Tales From the Watershed:Using Repertory Grids in the Study of Teachers’ Mid-career Identity

This is an innovative, multi-method study of primary teachers’ identity, to be conducted in the West Midlands region of the UK. The project aims to understand and explore factors (including local factors) influencing and contributing to the professional identity of 24 teachers who are the mid-phase of their career. This phase, which covers between 8 and 15 years of teaching, has been described as a ‘watershed’ period during which a teacher can experience a number of changes in their professional and/or personal lives (Day et al, 2007). This study therefore proposes to use a unique combination of critical event narrative and repertory grid interviews in order to understand and describe the complexities that underpin primary teachers’ professional identity at an individual level. The proposed research would illuminate how analyses of different sources of data obtained via these methods can give insight in to some of the forces that impact upon professional identity, how the construction and development of teacher identity evolves, and consequently provide a deeper understanding of the influences that shape mid-career primary school teachers’ professional lives that goes beyond the most obvious stereotypes. The research has three main purposes: a) to investigate and describe the construction and development of teachers’ professional identity in primary schools using a narrative and repertory grid interview approach; b) to examine how, if at all, critical events (Day et al., 2006; Webster & Mertova, 2007) during a teachers’ personal and professional life have an impact upon teachers in the 8-15 professional life phase, and thereby to advance theoretical understanding of professional identity formation; and, c) to analyse and identify the shared and/or unique patterns underpinning the construction, development and adaptation of teachers’ professional identity through the course of a career.