Abstract

FUENTES AMAYA, Silvia. Teacher Professional Identities: Identity Orientation and Educational Reform. Aleth. rev. desarro. hum. educ. soc. contemp. [online]. 2020, vol.12, n.1, pp.41-68.  Epub Nov 17, 2020. ISSN 2145-0366.

The analysis of the impacts of teacher professional identification models, prescribed by politics, in the context of the hegemony of an educational quality discourse (Rodríguez, 2010; Buenfil, 2016) which has been associated with democratic ideals such as equity and inclusion, requires a complex vision that conceives the resignification in a processual and historical way, as well as a notion of decentralized educational subject-actor. In this context, I present the results of an exploratory and analytical research, based on a mixed methodology, whose objective was to explore a first phase of resignification, by primary level teachers, of a historical-prescriptive professional identification model. From a discursive and ideological perspective (Laclau & Mouffe, 1987; Zizek, 1992; Fuentes, 2015). I developed two analysis strategies, the first one, involving the discursive analysis of official documents of the 2008-2016 reform period in Mexico: the Alliance for the Quality of Education (2008); the General Law of the Professional Teaching Service (2013) and the Educational Model (2016); the second, consists in the reconstruction of an identity orientation (Fuentes, 2010) based on the analysis of the data generated thanks to the application of a semi-open questionnaire to an intentional sample, constituted by 55 teachers from three Mexico City primary schools. Research results show that: a) in the reform period 2008-2016, it was possible to locate a prescriptive teacher professional identification model defined as "suitable teacher", b) its resignification, involved the constitution of an identity orientation articulated by the professional, responsible signifiers and with a vocation and c) the latter came from different policies and historical moments. It can be concluded that teaching professional identification process, in addition to being mobile, open, and contingent, involves different layers of resignification with different levels of ideological functioning. In the case study, although the discourse on educational quality hegemonized the prescription of a new model of teacher professional identification, the resignification of this, by the teachers surveyed, recove-red the signifier "with vocation", which had been excluded from the current policy regulations.

Keywords : teacher professional identity; identify orientation; educational reform; ideological functioning.

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