On becoming and remaining a teacher: rethinking strategies for developing teacher professional identity in South Africa

The paper is based on interviews with a sample of 200 teachers from the Limpopo province about their life histories, particularly those aspects related to their choice of teaching as their first career path, and their expectations, experiences and perceptions in this regard. It argues that current approaches to teacher education in South Africa require a paradigm shift to integrate the transposition of knowledge and skills required in teaching with strategies to enable teachers to navigate through the complex processes through which shared meaning about the teaching profession is negotiated in order to develop and consolidate teacher identity. If this dimension remains neglected, current strategies proposed by the National Planning Commission and the Department of Basic Education are doomed to failure. While this is implicit in the notion of ‘teacher education’ vis-à-vis ‘teacher training’, apart from few and limited experiments, it has not yet gained substance in actual teacher development practice in South Africa.