The interface between identity and change: How in-service teachers use discursive strategies to cope with educational change

Educational change places enormous pressure on in-service teachers to bring their professional identities under discussion. How teachers interpret and re-interpret their own understanding of who they are as teachers and the new roles they are expected to play affect their ability to cope with educational change and their willingness to effect change. In this paper the interface between identity and change is used as a lens to explore the discursive strategies five in-service teachers use to cope with educational change. Discourse analysis showed that when professional identity is informed by a discourse of vocational commitment, the latter not only becomes a tool for in-service teachers to cope with change, but it also feeds into a discourse of possibility. Despite framing their relationship with the Department of Education as a binary opposite, the participants use these discourses to position themselves within the context of a changing policy environment as hopeful professionals driven by professional purpose.