Background

Pedagogical activities have long been an important component of the teaching profession. Each day, teachers are involved with moral, social and emotional dilemmas, and they are confronted with norms and values (Korthagen, 2004). Day-to-day practice in the field of education, the popular media and the academic and practical literature (Turkenburg, 2008) all indicate that primary teachers are facing increasing demands with regard to their socialisation duties. Especially teachers working in urban schools are feeling pressurized to address a wide range of socialisation issues (Tillman, 2005, Singer et al, 2010). The results of a preliminary study involving 80 early-career primary teachers in urban primary schools, however, indicate that these teachers do not want to perform socialisation duties, and they feel that they spend too much time on such tasks. These findings raise the question of what primary teachers in urban schools understand as socialisation, which socialisation tasks are required (or increasingly required) of them and how they consider these tasks to fit within their professional identity.

Problem statement and research questions

This study is intended to provide insight into the meanings that primary teachers in urban schools assign to the pedagogical dimension of their profession. The problem statement is as follows:

How do primary teachers in urban schools perceive the meaning and practice of the pedagogical dimension of their profession, and is it related to personal characteristics of the teachers, characteristics of the educational and school organisation and characteristics of students and their parents?

Theoretical framework

In this study, we apply the concept of professional identity, following the definition by Beijaard and colleagues (2004), as a continual process of interpretation and re-interpretation regarding the experiences of teachers. They conclude that secondary teachers determine their professional identity according to a dimension related to subject area (and combinations of subject areas), a didactic dimension and a pedagogical dimension. In this study, this concept is applied to the context of primary school, focusing on the meaning and task perceptions of the pedagogical dimension. In addition, motivation is addressed according to self-determination theory (e.g. Gagne & Deci, 2005), and the ‘self-efficacy’ (Bandura, 1977) of teachers is investigated with regard to the pedagogical dimension of their profession.

Given that the professional identity of teachers is influenced by the people, the experiences they have acquired and the contexts in which they teach (Flores & Day, 2006), it is logical to assume that the ways in which teachers perceive their socialisation duties are affected by these factors as well.

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