Twenty-sixth International Conference on Learning

Abstract

Teachers’ Professional Identity (TPI) continues being a relevant research area in which a wide range of scholars and teacher educators have focused their attention. English as a foreign language teachers mean a sensitive group in this regard due to the fact that sometimes they feel threatened by native speakers and it affects the development of their TPI, and consequently, their careers. This study aims to know how pre-service English Secondary Education teachers build and develop their TPI along their initial teacher training as well as the diverse factors that may affect it. An ‘S-TPI’ questionnaire, measured using a Likert scale, was used to obtain the opinions of 133 future teachers (83,5% women and 16,5% men) in the 2014-2019 academic years. Results show an important relationship between the global view of professional identity and the development of educational skills linked to socio-educative and methodological aspects. Some of the implications derived from this research point to the need to take into account the results obtained when designing the initial training programs for pre-service Secondary Education teachers with the objective of considering the construction of TPI as a central and necessary element to get more competent and committed teachers and, therefore, improve the teaching-learning process quality and Secondary Education students’ performance.