Resumen de Teacher-inquirer identity in light of educational innovation and during online master thesis: examination of the inquiry skills and other related components
The expansion of globalized capitalism accompanied by rapid technological advancements have had profound impact on the educational landscape and vastly increased the challenges that teachers address nowadays. While there is no simple antidote to the complex problems that our world faces, teachers who engage with inquiry can alleviate the practical problems of daily teaching and reach their goals, improve students’ learning, and establish possibilities for professional development within their working context. However, despite the inherent potentiality of inquiry for teacher professional growth, the literature on the identity of the teacher-inquirer and related concepts is scarce.
This thesis aims to contribute to the literature regarding the teacher-inquirer identity on several fronts. On a theoretical level, the thesis aims to define the concept of the teacher-inquirer, elaborate a theoretical model of the inquiry skills practiced by teachers when they are conducting an inquiry, and identify other components related to the teacher-inquirer identity. On a practical level, the thesis aims to construct two self-report quantitative questionnaires to measure teachers’ inquiry skills and other related components when teachers are engaged in an inquiry in two different settings, examine relationships between the inquiry skills and other components, and categorise clusters of teachers in terms of their inquiry skills.
The thesis recognizes the problems regarding the definition of the teacher identity and begins by reviewing the concept of identity and its characteristics before providing a definition of the teacher identity. Next, it analyses six teacher identity types, explicates how the characteristics of teacher identities are manifested, and examines how the three Modes of Existence can be utilized as a lens to analyse teacher professional identities. Then, based on these foundational concepts as well as on literature on action research and research in social sciences, it constructs a definition of the teacher-inquirer identity, identifies five different phases or skills of inquiry (searching and focusing, understanding and exploring, designing and implementing, evaluating and reflecting, writing and presenting), and discusses how agency, sense-making, ownership, and emotions affect teacher identities.
The research study is situated within the critical realism paradigm. Two online questionnaires were constructed for collecting data from two different populations: in-service teachers who conduct inquiry in light of an educational innovation and student-teachers who conduct a thesis as part of their studies in an online postgraduate course. The two questionnaires gathered 111 and 154 responses respectively.
The statistical analysis revealed that there was considerable overlap between the theoretically identified skills and how participants perceived them in practice. Furthermore, in both studies, teachers reported that they practiced their inquiry skills at least to some extent and several connections among the investigated components emerged. Three different inquirer identity profiles have been identified based on the extent to which teachers and student-teachers practiced their inquiry skills. In general, the three profiles can be ordered from high to low. Lastly, it was found that several components, including sense-making, ownership, agency, and emotions, have an impact on the development of the teacher-inquirer identity in both studies.
The results are considered within the limitations of survey research and several suggestions for future research are made. Finally, a series of implications for practice are set forth that can be beneficial for a wide audience, from teachers and school leaders to educational policy designers and scholars.
