Identities and structure of teacher’s work: a representation

Abstract

In this paper one analyses and discusses the association between identities and the structuring of teachers’ work resorting to the social representations that higher education students, future teachers, have of the teacher profession, an issue which is inextricably linked to the reflection on teacher training. The data indicate a strong connection between teacher identity and their work and between teacher identity and a certain configuration of their work: the work of teaching, as opposed to the work of learning, performed by the students. The new functions performed by the teachers have little expression in the representation of teacher. Students’ representations reveal an identity which precedes work itself in addition to showing its role in the creation of teachers’ work. The content of such an identity seems to be characterised by an industrial view of work, subject to a logic of production, leading to a perception of teachers’ work as a bureaucratic profession.