Session Information
10 SES 07 A, The Key Role of Teacher Educators
Symposium
Contribution
Teacher educators’ professional identity is multilayered and often implicitly enacted in everyday practice (Rushton et al., 2023; Ahmad et al., 2019; Hökkä et al., 2017). Developing explicit awareness of this identity is, however, essential for ongoing professional learning and for strengthening teacher educators’ professional agency (Cochran-Smith et al., 2022; Paredes, 2020). Supporting teacher educators in making their professional identity visible and open to reflection is therefore crucial. Visual and dialogical approaches have been identified as promising means for articulating and reflecting on professional identity (Calvo, 2017; Foster-Fisher et al., 2005). This symposium contribution reports on a project conducted within an international InFo-TED Academy group in 2025. The project integrates three interconnected strands: teacher educators’ professional identity; reflective dialogue; and visualization. It explores how the visualization of professional identity, combined with structured reflective dialogue, can enhance identity awareness and support teacher educators’ professional development and agency. Central to this contribution is a workshop design in which participants create a personal visual representation of their professional identity as teacher educators, reflect on guiding prompts, and engage in peer dialogue about their visualizations. The workshop has two main aims: (a) to deepen participants’ reflection on their professional identity through visualization and dialogue and (b) to collect feedback on prototype prompts designed to scaffold reflective dialogue. The workshop consists of three phases. In the introductory phase, participants individually create a visualization of their professional identity, supported by a concise set of reflective questions. In the dialogue phase, participants discuss their visualizations in small groups, focusing on how professional identity is represented and using prototype dialogue prompts. In the final phase, participants’ experiences are situated within a theoretical framework that emphasizes the role of collective reflection on professional identity in professional development and agency. Participants are also invited to consider how the approach could be applied in their own contexts, including teacher educator professional development and teacher education programs. To examine the added value of the approach and refine the workshop design, the workshop was piloted during Augustus-December 2025 with groups of teacher educators in three countries (Belgium, Norway, The Netherlands). During the symposium, we present insights from these pilots, focusing on participants’ experiences with visualization and dialogue and on the prompts perceived as most supportive of reflection. These findings inform further refinement of the workshop and contribute to an emerging research agenda on visual and dialogical approaches to teacher educators’ professional identity development.
References
Ahmad, H., Shah, S. R., Latada, F., & Wahab, M. N. (2019). Teacher identity development in professional learning: An overview of theoretical frameworks. Bulletin of Advanced English Studies, 3(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.31559/baes2019.3.1.1 Bawankule, A. (2023). The role of mindmaps and visualizing personal futures to support identity development in informal maker education. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). Calvo, M. (2017), Reflective Drawing as a Tool for Reflection in Design Research. Int J Art Des Educ, 36: 261-272. https://doi.org/10.1111/jade.12161 Cochran-Smith, M., Craig, C. J., Orland-Barak, L., Cole, C., & Hill-Jackson, V. (2022). Agents, Agency, and Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 73(5), 445-448. https://doi.org/10.1177/00224871221123724 Foster-Fishman, P., Nowell, B., Deacon, Z., Nievar, M. A., & McCann, P. (2005). Using methods that matter: The impact of reflection, dialogue, and voice. American journal of community psychology, 36(3), 275-291. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-005-8626-y
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