Teacher identity and professional identity tensions among primary student teachers A focus on theory, measurement, and longitudinal associations

Each teacher training program aims at providing primary student teachers with abilities that will make them high-quality professionals determined to teach for a longer period of time. Helping student teachers build professional identities is fundamental to accomplish these goals. Successfully handling tensions that student teachers experience has been linked to forming their teacher identity. Most work underlying the connection between tensions and teacher identity is theoretical rather than empirical. Consequently, little is known about how the two constructs actually are related over time. Moreover, suitable and/or valid instruments for investigating the link between teacher identity and tensions are missing. The overarching goal of this dissertation, therefore, was first to develop reliable and valid measurement scales for teacher identity and professional identity tensions; and then advance our understanding of the development of the relationship between teacher identity and professional identity tensions across time in the context of primary teacher education. In pursuing this goal, four studies were conducted that together form the present dissertation. Study 1 (Chapter II) provides an overview of components of teacher identity that are found in quantitative measurement instruments and reports on the psychometric quality of these measurement instruments. The second study (Chapter III) presents the development and validation of the Teacher Identity Measurement Scale (TIMS). The third study (Chapter IV) describes the development and validation of the Professional Identity Tensions Scale (PITS). Finally, study 4 (Chapter V) examined the development of the relationship between teacher identity and professional identity tensions among primary student teachers across time.