Becoming a professional

Blending professional experience

What initially seemed a straightforward exercise quickly became consuming of my free time as I wrestled with new systems and revised my understanding of the biology of the immune response to specific vaccines. I felt a degree of nervousness as I approached my first shift, kitted out in my St Johns uniform and aware that through my actions and in my demeanour, I was required to exhibit the ‘heart’ values at the core of the organisation.

It had been around 25 years since I last held a needle and syringe, as what was a common place practice for me as a nurse, in my first career, became an extraordinary event. I found myself consciously aware of the need to project the calm confidence that is required of the vaccinator, with the authority to administer the vaccine, reassure the citizen and monitor for possible adverse reactions. 

I was interested to observe the effect that it had on me and my interactions. It seemed that, in the act of putting on the St John’s uniform, I experienced a sense of ‘becoming’ a vaccinator which recalled for me aspects of my previous nursing career and the skills I had developed. This was a re-learning and re-application of skills but was more than that. In the process of becoming, I had assumed a role, and with it, adopted a professional identity.

Although the role of vaccinator might seem far removed from that of teacher educator, I was aware that I was in fact blending the skills, knowledge and dispositions acquired from my careers as nurse, primary teacher, teacher educator and parent. Through this I experienced the multi-layered nature of a professional identity.

Renegotiating professional identity

Scanlon (2011) regards the process of becoming as one which is evolutionary and iterative, and through which a sense of the professional self emerges.

Mulcahy picks up the idea of the professional self emerging through the social interactions that characterise a period of professional formation, and which are arguably so important in the professional formation of the teacher and the nurse (as two examples). This process is not straightforwardly linear, but complex, as one’s professional identity emerges and is re-negotiated in what might be a lifelong process (Scanlon, Mulcahy, 2011). 

In tandem with my personal experience, I’ve reflected on the process of becoming a teacher and just how a professional identity is formed. As a teacher educator, it is the nurturing of undergraduates into the teaching profession that consumes my time and focus. Whilst we might have secure notions of what it is to be a professional, not least in the attributes specified in the Teachers’ Standards, I think it is useful to shift our focus towards the process of becoming a professional, recognising in so doing that this is complex and multi-layered.

The joy of becoming

The introduction of the ITE Core Content Framework (DfE, 2019) brings this into focus as we develop our curricular to ensure that the prescribed minimum entitlement for initial teacher education is met, and to shape the language that we use with our students and partners to describe the progress that is required of teachers beginning three phases of professional practice.

We deliberately deviated from the ‘Professional behaviours’ subheading used in DfE documentation, adopting instead ‘Becoming a professional’ in order to reflect the process of development that the student teacher engages in, acknowledging that this evolves as the student constructs, and is supported to articulate, their professional identity.

In developing a set of ‘expected progress’ statements, with which to chart this process, we were influenced by Berliner’s (2004) descriptions of the behaviour characteristic of novices and experts in professional fields. A ‘picture’ of the trainee teacher was developed from that of an emerging professional, reliant on high levels of support, observing and deliberate, through to that of a secure professional: proactive, accountable for their actions and increasingly critically reflective of their practice.

The intention here was to frame this process of development more holistically than the Teachers’ Standards alone would support. As our students become the reflexive primary practitioners that aspire for them to be, we should acknowledge that this is just one layer of a professional identity that will form and re-form through their professional lives, in teaching and beyond.

Many shifts in as a volunteer vaccinator, I have reflected that the sense of becoming, as a dynamic process, is experienced in the interplay of the professional identities we assume along with a ‘core’ professional self.  As our students become the teachers they aspire to be, and both construct and articulate their ‘teacher identity’, I wish for them the joy of becoming through their professional lives.

References

• Berliner, DC (2004) Describing the Behavior and Documenting the Accomplishments of Expert Teachers. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 24(3) June, pp 200-212
• Department for Education (2019) ITT Core Content Framework [online] Available from www.gov.uk/government/publications. Accessed 22/04/2022
• Department for Education (2022) Teachers’ Standards [online] Available from www.gov.uk/government/publications. Accessed 22/04/2022
• Mulcahy, D (2011) Teacher Professional Becoming: A Practice-Based, Actor-Network Theory Perspective. In: Scanlon, L ‘ed’ Becoming a Professional an Interdisciplinary Analysis of Professional Learning. Australia: Springer, pp 219-244
• Scanlon, L (2011) ‘Becoming a Professional’. In: Scanlon, L ‘ed’ Becoming a Professional an Interdisciplinary Analysis of Professional Learning. Australia: Springer, pp 13-32