Context: In recent years, and as part of wider trend of increasing accountability in education, we have seen an increased regulation of the role of the teacher and the work of teaching (see Ball 1993, 2003; Biesta 2004, 2015; Perryman 2006, 2009; Perryman et al 2011, 2018). This is evidenced in the transnational proliferation of codified teacher competence frameworks utilised by external regulatory authorities to ‘delimit, designate, name and establish’ (Foucault 1972, 42) teacher conduct in terms of what teachers should know (Schwab 1964; Shulman 1986, 1987), what teachers should do (Cochran-Smith and Lytle 1999; Grossman and Mc Donald 2008; McDonald, Kazemi and Kavanagh 2013) and increasingly who teachers should be while they are doing it (Mockler 2011; Mulcahy 2011; Zembylas and Chubbuck 2015, 2018; Zembylas 2018; Carswell and Conway 2023). In most jurisdictions, this is evidenced across the continuum of teacher education in terms of discrete yet interconnected steering frameworks that ultimately objectify teachers knowing, being and becoming. For example, in the Irish context this is evidenced in Céim: Standards for Initial Teacher Education (2020), Droichead: The Integrated Professional Induction Framework (2017), Cosán, Framework for Teachers’ Learning (2016) and the Code of Professional Conduct for Teachers (2016). Within this context of increased governmentality and its implications for teacher education, this study is concerned with understanding the ethico-political identity (re)formation of the Irish Primary School teacher across the transition from prospective teacher to newly qualified teacher i.e., how primary school teachers see themselves as teachers, how they construct the relationship that they have with themselves and how they account for themselves in that regard.

Aim: Using a Foucauldian framework (Foucault 1983, 1985; Clarke 2009), the aim of this paper is to understand the ethico-political (re)formation of teacher identity across the transition from Initial Teacher Education to Newly Qualified Teacher status.

Conceptual Framework: Informed by Foucault (1983a, 1985) our understanding of the ethico-political is framed by his conceptualisation of both the ‘values and rules of action that are recommended to individuals through the intermediary of various prescriptive agencies’ (Foucault 1985, p. 25) and the enactment of ‘real behaviour’ by ‘individuals in relation to rules and values that are recommended to them’ (Foucault 1985, 25). As a fusion between the political and the personal, we understand ‘real behaviour’ as those ascendant discourses that steer how the teacher sees themselves and importantly, how they wish to be seen by others. This paper addresses the ethico-political identity (re)formation of the Irish primary school teacher in terms of: (i) the ethical substance i.e., the ways that primary school teachers constitute themselves (ii) the authority sources i.e., the attributed sources through which primary school teachers come to know their ethical substance (iii) the ethical work that primary school teachers undertake to understand themselves vis-à-vis unfolding experiences and (iv) telos i.e., the mode of being primary school teachers aspire toward.

This paper brings together two interconnected studies. The first study, framed within the interpretivist paradigm, followed a small sample of prospective primary school teachers (n=4) across the final semester of their initial teacher education. Utilising a case study approach, data was collected during three phases using photovoice-elicited interview (Wang and Burris 1997), semi-structured interview and unstructured interview (Kvale 1996; Brinkman and Kvale 1996; Roulston 2010). Indicative findings from each round of interview informed the conversational direction of the subsequent interview. Data was reflexively interpreted (Gudmundsdottir 1996) in the thematic analysis tradition (Braun and Clarke 2009, 2022) using ethical self-formation axes as deductive lens. The second study, also framed within the interpretivist paradigm, followed some of the participants from study one (n=3) across their first year in the profession. Again, utilising a case study approach, data was collected of two rounds of unstructured interview that took place at the close of each teaching term (autumn and summer). While the interviews were unstructured, each ethico-political axis was used to frame the flow of the conversation; indicative findings from the first round of interviews were (re)explored during the second round. Once again, data was reflexively interpreted (Gudmundsdottir 1996) in the thematic analysis tradition (Braun and Clarke 2009, 2022) using ethical self-formation axes as deductive lens. The university research ethics board approved both studies and participants were provided with an information letter prior to signing in consenting to participate. For the purposes of this paper, and in order to demonstrate the generativity of an ethico-political conceptualisation of identity (re)formation, we use indicative examples from one illustrative composite case (Seán) using data typical to each case (verbatim narratives), to evidence our claims (Gleeson, 2015; Willis, 2019). We believe that our use of a composite case provides a ‘force of example’ (Flyvberg 2006 p. 229) regarding primary school teacher ethico-political identity (re) formation that has worthwhileness via the depth of insight it provides.

Findings illuminate primary school teacher identity (re)formation in terms of: (i) variations in the interactive/reactive dimensions of ethical substance (emotional, pedagogic and professional) and the subjective resources within each dimension across the transition, (ii) variations in the interactive/reactive valuational endpoints of telos (practical, professional and pedagogic) and the moral imperatives within each endpoint across the transition (iii) variations in the temporal orientation of authority sources across the transition and (iv) variations in the temporal orientation of self-practices across the transition. In conclusion, we make the case for the generativity of an ethico-political conceptualisation of teacher identity (re) formation for teacher education purposes in terms of its conceptual, contextual, critical, and reflective utility.

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