Much recent literature on teacher education has contained arguments for attention predominantly to understand teachers’ professional identity (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2000), the importance of identity in teacher development, and how teacher identity is developing during teacher education (Flores, 2014) for different reasons. It can be used as a frame or an analytic lens through which to examine aspects of teaching; the ways in which pre-service teachers integrate a range of influences; and the necessary confronting of tensions and contradictions in their future careers (Olsen, 2008). Who they are is in large part defined by the choices they make as future teachers in the classrooms, choices that affect their future students (Meijer, Korthagen & Vasalos, 2009). A teacher’s identity not only comprises personal knowledge and action but is also influenced by the ideological, political, and cultural interests and circumstances surrounding teachers’ lives and work (Day et al., 2006). It is worth noting that in our own efforts to understand the concept of teacher identity, we point out that since teaching requires the application of a teacher’s professional and personal knowledge in the classroom practices (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999), it is essential for teachers to be aware of their professional identities, beliefs, and values (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). To achieve this ultimate outcome, pre-service teachers should be challenged to examine the issues related to the teaching profession through different lenses throughout their professional education lives. It is desirable for pre-service teachers to regularly question and pose alternatives to develop some basic understanding about who they are as teachers particularly as they move into the first year of the education program.

Students come to a teacher education program with expectations about becoming teachers. During their course, they construct identities as students, which then change into those of teachers by the end of the preparation period. In this regard, having some understanding of how freshman students perceive their journey towards teaching provides valuable insight for us as teacher educators. Specifically, understanding about pre-service teachers’ current teacher identity is critical for teacher educators so that they can properly guide pre-service teachers towards their future careers and the kind of teachers they want to become (Stenberg, Karlsson, Pitkäniemi, & Maaranen, 2014). This study explores the nature of constructing professional identity when a group of pre-service teachers experiences the transition from being students of teaching to becoming teachers – in the first pedagogical course.

Reflective writing can be considered as one of the effective tools for the development of teacher identity when it is carried out in a systematic and structured way (Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005). Central to this study is the question of what is the nature of pre-service teachers’ professional identity that they are constructing through reflective writings. As in this study, pre-service teachers were guided to focus on their personal perspectives and to examine how they themselves make sense of their understanding of teaching practices (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011) through online reflections on various imaginary teaching scenarios.  

Utilizing a case study, this research draws on the data from a cohort of pre-service English Language teachers part of a closed online group hosted as the learning management system for a high-ranking university in Turkey. The participants were freshmen students studying at a high ranking Turkish university to obtain a Bachelor of Education in a four-year undergraduate program. This study was carried out in the Fall semester of 2019-2020 education year and twenty (17 females, 3 males) preservice English language teachers participated in the online reflections conducted within the “Introduction to Education” course. The aim of the course was to improve pre-service teachers’ understanding of the basic concepts of education, question the purpose of education as well as its meaning to them, help them understand the historical and philosophical perspectives of education, and develop their own framework on education. An imaginary scenario-based reflection was constructed to provide preservice teachers opportunities to notice the complexity of teaching the English language and to reflect on it based on their understandings of teaching. Throughout the semester, pre-service teachers engaged in online weekly reflections on six imaginary scenarios about the six different pedagogical topics discussed in the course. For each topic, the participants were given descriptions of teaching scenarios and asked to engage in responding to various reflective questions on their posts. Detailed guidelines for reflections were provided. The data were analyzed with deductive content analysis (Lee, 1999) in order to find predetermined themes and categories associated with their understanding of what kinds of teachers the preservice teachers want to be and how they see their role as future English teachers by using Beijaard, et al.’s (2000) teacher identity framework. The professional identity framework identifies three distinct teacher knowledge bases, which are (1) teacher as a subject expert, (2) teacher as a didactics expert, and (3) teacher as a pedagogical expert. In addition to these three aspects, Löfström, Anspal, Hannula, and Poom-Valickis (2010) further added self-referential and contextual categories to address teachers’ personality and the characteristics of the teaching environment respectively.

The initial analyses of their responses display that all of the pre-service teachers clarified their perception of their professional identity by referring to the importance of being sensitive to the social, economic, and cultural problems of students, the necessity of a positive atmosphere in the classroom for effective teaching, creating positive relationships with students, and students' feelings of well-being. Both pedagogical expertise and didactical expertise appeared to be most and equally present in the participants' perceptions; this was not particularly the case for subject expertise. Analyzing the online reflections of pre-service teachers provides insight into the development of teacher identity and the possible influences on its formation. This study presents several implications for teacher education. Clearly, the development of the professional identity of teachers is an on-going process, which is supported to construct their professional identity during teacher education programs (Freese, 2006). As a result of the study, pre-service teachers can benefit from online reflections on imaginary scenarios related to teaching practices throughout the preparation process to aid in their development and moving from learner to professional (Cohen-Sayag & Fischl, 2012). The findings presented here lend themselves to further research and examination. A future study may conduct a longitudinal approach to explore how one’s teacher identity changes and shifts over time spent in the teacher education program. There are several limitations to this study. The participants represented only one small group of students in the first year of the teacher education program within the specific context in Turkey.

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