General, Special and … Inclusive: Refiguring Professional Identities in a Collaboratively Taught Classroom

This article was published in Teaching and Teacher Education, Volume 26, Issue 8, Author(s): Srikala Naraian, " General, Special and … Inclusive: Refiguring Professional Identities in a Collaboratively Taught Classroom", Pages 1677-1686, Copyright Elsevier (November 2010).

This article examines how collaborative practice between special and general education teachers complicates the configuration of their professional identities.

The article uses the framework of figured world (Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) to scrutinize the practice of one special educator, Stephanie.

Alternatively assuming both subordinate and lead positions within a collaborative teaching team, Stephanie refigured her professional identity and practice contingently, initiating a trajectory of change that extended to “out-of-classroom” spaces (Clandinin & Connolly, 1996).

Stephanie’s improvisations in this process index the significance of teachers’ authorial spaces in the implementation of inclusive education.

References
Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, M. E (1996). Teachers' professional knowledge landscapes: Teacher stories. Educational Researcher, 25(3), 24-31.