Chapter 1: Professional Identity in Education from the Perspective of Dialogical Self Theory

Teaching is one of the most important and influential professions that exist. Teachers are responsible for a huge part of human education, and they educate the people who are responsible for a world that should offer the conditions of coexistence and a satisfactory and sustainable life. Politicians, health workers, scientists, thinkers, researchers, and teachers themselves have learned the majority of what they know thanks to teachers. This incredibly important profession is also extraordinarily complex, and its complexity increases in tandem with the educational needs of the population—and these increases constantly.

Having up-to-date and structured knowledge, as well as being able to transmit this knowledge so as to produce substantial and transferable learning in the population, have been and continue to be necessary conditions of teaching. However, in modern times simply transmitting knowledge is not enough. The Internet can do this, and sometimes very effectively. The challenges currently facing humanity require cooperation and mutual support, initiative and perseverance, critical thinking and democratic values, imagination and creativity, and the necessity of such qualities has become even more apparent during the COVID19 crisis. We require professionals with educational intentionality who know what is most important to teach, what the most appropriate way to teach it is according to a given socio-cultural context, and why this must be done. The world needs teachers who have achieved what the Delors report described as the fourth pillar of education—professionals who know how to be teachers.

This chapter and by extension this book are aimed at constructing a responsible professional identity committed to the challenges that humanity must address. To accomplish this objective, we have adopted the dialogical self theory as an explanatory framework, as this is the theory we consider to currently best describe and analyze the dynamic, situated, and pluridimensional qualities of identity.