.An accumulating body of research on teacher education highlights the importance of teacher identity formation in teacher development (Lasky, 2005; Sachs, 2005). A review of the studies in the area indicates some main issues. The first issue is the lack of explicit definition of identity in many studies. In Beijaard et al. (2004)’s review of studies on teacher professional identity, ten of the 22 reviewed studies did not give an explicit definition of teacher identity. The second issue is that most studies still focus on the personal aspect of identity formation (Beijaard et al., 2004; Tsui, 2007).  The definition of teacher identity in Beijaard et al. (2004)’s reviewed studies emphasizes the personal side of becoming a teacher. Beijaard et al. (2004) also point out “the need to pay explicit attention to the influence of context” on identity formation (p.125). However, Akkerman and Meijer (2011) challenge the focus on the social nature of identity in research and argue that it is not clear how a person is socially determined. The third issue is the relationship between agency and identity (Tsui, 2007). The recognition of teacher agency shifts from a structural view of the individual to regarding teachers as intentional individuals, but we also bear in mind that teacher agency may be constrained by the subject or the institutions (Cross & Gearon, 2007; Tsui, 2007). Akkerman and Meijer (2011) also point out that it is not clear how a person shows agency to move beyond the given context. Therefore, it is necessary to explore how the relationship between the subject and the social context are mediated and the role of agency in teacher’s identity formation.

This study, therefore, aims to explore two research questions:

1 How do  pre-service TESOL teachers learn to teach in Australia context during their practicum ?

2 How this learning to teach experience constructs their identities as teachers?

We use activity theory and Vygotsky (1978)’s ZPD as the theoretical framework to explore pre-service teachers’ identity formation.

Activity theory could capture how the incorporation of tools and artefacts mediate, expand and even limit the interaction between the subject and the community, as this theory argues that human consciousness is constructed on the social plane in which the relationship between the subject and the object are mediated by tools and artefacts ( Engeström, 1987; Smagorinsky, Cook, Moore, Jackson, & Fry, 2004). In addition, activity theory focuses on both individual minds and collective action and can help to explain “the incorporation of the collective into the individual” (Edwards, 2005, p. 170). In the activity theory framework, tools, community, rules, and division of labour are the social and material structures that enable and constrain human agency (Sewell, 1992).  From activity theory perspective, identity is the product of an activity (Roth et al., 2004).  To illustrate this system of relations, this study draws on the third generation activity theory to analyse teacher identity construction during their practicum because the third generation activity theory enables the analysis of the interaction between two or more related activity systems (Engeström, 2009). In addition, a pre-service teachers’ identity is constructed during the process of learning to be a teacher with the assistance from more experienced teachers. As for this point, the ZPD offers an insightful and theoretical way to reveal the complex nature of transformation during learning (Wells, 1999) and describes the process of negotiation of identity during the process of collaboration on the social plane. The use of the ZPD could resolve the problem posed by Akkerman and Meijer (2011) to show how a person shows agency to move beyond the given context with the assistance from others.

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