The Way Student-Teachers Construct Their Identity at School

Abstract

The incorporation of reflective practices in the arena of education has been discussed in different studies in order to understand the development of practitioners in a target setting. This article reports on a study aimed at describing the way ten foreign language student-teachers from a public university in Colombia construct their identity from their experiences at school. By analyzing student-teachers’ reflections, diaries, and the participants’ advisor observations during her visits to schools, the researcher found that once immersed at school, student-teachers evolve in interactions with the realities that the context offers, negotiate with it and then become independent decision makers.

Keywords

• Identity
• reflection
• student-teacher
• teachers’ identity