The constitution of teacher identity and its implications on the educational practices from teachers of a community university

Abstract

Identity is a process that emerges from the perception we have about ourselves as historical subjects, built according to the context, experiences and relationships that each person establishes with others and with the world. This text aims to identify and analyze the factors that influenced the constitution of the teaching identity and its implications on the educational practices of a group of higher education teachers of a community university. The research followed a qualitative, descriptive approach, through a semi-structured interview. The teachers were  questioned in a way that they could recall their personal and professional life trajectory. For this investigation, we found theoretical contributions in studies on the theme of professional identity in the works of Dubar (2005) and higher education teacher training in Pimenta and Anastasiou (2014), among other authors who contribute to the research theme. Data analysis was based on the Textual Discursive Analysis of Moraes and Galiazzi (2016), which proposes three stages: dismantling the texts, establishing relationships and capturing the new emerging. According to the teachers' statements, analyzed in the light of the theoretical framework, we consider that the teacher has  their/an entry to higher education teaching by the investigative profile, making  their initiation full of insecurity due to the lack of specific knowledge of teaching. The professional is constituted and identified with the  occupation along the teaching path by practical knowledge, resulting from human interactions established in the academic daily life. Such knowledge needs to be critically reflected according to the references of the field of education. Therefore,  within the institution, continued professionalization processes are necessary, which enable the knowledge of practice to be problematized and reconstructed by teachers, both individually and collectively.