This study examined the multiplicity of professional identity perspectives that beginning visuals arts teachers carry with them into schools in order to gain a better understanding of how interacting identity perspectives catalyse their teacher identity formation. During teacher education, visual arts teachers are routinely asked to frame their professional goals and actions using the discourses of artists and educators. This familiarity with thinking and talking about professional practice from two distinct professional identity positions makes them an interesting case for examining teacher identity as the dynamic interaction of multiple identities (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011). Framing teacher identity formation as ‘multivoiced’ moves a teacher’s focus away from monitoring accrual of predetermined cognitive and behavioural assets towards an engagement with the process of identifying themselves as being a teacher (Arvaja, 2016). Rots, Kelchtermans and Aelterman (2012) suggest that this self-identification connects a teacher’s personal interpretive framework to their professional development. Without it, a teacher may find it difficult to cope with the more person-centred facets of being a teacher such as norms, emotions and social interactions (Rots et al. 2012; p.9). However, Akkerman and Meijer (2011) pointed out the limitations of dichotomising teacher identity as ‘professional versus personal identity’, arguing instead for a dialogical approach. Dialogism places the individual and society in dynamic relationship whereby dialogue, in the self, or with others, catalyses interaction between different perspectives, or identity positions, on experienced or imagined phenomena (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010; Hermans and Gieser, 2011). Identity formation can therefore be perceived as a process of positioning different perspectives, or ‘voices’, in reaction to or anticipation of, internal and external dialogic cues (Arvaja, 2017; Aveling, Gillespie & Cornish, 2015). Disagreement and dissonance are not uncommon as some voiced perspectives dominate and others recede, but not necessarily in concordance with the context they emerge in (Gillespie & Cornish, 2010).  

A focus on dialogic relationship, on being understood, resonates through visual art teachers’ descriptions of their experience of working in schools. Some visual arts teachers report a profound sense of isolation or ‘speaking a different language’ than the school community (Cohen-Evron, 2002; Adams, 2007). In contrast, they often highlight the importance of the safe atmosphere they create in class and their personal connection to their students (Määttä & Uusiautti, 2013). Arts teachers feel at ease asking students to express their inner world, including feelings, because they believe this is a key component of creative pedagogy and a condition that must be met if students are going to produce original work (Hall & Thomson, 2016). At the level of professional status, however, they often experience disappointment, or even feel guilt because they have not pursued, or managed to maintain, ‘making art’ next to their ‘job’ as a teacher (Blair & Fitch, 2015; Scheib, 2006).

In contrast to these multivoiced narratives told by art teachers, research on art teacher professional identity tends to conclude by highlighting the simple dichotomy: artist identity v teacher identity (for examples, see Thornton, 2010; Unrath et al., 2013); or propose strategies to ‘manage’ the two identities through prioritisation, separation or balancing (Hatfield, Montana & Deffenbaugh, 2006). The catalytic potential of having multiple professional identity perspectives that appear, or are framed as conflicting is rarely considered. The present research seeks to transcend the tendency in arts education research to reduce art teacher identity to a simple dichotomy while contributing to a broader understanding of professional teacher identity formation as a dynamic, multivoiced process. 

The central question of this study was:

What do visual arts teachers’ self-dialogues about teaching the arts in a secondary school reveal about the dialogical character of early-career professional identity formation?   

The 12 beginning visual arts teachers interviewed for this study were recent graduates of 5 different Dutch visual arts teacher education bachelor degree programmes. Their ages ranged between 22 and 59. At the time of the first interview, the respondents were employed as secondary school visual arts teachers in vocational to pre-university secondary school settings. The methods employed conform to the narrative research tradition. Polkinghorne (2007), who succinctly described narrative research as ‘the study of stories’, argued that the validity of knowledge claims built around narratives rests on communal consensus involving speakers, listeners and readers. Best practice in narrative interviewing asserts that the narrative interview should be a temporal construction belonging to both interviewer and informant, and, so far as possible, be devoid of power asymmetries (Gubrium, 2012). To facilitate this, the researcher provided potential respondents with a clear framework of the aims, objectives and timeline of the research. One-to-one semi structured interviews with the 12 beginning visual arts teachers focussed on how they perceived and experienced professional identity formation as teachers and artists in the secondary school context. Each teacher was interviewed twice, at their school, with a 12-month gap between interviews. The aim of the interviews was to elicit self-dialogues about their developing professional identity as someone who teaches art in a secondary school. The interviews drew on a range of identity ‘issues’ the researcher identified in the literature and earlier research (2022 submitted), related to their past and future perspectives on professional identity, their relationships and interactions with students and colleagues at school, the role and status of the arts in schools, the production of teaching materials and the relationship between time/activities at school and outside school. The data is being analysed in two coding cycles. In the first instance, InVivo, process and versus coding (Saldana, 2021) are used to the explore teacher actions and interactions at school that describe processes within early-career identity formation. The second cycle of coding employs pattern coding (Saldana, 2021) and ‘analysis of multivoicedness’, a method that codes specifically for 1) voices of the self (I-positions), 2) voices of others (inner and actual others), and 3) interactions between voices (Aveling, Gillespie & Cornish, 2015).

Three patterns of multivoiced self-dialogue that align with professional identity formation concerns are emerging from the data. Firstly, the majority of respondents prioritise personal connections and creating a safe environment during teaching over curriculum and performance goals. Just the same, their descriptions describe the arts as a ‘challenging subject’ involving ‘failure’ as part of the art-making process. They do not try to shield their students from this experience. Secondly, respondents describe their relationships with colleagues at school as ‘good’ and do not report tangible tensions among school subjects. However, when probed further, several respondents reported that they have very little contact with teachers outside the arts section. Most of the respondents think other subject teachers ‘have no idea’ what happens in the arts classroom. Thirdly, the majority of respondents describe their interactions with students as rewarding and felt comfortable with their decision to work in a school. Despite this, 10 of the respondents expressed an intention to combine school teaching with other arts employment and none of the respondents thought teaching alone would sustain their interest over time. These preliminary findings suggest that the early-career professional identity formation of these visual arts teachers is not dominated by the binary view that artist identity and teacher identity are not compatible. Their self-dialogues are infused with perspectives from both professional identities that individuals position as they reflect on, and respond to, the interview questions put to them. In this way, these teachers appear to use self-dialogues to tell themselves, and others, stories that orientate them in the social settings of classroom and school as professional teachers.

Adams, J. (2007). Artists becoming teachers: Expressions of identity transformation in a virtual forum. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 26(3), 264-273. doi:10.1111/j.1476-8070.2007.00537.x Akkerman, S. F., & Meijer, P. C. (2011). A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(2), 308-319. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.013 Arvaja, M.. (2016). Building teacher identity through the process of positioning. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 392–402. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.07.024 Aveling, E.-L., Gillespie, A., & Cornish, F. (2015). A qualitative method for analysing multivoicedness. Qualitative Research, 15(6), 670–687. https://doi-org.ru.idm.oclc.org/10.1177/1468794114557991 Blair, L. & Fitch, S. (2015). Threshold concepts in art education: Negotiating the ambiguity in pre-service teacher identity formation. International Journal of Education through Art, 11(1), 91-102. https://doi.org/10.1386 /eta.11.1.91_1 Cohen-Evron, N. (2002). Why Do Good Art Teachers Find It Hard to Stay in the Public School System? Studies in Art Education, 44(1), 79-94. Gillespie, A. & Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: Towards a Dialogical Analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 40(1), 19-46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5914.2009.00419.x Gubrium, J. H., J. . (2012). Narrative practice and the transformation of interview subjectivity. The SAGE handbook of interview research: The complexity of the craft (s. pp. 27-44). SAGE Publications, Inc. Hall, C., & Thomson, P. (2016). Creativity in teaching: what can teachers learn from artists?. Research Papers in Education, 32:1, 106-120, doi: 10.1080/02671522.2016.1144216 Hatfield, C., Montana, V. and Deffenbaugh, C. (2006). Artist/Art Educator: Making Sense of Identity Issues. Art Education, 59(3), 42-47. Hermans, H. J. M. & Gieser, T. (2011). Introductory chapter History, main tenets and core concepts of dialogical self theory. Handbook of Dialogical Self Theory (s. 1-22). Cambridge University Press. Määttä, K., & Uusiautti, S. (2013). The Framework of Teacherhood in Art Education. World Journal of Education, 3(2). doi:10.5430/wje.v3n2p38 Polkinghorne, D. E. (2007). Validity Issues in Narrative Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(4), 471-486. https://doi.org /10.1177/1077800406297670 © 2023 Rots, I., Kelchtermans, G., & Aelterman, A. (2012). Learning (not) to become a teacher: a qualitative analysis of the job entrance issue. Teaching and teacher education, 28(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2011.08.008 Saldana, J. M. (2021). The coding manual for qualitative researchers (4th ed.). SAGE Publications. Scheib, J. W. (2006). Policy Implications for Teacher Retention: Meeting the Needs of the Dual Identities of Arts Educators. Arts Education Policy Review, 107(6), 5-10. doi:10.3200/aepr.107.6.5-10 Thornton, A. (2011), Being an Artist Teacher: A Liberating Identity?. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 30: 31-36. doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2011.01684.x Unrath, K., Anderson, M., & Franco, M. . (2013). The Becoming Art Teacher: A Reconciliation of Teacher Identity and the Dance of Teaching Art. Visual Arts Research, 39(2), 82-89. doi:10.5406/visuartsrese.39.2.008