Challenges Student Teachers Experience in the Development of their Professional Teacher Identity

This chapter focuses on the challenges that pre-service teachers may experience when entering the world-of-work during their practicum year. In the first part of the chapter, existing literature in this area of interest is discussed, and Activity Theory (Engeström, 1987, 2015) is proposed as a suitable framework when analysing such experiences. In the second part of the chapter, a report is given on the prominent challenges experienced by the student teachers who participated in the FIRE project, in terms of their teacher identity development. Furthermore, how the participating pre-service teachers aim to address the identified challenges as part of the broader Participatory Reflection and Action (PRA) project, in collaboration with their peers, during the teaching practice component of their training programme is discussed. In discussing the findings of the FIRE project, the experiences of the participating pre-service teachers with regard to their development are related to their desire for positive change to their perceptions of possible ways of achieving this.