Beginning Teachers Navigating Identity Development Transitions: Identity Motives and Commitment to Teaching.

Beginning teachers (preservice and novice) must develop a resilient professional identity, yet
high early attrition rates indicate the need for additional support in this process. Many attrition studies
focus on external factors; few address teacher identity. According to developmental psychologists,
identity commitments are concretized in a stepwise process, first by tentatively making them, and
then by evaluating them. Most preservice and novice teachers are in a transitional stage, as they
explore whether tentative commitments fit their sense of self. Our research tests the proposition that
such exploration is often focused on determining whether a teaching career will satisfy their identity
motives. We interviewed and collected self-reported written stories from 154 interns and novice
teachers. Participants discussed their career choice in an initial interview and in a questionnaire
focusing on recent, identity-relevant significant events administered at three points in time over
a year. These career choice and written, field-based significant event stories underwent content
analysis for the presence of identity motives, guided by a codebook developed for this research. This
paper describes two central and innovative findings. First, identity motives are, indeed, present
and highly salient in teachers’ career deliberations. Secondly, we found that beginning teachers
express motives differentially, vary in the salience they accord the motives, and explore motives
differently according to situational context. This differentiation in focus may indicate important
shifting priorities and challenges as participants navigate the transition to the field. Taken together,
these findings suggest that understanding and addressing identity motives in teacher development
may enable more personalized and responsive tools that support teacher retention.