Mo(ve)ments in professional identification: achieving professional identity and becoming a teacher in Danish and Kenyan teacher education

This article explores and compares the way in which Danish and Kenyan student-teachers achieve a professional identity while training to be teachers, drawing on conceptually-related theoretical approaches of critical psychology, social theory of learning, professional literature and literature about narratives and life history. Findings from contextual comparisons of the students’ life stories suggest that the process of professional becoming may be viewed as a highly personal meaning-making and storied process following individual trajectories through teacher training; yet moments in which students change professional identification are often ingrained in social relations with tutors and other students, or take place during periods of teaching practice. Student-teachers come to acknowledge teacher training as a resource and part of a personal life project, and some students change their professional identification profoundly during teacher training.