“This is English class”: Evolving identities and a literacy teacher's shifts in practice across figured worlds

Teacher learning should be regarded as a complex life-long process, one that may be best understood as interwoven with the life-long process of identity development. Using concepts like figured worlds, histories-in-person, cultural artifacts, and conceptual/procedural identity (Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998), this paper explores one secondary teacher's shifting from traditional methods of English teaching to a workshop approach. As the teacher perceived the figured nature of dominant narratives about schooling alongside his own history-in-person, emerging tensions became productive spaces. This paper concludes with implications about the usefulness of identity theories to examine and facilitate teacher learning over time.