In the context of teacher education the tradition of focusing merely on teacher’s acquisition of ‘occupational assets’, and assessing their development in terms of predefined professional standards, has turned out as too narrow a perspective when it comes to researching and supporting teachers’ professional development (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Instead, a shift towards teacher perspective and the issue of how the teachers themselves make sense of their teachership and teaching practices provides a starting point in understanding and supporting teachers’ professional growth (e.g. Akkerman & Meijer, 2011; Cohen, 2010; Niessen et al., 2008). According to Vähäsantanen and Billett (2008), construction of identity is not about adaptation to pre-defined and pre-structured roles and identities offered by institutions, other people and social contexts but rather involves an ongoing process in which individuals are active agents. Professional identity negotiation, then, is manifested in active reflection and interpretation between the personal and the social context (Fenwick & Somerville, 2006; Vähäsantanen & Billett, 2008). In this process, personal experiences, interests, values and beliefs relative to one’s professional self are reflected in connection with situational expectations and external conditions regarding their work (Beijaard et al., 2004; Vähäsantanen & Billett, 2008). Both personal and contextual factors shape professional identity negotiations, and influence how teachers perceive themselves as professionals.

Consequently, there is a need to develop practices that would actively support reflective identity work (Cohen, 2010) in educational contexts and also at the workplace. In this situation, the kind of pedagogy that takes better into account the interrelationship between the world of work, students’ personal experiences, and education seems to be a critical aspect for the students’ professional development (Tynjälä & Gijbels, 2012). This is especially important in teachers’ continuing education and, therefore, also in the context of this study, where the subjects are an adult teachers enrolled in one-year pedagogical studies.

Looking at learning from the perspective of identity trajectory, as this study does, learning is seen as an ongoing process of personal sense making, analysing and reflecting on practices, beliefs, conceptions and knowledge relative to issues of teaching and learning. This includes such questions as “who am I as a teacher, who I want to become” (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). In educational contexts this identity work can be enhanced through personalisation (Arvaja, 2014). Subjecting one’s own experiences to reflection and analysis provides possibilities for the (re-)negotiation of one’s “being, thinking and acting” as a teacher (Akkerman et al., 2012; Gee, 2010; Ligorio, 2010). Flores and Day (2006) suggests that teacher education should focus more strongly on giving students opportunities to reflect upon personal biography and the cultural contexts of schools in order to understand the relations and possible tensions between them.

This study approaches professional identity construction and development from the viewpoint of an encounter and negotiation of the self and social (context). It presents conceptual and methodological construct of positioning as means for studying and understanding this relationship. In the dialogical approach to narrative self-construction the self - both personal and professional - is seen to be represented, enacted and constructed through the process of positioning (Hermans & Kempen, 1993; Wortham, 2001). By analysing the learning diaries of a particular student, Anna, the study seeks to explore and demonstrate how through the process of positioning - voicing and evaluating different characters in her narrative - she is constructing her I-position as a teacher during her one-year pedagogical studies. The study focuses especially on the role of personal narrative and biography in constructing professional identity and in making sense of one’s work.

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