Critical Incidents in Forming the Professional Identity of the Teacher Cover Image

Zlomové události při vytváření profesní identity učitele
Critical Incidents in Forming the Professional Identity of the Teacher

Author(s): Roman Švaříček
Subject(s): Education
Published by: Slovenská pedagogická spoločnosť pri SAV
Keywords: critical incidents; professional identity; professional development of the teacher; qualitative research

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with critical incidents that play a role in the development of the professional identity of expert teachers. The incidents are viewed through the reconstruction of how the professional identity was built through their narrations. The concept of professional identity was used to explain professional questions that must be answered by the teacher in her development. Professional identity is defined both through viewing the teachers´s own professional behaviour and through viewing her by others in narrations and behaviour of the school personnel. In their narrations, teachers do not describe their story in a compact form; rather, they concentrate on individual episodes which, according to their opinions, are important. In many cases, the lived complex experience is „simplified“ in a narration describing a small event with a critical importance. The purpose of the text is to concentrate solely on the critical incidents depicting professional failures in the career of experienced teachers and to observe how expert teachers describe and justify them. In other words, we are interested in possible interpretations of critical incidents by these teachers’ incidents as well as how they are interpreted by the author of the present paper.

  • Issue Year: 2011
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 247-274
  • Page Count: 27
  • Language: Czech