ones as well as new characteristics
unique to the preservice teacher herself. (p. 37)

317

In the case study presented by Meijer et al. (2009), we nd an

example of Paulien as a novice teacher, who comes to redene her
position as facilitating teacher in relation to her position as
respectful teacher. Paulien reects on a classroom situation in
which she noticed that three pupils were looking out of the
window and not contributing to the discussion. When she asked
her students why their attention had lapsed, they told her that it
was not because of lack of interest, but that they found it very
difcult to think about their own opinion. Paulien started to realize
that she was treating her pupils as adults able to articulate their
opinions, as well as to voice their problems in trying to keep up
with the lesson or pay attention. In the supervisory session, she was
asked how she experienced this realization:
Paulien: Quite painful, actually. I always wanted to treat them
with as much respect as possible, and I discovered that I didnt
really respect the fact that they are. well. just kids, actually.
Angelo: But you dealt with it, didnt you?
Paulien: Well, yes, we talked about it, and in fact I was rather
pleased that I could now help them. (Excerpt in Meijer et al.,
2009, p. 305)
In this fragment, Paulien hints at a redenition of her teacher
positions. Whereas she rst intended to respect her pupils by
expecting them to take the rst step in explaining their opinion and
their ideas about the lesson, she now redened being respectful in
terms of perceiving the students as kids who may need some
guidance. Whereas she rst saw an opposition between facilitating
to respecting pupils, she now sees how both can co-exist.
In a study by Meijer and Oolbekkink-Marchand (2009) on the
learning taking place in collaborative reection meetings with
student teachers, it appeared that student teachers felt they
learned most when discussing the limits to their teaching responsibilities (such as the responsibility for a pupil who does not show
up, or the consideration of an individual pupils private problem
when s/he does not hand in assignments). After one such session,
a student teacher whose problem was discussed reported: This
really made sense to me. Its not a problem that needs to be solved,
its a given fact and I have to learn how to deal with it . nding my
own position on it, thats it. (p.188). In their conclusions, Meijer
and Oolbekkink-Marchand related their nding to the work of
Kelchtermans and Hamilton (2004), who stated that the type of
learning at stake goes beyond learning to know how to teach, and
focuses on learning to be someone who teaches.
6. Concluding remarks
In research on teaching throughout the world, identity has
become a fundamental aspect. We have argued that there is still
a need for elaboration on the conceptualization of identity so that
the concept does not only intuitively make sense, but also informs
our way of studying and describing teachers and their development. The aim of this paper was twofold. The rst was to elaborate
on three recurring characterizations of the complexity of teacher
identity in terms of it being multiple, discontinuous and social. The
second was to introduce a more balanced and complete view of
identity by accounting simultaneously for the unitary, continuous
and individual nature of identity. We have introduced and
proposed a dialogical understanding of self as an informative and
fruitful theoretical point of view that might add to our current
understanding of teacher identity. We believe that this approach,
by combining a modern and postmodern interpretation, does more
justice to the full complexity of identity. What follows from a dialogical understanding of self is that being someone who teaches,
or teacher identity, cannot be seen as an end point, but instead
should be dened as an ongoing process of negotiating and

318

S.F. Akkerman, P.C. Meijer / Teaching and Teacher Education 27 (2011) 308e319

interrelating multiple I-positions in such a way that a more or less

coherent and consistent sense of self is maintained throughout various
participations and self-investments in ones (working) life.
Our description of a dialogical viewpoint on teacher identity and
the consequences this brings to research on this concept consists of
a theoretical deliberation supported by only a limited number of
empirical examples. Dialogical theories are increasingly applied in
other elds of empirical studies (for an overview, see Hermans &
Hermans-Konopka, 2010) and the value and plausibility of the
theoretical and illustrative claims on teacher identity we have
presented need to be empirically grounded in the context of
teachers practices. We have proposed that a dialogical conceptualization of teacher identity is particularly useful as an analytical
framework in studying the professional development of novice and
experienced teachers. Developmental processes of teachers often
reect struggles between diverse I-positions, and attempts by
teachers to present a self that accounts for diverse I-positions,
while also striving for a sense of coherence and continuity. This
reects struggles of being one and being many at the same time. A
way to come to an understanding of this complexity is to look more
carefully at the doubts, dilemmas, and uncertainties that teachers
experience, implicitly within their normal work routines, or
perhaps more explicitly when faced by educational innovations or
career transitions. Cohens (2010) exploration of teachers conversations as professional identity experiences is an example of doing
so. She found that .teachers simultaneously built on shared
themes and differed in their conclusions about curriculum and
student ability, highlighting the complexity of [their] engagement
in creating themselves as teachers (p.480). She concluded that
Discourse analysis of teacher talk with colleagues offers
a methodological approach for listening closely to the ways in
which teachers richly contextualise their professional identities,
and sheds light on how the dynamic of recognition shapes the
range of possible meanings for teacher professional identity in
local contexts. (p.480)
In a similar vein, teachers self-dialogues might be studied to
reveal the individual identity struggles and challenges teachers
face, in taking up a teacher career, or as a consequence of changes in
their working lives. Combining a micro and macro-analysis of the
ambiguities they face may help not only researchers, but also
teachers in revealing the various aspirations they attempt to display
in being a teacher.

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