Exploring Grade R teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity: Who am I?

Abstract

Understanding Grade R teachers’ professional identities seems to be quite bleak because they are not sure where they feature in Primary schools or pre-primary schools. Their professional identities are in sport light due to the issue mentioned above.  This study explores Grade R teachers’ perceptions of their professional identity and qualifications. Grade R teachers’ professional identities are based on the collaboration between teacher education institutions and schools. However, this thinking tampers with what teaching practice is an essential prerequisite for what good teacher education requires. The study was underpinned by decoloniality theory and qualitative research within the interpretive paradigm. All the Grade R teachers participated in this study. Data was generated through semi-structured interviews. We divided the time into two hours per interview to generate data in two days to allow the teachers enough time to respond to the questions. Thematically the teachers’ voices were analyzed. The findings suggest that creating multifaceted images, community values, self-beliefs, and motivation can influence how teachers interpret their personal experiences in the program. Prominent among the results regarding the motivational aspects of teaching is a perception of the profession as granting intrinsic rewards. Teaching is perceived as, according to self-realization, providing a sense of purpose and mission and enabling lifelong development. The personal investment that is interwoven with their lived experiences before they enter the program is coupled with the three different forms of engagement, which are: participation, alignment, and imagination can translate to who they are as people that develop their identities in their career path and interactions in a teacher community at large.

Keywords: {'name': 'Professionalism, grade R, Foundation Phase, teacher identities; self-beliefs'}

Authors & affiliations

Blanche Ntombizodwa Hadebe-Ndlovu
Affiliation not supplied

Moses Onyemaechi Ede
Affiliation not supplied

Deposited references

Supplied references, not a list of publications citing this article.

DOI: 10.1177/0013161X17696556

DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.013

DOI: 10.4102/sajce.v2i1.25

DOI: 10.1080/03057640902902252

DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2003.07.001

Biersteker, L. (2010). Scaling Up Early Child Development in South Africa: Introducing a Reception Year (Grade R) for Children Aged Five Years as the First Year of Schooling. Brookings Institute, Washington DC Working Paper 17.

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-5251-4_103

Brott, P.E. & Kajs, L.T. (2001). Developing the professional identity of first-year teachers through a "Working Alliance". Retrieved April 12, 2010, from http://www.alt-teachercert.org/Working

DOI: 10.1016/B978-008043349-3/50013-X

Cohen, L., Manion. L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education. London: Routledge.

Creswell, J. W. (2014). A concise introduction to mixed methods research. SAGE publications.

DOI: 10.1007/s10649-016-9696-5

DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2005.03.001

Department of Basic Education. (2011). Action Plan to 2014: Towards the Realisation of Schooling 2025. Retrieved 2014, 24-September from Department of Basic Education: www.education.gov.za/Curriculum/ActionPlanto2014/tabid/41 8/Default.aspx.

Department of Education (DoE). (2001a). Education White Paper 5: Meeting the Challenge of Early Childhood Development in South Africa. Pretoria: Department of Education.

DOI: 10.15700/saje.v39ns1a1774

DOI: 10.15700/saje.v39ns1a1774

Esau, H., & Mpofu, J. (2017). The readiness of primary schools to implement the new curriculum in Zimbabwe at ECD (a) level: A case study of bandura urban primary schools. European Journal of Education Studies.

Hashwani, M. S. (2013). Narratives of personal and professional identity construction of teachers of English in the multilingual context of Karachi, Pakistan (Unpublished doctoral thesis). Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan.

Hashwani, M. S. (2013). Narratives of personal and professional identity construction of teachers of English in the multilingual context of Karachi, Pakistan.

DOI: 10.59643/1942-9916.1065

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-13761-8_18

DOI: 10.1016/j.tate.2005.06.003

DOI: 10.1177/0013161X15616660

DOI: 10.1177/1942775116668525

Long, R. (2020). Investigating grade R teacher institutional identity presented in policy and expressed through narrative in a time of transition. Unpublished Doctoral thesis]. Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2018.04.004

DOI: 10.1080/0972639X.2016.11886740

DOI: 10.4324/9780203803929-4

Ntekane, A., (2018). Parental involvement in education. Research Gate, 1, pp.1-5.

DOI: 10.1111/cch.12511

UNICEF (2012). The state of the world's children 2012: children in an urban world. Social sciences.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). (2014). Early Childhood Development Knowledge Building Seminar 2014: ECD@20. Pretoria: UNICEF.UNICEF. (2012). Inequities in Early Childhood Development: What the data say Evidence from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys. United Nations Children’s Fund.