Key features of teacher identity: a systematic meta-review study with special focus on teachers of science or science-related subjects

Abstract

Since 2010, a remarkable number of literature reviews on teacher identity has been published. These literature reviews address a wide range of different foci, e.g., school teachers’ identity, higher education teachers’ identity, or the identity of teachers teaching a specific subject such as science. So far, these literature reviews have not been systematically compared for similarities and differences to gain a deeper understanding of what key features characterise teachers’ identities in general and what key features are specific for the identity of teachers teaching science or science-related subjects. To address this research gap, we conducted a meta-review of 24 literature reviews on teacher identity, which we identified in ERIC and the Web of Science databases. From the 24 reviews we extracted 30 key features of teacher identity. In addition, several of these key features are notably prevalent in literature reviews addressing the identity of teachers teaching science or science-related subjects, while others are less prevalent. Above all, these results strongly indicate that the identity of science teachers significantly differs from the identity of teachers of other subjects or of generalist teachers. Implications of this finding for future research in science education are outlined at the end of this paper.

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