Abstract
It is widely understood that the development of a teacher identity for individuals transitioning into teaching is important, and therefore substantial research has been produced looking at teacher identity development. Much of this research is conducted using the possible selves theory as its framework. Nevertheless, with the self and identity being widely interpreted concepts with no consentaneous definition, researchers lean on metaphorical language at times to semantically represent the meaning of the future selves. This chapter reviews contemporary literature, discussing how different metaphors used to talk about the self, influence the methodological choices made within the study. Different types of metaphors used led to a heavier emphasis on either the integrative, temporal, or dynamic nature of the possible selves theory.
TopMeasuring The Possible Teacher Selves
Markus and Nurius (1986) began the discussion of possible selves by attempting to measure these selves and their impact, and this traditional measurement continues today. While some authors have focused on the development and validation of scales which could be used to measure the teacher possible selves, others have utilized these questionnaires to assess the relationships between possible selves and a variety of different variables, such as professional goals and the beliefs held about their attainability (Cetin & Eren, 2019), self-efficacy (Dalioglu & Adiguzel, 2016), and attitudes (Uygun & Avaroğulları, 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ideal Self: A self-conception that is a sub-part of an individual’s self-concept which represents the attributes such as traits and behaviors that the individual desires, and which can be an alternative to the current self or a future self-conception.
Ought-To Self: A self-conception that is a sub-part of an individual’s self-concept which represents the attributes such as traits and behaviors that the individual believes they or others think should be possessed, and which can be an alternative to the current self or a future self-conception.
Vision: An ideal imagined future state that is experienced by the individual through sensory of concrete mental images.
Identity: An ongoing and dynamic product and process tightly connected with the larger self-concept, which is shaped by both internal and external influences such as emotions and community discourses respectively and is constantly being constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in relation to a specific individual within a situated context.
Feared Self: A self-conception that can contrast the current self or be represented as a future self and which is a sub-part of an individual’s self-concept that represents the attributes such as traits and behaviors that the individual assesses as a negative self-representation.
Expected Self: A possible self-conception that is a sub-part of an individual’s self-concept, specifically a part that represents the self in the future temporal zone and which reflects the positive attributes hoped for in the future.
Dreamwork: Originally a Freudian concept that currently refers to different processes that allow for individual meaning making of dream-content that can be found in dreams and the remembering of memories.