Teacher Identity Discourses in Place—Exploring Discursive Resources in Pre-Service Teachers’ Constructions of Teacher Identity

Abstract

This methodological article focuses on how to effectively map pre-service teachers’ use of discursive resources in professional identity production. By adopting a discourse analytical approach, this study views identity construction as a situational, real-time process occurring in interaction. The aim is to contribute knowledge about how to systematically map and analyze the resources that pre-service teachers use to construct their teacher identities during their education. Drawing on the framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis, this article presents a model that integrates two key concepts: discourse domains, which refer to the types of discourse commonly used in teacher education, and layers of discourse, which address societal levels in identity construction. The results suggest that using these concepts to map students’ use of discursive resources highlights how their knowledge of the teaching profession, their education and everyday experiences can be assets when constructing their teacher identities. While the model can be further refined and developed to better show the complexity of discursive resources in identity construction processes, it shows promise as a fruitful approach. By mapping and visualizing discursive resources through this model, this study offers valuable methodological insights into how to approach professional identity development among pre-service teachers.

1. Introduction

Teacher education, like vocational education in general, is inherently future-oriented and has a clear purpose, namely, to prepare students to become professionals. This forward-looking timeline extends beyond initial certification, as becoming a teacher requires a commitment to lifelong learning and continuous professional development. At the same time, the past plays a crucial role in shaping the future, involving not only individual educational experiences [1] but also broader historical discourses within education that influence contemporary educational systems.

During their education, pre-service teachers thus need to relate to their future profession. While some question whether students truly can “have” a teacher identity, extensive research in recent years clearly suggests that pre-service teachers do actively construct and develop their teacher identity during their education [2,3,4,5,6,7] (Often, when it is argued that teacher identity is exclusive to professionals, the focus seems to be on what James Paul Gee [8] refers to as institution-identity—being institutionally legitimized as a teacher. However, according to Gee, this is only one of several ways of constructing identity in educational contexts.) As they construct and develop these identities over time, they may draw on a range of diverse resources at their disposal, including spoken narratives [9], written texts [10] or digital tools [11]. Such resources are discursive, i.e., are connected to language use, and often linked to the hybrid nature of teacher education, where a balance in the tensions between academia, profession and everyday life becomes important [12]. As “the way we use language is inseparable from who we are and the different social groups to which we belong” [13] (p. 2), the discursive resources used by pre-service teachers are a highly interesting area of focus for better understanding the development of their teacher identities. In education sciences, teacher identity is often examined using various reflective practices, where participants are asked in interviews to reflect on their identities [14,15,16]. In this study, however, identity construction is studied as occurring in social interaction, thus highlighting a more situational and, from the perspective of education sciences, non-traditional construction of teacher identity.

As the potential variations of discursive resources used in the construction of teacher identity are vast, there is a need to deal with the complexity of managing them. As a primarily methodological study, this article aims to contribute knowledge about how to systematically map and analyze the discursive resources that pre-service teachers use to construct teacher identity within their education. To achieve this, this article presents and tests a heuristic model for understanding students’ use of discursive resources by focusing on three Swedish pre-service teachers in two different settings within a teacher education program: a university rhetoric class and a school during their placement. The model integrates two key concepts: discourse domains [12,17] and layers of discourse [18]. The former encompasses the typical use of language in teacher education, while the latter encompasses different societal levels of discourse in identity construction processes. These concepts are brought together within the larger framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis [19,20], which is the theoretical and methodological foundation in this study. The vantage point is that each identity-making discursive resource can be understood in relation to societal levels, ranging from the individual to the institutional and sociopolitical (layers of discourse), and in accordance with language use in teacher education (discourse domains).

By mapping the discursive resources used in interaction, we can gain a clearer understanding of the tools that pre-service teachers employ during the process of identity construction and where they originate from. Furthermore, such knowledge can help us to explore how the discursive environments of teacher education settings may be developed to further support their professional identity construction [21]. This article offers a proposal for how such mapping can be conducted. Although this study is rooted in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics, its findings may also be relevant to researchers and educators interested in teacher education and teacher identity. Ultimately, the hope is that the findings will be of relevance for both researchers and practitioners alike.

2. Discourses and Discursive Resources in Teacher Education

One of the primary ways to construct identity through social action is by using discourse [19,22]. Discourse refers to the combination of language in use, shared viewpoints and different ways of being in the world [23]. This is one of the main reasons why discourse is highly relevant to examine when exploring identity construction processes.

Discourses come in various forms, each with its own history and future trajectory [19], and can be understood on broader and narrower scales [20,23]. For example, a student in teacher education is exposed to a wide range of discourses, from larger sociopolitical discourses related to governance and policy to short casual conversations with their peers. Within the framework of Mediated Discourse Analysis [19,20] (MDA: see also, nexus analysis), both broader and narrower discourses are integrated into the concept of discourses in place [20,24]. Discourses in place refer to all the relevant discourses that affect and are used in a specific social action, whether they are rapidly circulating discourses, such as conversational topics in interaction, or more extensive discourses, such as policy documents governing school practices. In other words, “in place” should be understood as the specific situation being examined, in which discourses become visible primarily through their use.

The concept of discourses in place is a valuable theoretical tool because it situates discourse within the context of social action, thereby helping to uncover the relationship between discourse and action [25]. Specifically, it helps to identify which discourses are relevant for a particular action to occur. According to MDA, discourses in place are one of three elements that permeate all social actions, the other two being the historical body (people’s prior experiences) and the interaction order (the interpersonal relationships between those involved in the action) [20].

In the context of vocational education, Andrew Northedge [17,21] observed that students in care education often employed discourses from certain areas to complete tasks within their education. He identified three primary categories of discourse used by both students and educators: everyday discourse (e.g., mass media articles), discourses of care practice (mainly from practitioners in hospitals) and academic discourse (found in, e.g., scientific journals). To enhance student learning, Northedge argued that educators ought to help students become aware of when and how to use relevant discourses by fostering what he called an appropriate discursive environment.

Mary Macken-Horarik et al. [12] extended Northedge’s discourse categories to the field of teacher education from a systemic functional linguistics perspective [26]. They redefined these categories as discourse domains: the everyday discourse domain, the professional discourse domain and the academic discourse domain. In their study, Macken-Horarik et al. [12] focused on language use by describing the academic discourse domain as characterized by the scientific and formal language found in texts such as research papers. The professional discourse domain, on the other hand, is marked by practical language related to professional practice and experience, such as lesson plans. Lastly, the everyday discourse domain is characterized by informal, common-sense language that can typically be found in mass media texts. Originally rooted in the perspective of new literacy studies, these discourse domains have primarily been applied in research on writing [27,28]. However, as students’ writing and learning are inherently linked to “epistemic identities” [29] (p. 446), the discourse domain may be used to more generally explore the connection between language use and identity construction in education.

One of the most compelling insights from Macken-Horarik et al. [12] is that it is productive for students to use language in ways that allow them to navigate between the three discourse domains. This can be facilitated by using discursive resources that enable transitions between the domains. For instance, a question posed during a thesis seminar using everyday common-sense language could serve as such a resource [28]. Questions are only one type of potential discursive resource, as many different linguistic or material elements can be discursive.

In previous research, discursive resources have been studied across different fields and found in the shape of, e.g., narratives [30], the concept of ‘culture’ [31] and humor [32]. For something to be a discursive resource, however, it must be used by someone to achieve a goal [33]. In this article, a discursive resource is understood as any linguistic/material form that people use to accomplish a communicative goal. In the teaching profession, typical examples might include a question, a whiteboard or a book. But discursive recourses should not be seen as static, since employing them often involves transformation processes, such as when a teacher’s lesson plan is translated into real-world actions in the classroom or when a written text is quoted or referenced in conversations between learners. In MDA, such processes are referred to as cycles of discourse [20], meaning that discourses may change form as they are used, often through processes of resemiotization [34].

3. Identity and Teacher Identity

Identity is a concept that has been extensively covered in academic research and has significance in both scholarly work and public discourse [35]. It is sometimes used interchangeably with related concepts, such as role or subject position. In this article, identity is defined as “the social positioning of self and other” [36] (p. 586), meaning that it not only involves how individuals perceive themselves within the social world but also how they perceive others and are perceived by them. This view of identity recognizes that it can be both stable and fluid, akin to being “both wave and particle” [37] (p. 135), and, in alignment with several studies from fields such as writing research [10,38], interactional sociolinguistics [39] and gender studies [40], it is understood as a social phenomenon.

The idea that identity can be both stable and fluid is central to the work of Sigrid Norris, who notes that identity is shaped through actions in interactions, where social actors produce what she identifies as identity elements [18]. These identity elements can be seen as situational identities or pieces of a larger puzzle that together contribute to a person’s identity. These elements can be momentary or enduring and may take a foreground or background role in a person’s focus at any given time [18]. The key point in the context of this study is that identity elements are produced across three different layers of discourse. The three layers identified by Norris [18] (p. 179) are central layers of discourse, intermediary layers of discourse and outer layers of discourse. Each layer connects to specific types of identity elements, distinguished by their persistence. The central layers of discourse are linked to a person’s immediate actions, such as short utterances, and produce immediate identity elements where the intermediary layers pertain to a network level (i.e., a person’s closest network) generating continuous identity elements. The outer layers concern the societal level where larger institutions are found and produce general identity elements. These layers combine in what Norris refers to as vertical identity production—vertical in the sense that identity is studied from individual actions to larger institutional and societal discourses.

Vertical identity analysis has been applied in various contexts, such as exploring a woman’s complex identity as a newly divorced individual [18], constructing ethnic identity amongst Māori and Pacific female artists [41] and examining Samoan identity in New Zealand [42]. In the context of teacher education, it has been used to study pre-service teachers’ constructions of teacher identity during thesis work [43]. Vertical identity analysis was originally designed and used as a tool for analyzing multimodal identity construction in interaction, as many modes of communication like gaze, hand movements or posture come together in identity construction processes [18,19]. Though, in this study, it is used to highlight the societal level involved in the construction of teacher identity as analyzed through spoken discourse.

Given this perspective on identity, teacher identity can be viewed as the ongoing process of positioning oneself within the teaching profession [44,45,46]. The teacher identity examined in this article takes the primary shape of discourse-identity, which is constructed and recognized through discourse [8] (p. 100). Like identity itself, teacher identity is continuously evolving and is shaped by personal and professional experiences [46,47]. Douwe Beijaard [48] identifies four key areas central to the development of teacher identity: the workplace, the subject matter, relationships with pupils and role conception. These areas are relevant to pre-service teachers’ professional identity construction, although in more hybrid environments such as teaching placement, rather than in traditional school settings [5].

4. Materials and Methods

The data for this study were collected as part of a larger research project [5], although none of the excerpts used in this article have been previously analyzed or published. I did not collect any sensitive data, as it is defined by the Swedish Ethics Review Act [49] (SFS 2003:460). All participants, including students, pupils and teacher educators, have been anonymized, and they have all signed an informed consent form.

As this is a primarily methodological article, the data are used to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed model in this article. In total, there are two data sets: (1) 19 video-recorded oral presentations made by seven pre-service teachers enrolled in an obligatory rhetoric class at the beginning of their education, and (2) approximately three hours of video recorded data from a student teaching history to a secondary school class during his final teaching placement. Two oral presentations from the rhetoric class and one sequence of interaction between a pre-service teacher and his pupils from teaching placement are used as excerpts in this article.

In the first data set, the students took part in a Swedish teacher education program oriented towards secondary school teaching, and the rhetoric class took place during their second term. The rhetoric class consisted of three sessions, each lasting approximately three hours. During this time, the students were allowed to work together on their speeches and then perform them in front of their peers and their tutor. Each session was preceded by an optional lecture focusing on different aspects of classical rhetoric.

The students were required to perform three different oral presentations, during which they had the option to present as a teacher and imagine that their fellow students in the seminar room were either pupils or teacher colleagues. Alternatively, the students were allowed to present as “themselves”, without engaging in role-played interaction. As one of the more explicit ways in which identity construction becomes visible in interaction is through self-categorization or the categorization of others [36], the specific excerpts in this article focus on two speeches where the students chose to perform an argumentative speech as teachers.

The second data set concerns a student, Eric, during his final teaching placement in his training to become a secondary school teacher in history and English. I first met him during my thesis work, and he invited me to observe him when teaching his pupils. The data used in this article come from video recordings of Eric and his class during his lessons on World War II.

Although people construct their identities through many different modes of interaction [18,50], this study focuses on the transcribed excerpts of spoken discourse. The students’ interaction has been transcribed, translated from Swedish to English and adapted for readability and comprehension. Notes from the researcher are written in square brackets in the transcriptions.

The video recordings that were used in both data sets could have affected the participants in different ways. However, when the recordings were made, the students, pupils and teacher educators were all familiar with me as the researcher. In the case of the rhetoric class, video recordings were incorporated into the educational design, where the students had access to their own recordings and could watch them to improve their speech performances. In this way, as confirmed in discussions with both the students and their tutor, the video recording process was viewed more as an asset to the course and less as a disturbance. The video recordings during Eric’s final teaching placement did not seem to be problematic either. The data collection process was initiated by Eric himself, and I ensured that I met his pupils on several occasions before the actual recordings took place. The pupils, who were excited about being filmed, seemed to acknowledge the two cameras during the first three to five minutes by making faces and talking directly to them but appeared to forget about the cameras afterwards.

Method for Exploring the Use of Discursive Resources

The overarching framework used to map the discourses employed by the students in their oral presentations is mediated discourse analysis [19,20]. Mapping can be understood as the analytical endeavor of tracing discourses from the time of their use to larger historical and anticipated outcomes, with the main idea of getting a broader understanding of how discourse is used [20]. It is also in this mapping process that the specific discursive resources can be discerned. MDA is designed to analyze human action and has been applied in various educational contexts, including prenatal education [51], language learning [52] and teacher education [5,53]. In this article, MDA is employed through the concept of discourses in place, meaning that the discursive resources mapped in the model are derived from the students’ actions—specifically, what they do during their speeches and in the classroom.

Below, I describe the analytical process step by step. Some of these steps may naturally occur almost simultaneously.

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Identifying relevant higher-level actions [18] in the data. In this case, these are actions where students speak about themselves as teachers or act as teachers.

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Transcribing these actions in detail.

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Examining the data to identify the relevant discourses in place that surround the students’ actions.

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Identifying the most prominent discursive resources used by the students in these actions.

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Mapping how the discursive resources function in terms of language use (the three discourse domains) and the actors/institutions involved in the societal levels (the three layers of discourse).

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Describing the potential role of these resources in the construction of teacher identity.

To provide an overview of the identified discursive resources and their function, they are placed in a heuristic model incorporating the three layers of discourse and the three discourse domains. The model is presented in Figure 1.

In Figure 1, the layers of discourse are displayed on the left. Each layer pertains to a societal level that is associated with different actors and institutions (see Section 3). The discourse domains are placed at the top and focus on the typical language use in teacher education settings (see Section 2). In Figure 1, they are illustrated with examples of typical texts and language that can be connected to each domain. For example, a student on teaching placement who consults their lesson plan while instructing pupils could be said to use the lesson plan as a discursive resource connected to the intermediary layers of discourse (as it involves the pupils, a network in close proximity to the student) and the professional discourse domain (since a lesson plan is a typical professional text for a teacher). In that context, the lesson plan would be placed in the center of the model. However, the placement of a discursive resource in the model always depends on how it is used, meaning that certain texts do not necessarily always “belong” to a specific discourse domain.

It is practically impossible to map and describe all the potential discursive resources involved in the students’ actions, primarily because they often operate on multiple levels simultaneously. Hence, I have adopted an inductive, participant-oriented analytical stance to identify what appears to be the main use for the most prominent discursive resources in the identity construction process.

5. Results

In this section I examine the speeches of two pre-service teachers, Stefan and Jessica, as they deliver argumentative oral presentations in their rhetoric class, and an interaction between another pre-service teacher, Eric, and his pupils in the classroom. Each excerpt is presented as a transcription and followed by a mapping of the most prominent discourses in place, along with the discursive resources used in their interactional identity construction processes.

5.1. Stefan

Stefan delivers a speech advocating for the incorporation of designated days when schools serve vegetarian meals. At the beginning of his speech, he explicitly states that he is presenting as a teacher addressing his colleagues, making this an interesting case to examine from the perspective of teacher identity construction. Although Stefan claims to be performing as a teacher, he does not exhibit any specific actions typically associated with a “teacher-like” behavior (most students in the class do not “play their role” during their speeches). Overall, his presentation follows the structure of a classic argumentative speech. Below is a transcript of Stefan’s speech:

• Excerpt 1. Stefan’s speech.

(01) I am a teacher at this school, and this is a teachers’ meeting

(02) where I want to promote something I believe is important. What

(03) follows is rooted in the school’s core values and mission. The

(04) school, in collaboration with families, is committed to

(05) fostering the all-around personal development of pupils,

(06) shaping them into active, creative, competent and responsible

(07) individuals and citizens. However, in the pursuit of grades and

(08) results, we are increasingly losing sight of these fundamental

(09) values, particularly at our school. Our efforts to nurture

(10) responsible individuals and citizens, especially in relation to

(11) an environmental perspective, are in dire need of improvement.

(12) One of the simplest ways to address this is by incorporating

(13) days where we serve only vegetarian food at school.

(14) David Stenholtz, President of Doctors for the Future, states

(15) that there is an extremely strong scientific link between the

(16) rising consumption of unhealthy foods and the increased

(17) incidence of lifestyle diseases.

(18) I would like to conclude by emphasizing that it is crucial we,

(19) as adults and teachers, do not impose this idea against the

(20) will of the students. This initiative should be something the

(21) students themselves want to implement. Our role as teachers and

(22) adults is to support and fulfil the students’ desires for the

(23) environment they can directly influence, and to provide them

(24) with an understanding of comprehensive and global environmental

(25) issues.

As here the focus is on teacher identity, this sections centers on the larger action of presenting oneself as a teacher during an argumentative speech about serving vegetarian food in schools directed at teacher colleagues. This is the context that Stefan uses to frame his speech. Several discourses come into play in this action. Based on Stefan’s presentation, some of the more prominent ones include academic discourse (e.g., performing an assessed oral presentation, referencing scientific connections to the topic and the physical space of the university), discourse on environmental issues (the topic of the speech) and professional discourse (e.g., fostering responsible individuals and acting as expected of a teacher).

What is perhaps most evident in Stefan’s speech is the explicit statement that he is a teacher and that the other students (and the class tutor) are his colleagues. This information is introduced in lines 01–02 of the speech. Prior to the speech, while preparing for the assignment, the students were given written instructions from their tutor stating that they could choose the role in which they wished to perform the speech. However, explicitly stating the role distribution during the speech was not part of the instructions. Stefan seems to use the instructional text as a discursive resource to construct an immediate teacher identity connected to the professional discourse domain by simply stating that he is a teacher. The text itself is an academic instructional text that is aligned with the academic discourse domain, as it is provided by the class tutor. By framing his presentation with the statement, “I am a teacher at this school, and this is a teachers’ meeting where I want to promote something I believe is important” (lines 01–02), Stefan uses this text as a discursive resource within the academic discourse domain, thereby setting the scene for his peers and tutor.

The intermediary layers of discourse involve Stefan’s immediate network, with the most obvious being his fellow students that he addresses in the classroom. Another close network is the class tutor, who, as a representative of the department, is present to assess the presentation. The instructional text becomes relevant again in these intermediary layers, as Stefan designates the other students as his colleagues. In this hybrid setting—where Stefan speaks at a teachers’ meeting while delivering an assessed oral presentation—the dual nature of the context becomes evident. We can see how one particular discursive resource (the instructional text) can simultaneously operate across multiple layers of discourse and discourse domains within a very short time frame.

When addressing his peers, the ‘teacher colleagues’, Stefan further states: “In the pursuit of grades and results, we are increasingly losing sight of these fundamental values, particularly at our school” (lines 07–09). The foundational values he refers to likely connect to what he describes as the school’s core values, which he mentions in lines 03–07: “The school, in collaboration with families, is committed to fostering the all-around personal development of students, shaping them into active, creative, competent and responsible individuals and citizens”. This is, in the original Swedish form, a direct quote from the Swedish curriculum for the compulsory school (the formulation is identical in the 2022 version of the curriculum, although Stefan refers to an earlier version). It can be interpreted as an example of using the curriculum, a text connected to the professional discourse domain, as a discursive resource for constructing a continuous teacher identity by creating affinity between fellow colleagues around the fundamental values that teachers ought to follow. Quoting the curriculum also ties into the larger institution of the Swedish National Agency for Education, thus linking the use of the curriculum to the outer layers of discourse.

Later in his speech, Stefan states that “it is crucial that we, as adults and teachers, do not impose this idea against the will of the students” (lines 18–20). Thus, he establishes affinity within his network of colleagues through both the teaching profession and the more commonplace notion of being a responsible adult (“as adults and teachers”). The image of being responsible adults then becomes a discursive resource connecting to larger commonplace discourses on adulthood and responsibilities to establish more personal affinity with his peers in the everyday discourse domain.

In the outer layers of discourse, we find discourses connected to actors and institutions on a wider societal level. A particularly interesting use of discourse here is when Stefan mentions a person, David Stenholtz, a public Swedish figure who has written books on the health benefits of a vegetarian diet. Stefan states that Stenholtz points to “an extremely strong scientific link between the rising consumption of unhealthy foods and the increased incidence of lifestyle diseases” (lines 15–17). Instead of pointing at specific research studies, Stefan refers to Stenholtz, who appears not to be a researcher, in his role as president of the organisation Doctors for the Future. As Stefan does not refer to specific studies and rather brings it up in a similar way as a news discourse, the discursive resource here becomes the reference to Stenholtz in the everyday discourse domain as a source that legitimizes the scientific link between unhealthy food and increased lifestyle diseases. Further, this is linked to the overarching environmental discourses on the benefits of eating more vegetarian food.

In Figure 2, we can see an overview of the most prominent discursive resources used by Stefan to construct teacher identity during his speech. The discursive recourses are placed in the model in accordance with the corresponding layers of discourse and discourse domains.

As we can see, this relatively short speech demonstrates how Stefan simultaneously employs specific educational discourses alongside broader societal and environmental discourses in a fictitious meeting between teachers. Primarily, Stefan seems to utilize discursive resources through the everyday and professional discourse domains.

5.2. Jessica

The next excerpt comes from another student in the same class when delivering her speech as a teacher. She addresses her colleagues as a language teacher, advocating for the importance of addressing a specific issue in Swedish language correctness: spacing between words (in written Swedish, compound words are written as a single unit, which can lead to the formation of very long words. However, when compound words are written as separate words, their meaning can change significantly. This phenomenon is referred to as “särskrivning” (spacing between words) in Swedish). Like Stefan, she did not explicitly adopt any particular teacher-like behavior during her speech:

• Excerpt 2. Jessica’s speech.

(01) The idea is that I am a language teacher and that you are my

(02) colleagues, also language teachers, either from the same team

(03) or from a different one.

(04) It spreads quickly. It is also contagious, and it is not only

(05) rampant among pupils’ scrawl, but it is right

(06) here in our midst. Yes, that’s right—spacing between words

(07) [särskrivning]. This occurs when a compound word is written as

(08) two separate words or several separate words, which then

(09) results in a completely new meaning. For example, a “nurse”

(10) [sjuksköterska] becomes a “sick nurse” [sjuk sköterska]

(11) and “sweet potato” [sötpotatis] becomes “a cute potato” [söt

(12) potatis]. Another example is “cashiers” [kassapersonal]

(13) becoming “worthless staff” [kassa personal].

(14) In today’s education, we don’t place much emphasis on teaching

(15) students how to avoid these types of writing errors, as they

(16) are not generally considered serious enough. However, it is

(17) crucial that we, as language teachers, allocate more attention

(18) to this issue in our teaching. First, it [spacing between

(19) words] leads to misunderstandings between individuals. More

(20) importantly, it significantly disrupts reading. Studies show

(21) that such improper writing impacts reading comprehension by as

(22) much as 22%, as readers are forced to backtrack in the text,

(23) misunderstand sentences and fail to grasp the intended

(24) message.

(25) Therefore, it is essential that we, as language educators,

(26) address this through our curricula and provide more instruction

(27) on how to prevent such writing errors. While the

(28) misunderstandings that arise may sometimes be humorous, they

(29) are more often problematic and interfere with pupils’ ability

(30) to read effectively. If pupils attend our classes and go on

(31) without learning how to avoid these issues, they risk spreading

(32) these misunderstandings in the future.

The action in focus of Jessica’s speech is to present herself as a teacher during an argumentative presentation on the phenomenon of spacing between words (“särskrivning”) to her language teacher colleagues. Many of the relevant discourses in place in Jessica’s speech are similar to those in Stefan’s, as they perform similar tasks in close proximity. However, there are some differences. In Jessica’s case, the relevant discourses in place include educational discourse (performing an assessed oral presentation), academic discourse (referencing reading comprehension studies, the physical setting of the university, etc.), societal discourse on spacing between words (both the negative and humorous aspects of the phenomenon) and professional discourse (the consequences of not teaching students the correct way to write and the teacher’s professional agency to influence school practices).

Jessica begins her speech by explicitly constructing the immediate identities of both herself and the audience, identifying them all as language teachers (lines 01–02). While this is similar to Stefan’s approach, Jessica further specifies the type of teacher—a language teacher—thereby constructing a more specific language teacher identity in the central layers of discourse. Like Stefan, she uses the instructional text as a discursive resource to achieve this identity construction. However, what sets Jessica apart is her explicit acknowledgment of the role-playing element of the presentation, as she states, “the idea is that I am a language teacher […]” (line 01), thus demonstrating an awareness of the role-played aspect of the speech that Stefan does not express.

One particularly interesting aspect of Jessica’s presentation, which relates to the continuous identity construction in the intermediary layers of discourse, is her use of examples to illustrate misunderstandings caused by the spacing between words in texts. In lines 04–06, she introduces the topic by framing it as a dramatic issue: “It spreads quickly. It is also contagious, and it is not only rampant among pupils’ scrawl […]”. This is followed by humorous examples of how Swedish compound words tend to change meaning when written as separate words (lines 09–13). The contrast between the dramatic phrasing and the more light-hearted examples serves as a discursive resource that highlights the potentially amusing aspects of the issue. This approach most likely aims to make the audience laugh. Thus, Jessica’s phrasing of her introduction functions as a discursive resource within the everyday discourse domain that is used to emphasize the humorous elements of the issue in the intermediary layers of discourse.

Furthermore, Jessica states, “Therefore, it is essential that we, as language educators, address this through our curriculum and provide more instruction on how to prevent such writing errors” (lines 27–29). Here, she uses the grammatical function of clusivity, with “we” serving as an inclusive pronoun that positions her, along with the audience, as part of a shared group of language teachers. This inclusive “we” becomes a discursive resource for fostering a sense of affinity among language teachers in the intermediary layers of discourse. In the same passage (lines 27–29), Jessica introduces curricula as a central element, arguing that the group of language educators should “address this through our curricula”. Since contributing to practices and policies within educational contexts is key to teachers’ professional agency [6], the curriculum seems to function as a discursive resource for teacher identity construction connected to the professional discourse domain.

In the outer layers of discourse, Jessica, in a similar way to Stefan, refers to research and studies. Instead of focusing on a person as someone who may legitimize a scientific connection, she highlights results, although in a rather unspecific way: “studies show that such improper writing impacts reading comprehension by as much as 22%” (lines 20–22). In this way, she uses studies of reading comprehension as a discursive resource belonging in the academic discourse domain to highlight the negative effects of spacing between words.

In Figure 3, the most prominent discursive recourses used by Jessica in her identity construction are placed in accordance with the corresponding layers of discourse and discourse domains.

In Jessica’s speech, discursive resources connected to the professional and academic discourse domains appear more prominent, compared to Stefan’s greater reliance on resources associated with the everyday discourse domain.

5.3. Eric

This third excerpt can be understood as a contrasting example to Stefan’s and Jessica’s speeches, as it takes place in a rather different setting and includes interaction between a student teacher and his pupils. Furthermore, it more clearly highlights how discursive resources may operate on several levels simultaneously.

Eric was teaching a secondary school class during his last teaching placement in his teacher education. In contrast to Stefan and Jessica, in this setting, Eric was expected to behave as a teacher and be able to manage the learning environment in the classroom himself, although his personal tutor was present in the background. The excerpt shows an interaction taking place when Eric explained Einsatzgruppen (a German death squad in World War II) to his pupils during a history class.

• Excerpt 3. (E: Eric, P1–P4: Pupil 1–4)

01

E: There’s a film. Have you seen it? I think it’s called Inglourious Basterds. It’s

02

the one where he enters a house. Have you seen it?

03

Several pupils: Yes

04

P1: Which one?

05

E: Inglourious Basterds. He goes into a house, and they have Jews hidden under

06

the house.

07

P2: Under the floor.

08

E: Yes. Those are the kinds of things the Einsatz forces were doing. They went

09

into villages, tracked down Jews, and dragged them into the woods to shoot

10

them.

11

P3: Is it a good film?

12

E: Yes, but it’s completely historically inaccurate, you know.

13

P3: What does “inaccurate” mean?

14

E: That it’s not right, that things aren’t portrayed accurately. [In the film] Hitler

15

dies in a cinema, and I don’t think that happened in real life.

16

P4: He committed suicide.

17

E: Yes. And then we have the concentration camps.

18

P3: Just one question, what was the name of the film?

19

E + several pupils: Inglourious Basterds.

The action in focus in excerpt three is Eric explaining the function of a German death squad in World War II to his pupils. He does this by describing a scene from the movie Inglourious Basterds. Unlike Stefan and Jessica, Eric is expected to present himself as a teacher, in that he is instructing a class during his placement. The discourses present in this action include professional discourse (the potential use of film in educational contexts, the school environment), everyday discourse (the pupils’ comments, watching films) and academic discourse (historical inaccuracies in films, subject matter).

Eric constructs a particular kind of teacher identity within the central layers of discourse by making what could be interpreted as agnostic knowledge claims, primarily through the phrases “I think” (line 01) and “I don’t think” (line 15). In the first instance, Eric says that he thinks he knows the name of the film he intends to use to make a point. In the second, he states that he does not think Hitler died the way in which it is depicted in the film. In these cases (especially in the second case), it is likely that Eric is certain about the facts but uses expressions of uncertainty as a discursive resource to engage his pupils in the discussion.

In the intermediary layers of discourse, the scene that Eric introduces in lines 01–02 (“It’s the one where he enters the house”) appears significant. He initially gives a very brief description, but several pupils confirm that they are familiar with the film. Eric further explains the scene by repeating the film’s title and adding, “he goes into a house, and they have Jews hidden under the house” (lines 05–06). A student immediately confirms knowledge of the scene by contributing additional information (“under the floor”, line 07). The scene serves as a discursive resource that (1) establishes a connection with pupils through the shared everyday experience of watching a film and (2) brings a historical event to life, an event that is also tied to the subject Eric is teaching. Thus, the scene is a discursive resource connected to both the everyday and professional discourse domains, used to construct teacher identity within the intermediary layers of discourse.

In the outer layers of discourse, the film itself appears to be a useful discursive resource. Asking the pupils if they have seen a popular film directed by Quentin Tarantino could be seen as bringing both him, as the director, and the more general perception of Hollywood into the practice of watching a film. The film, then, functions as a discursive resource connected to the everyday discourse domain. However, the use of fictional or historical films in history education is a well-documented phenomenon in both research and practice [54,55]. By using the film scene, Eric adheres to a well-established tradition of employing the pedagogical potential of films when teaching history. This interpretation is further supported by his awareness of how to use films in the classroom, as shown when he ensures that the pupils understand the film’s historical inaccuracy (line 12: “but it’s completely historically inaccurate, you know”). From this perspective, Eric’s use of the tradition of incorporating films in history education serves as a discursive resource to construct the general identity as a history teacher.

In Figure 4, the most prominent discursive recourses used by Eric in his identity construction are placed in accordance with the corresponding layers of discourse and discourse domains.

In Eric’s explanation of a historical event, a film emerges as an important discursive resource. It is primarily used in connection with the everyday and professional discourse domains. In contrast to Stefan and Jessica, the academic discourse domain seems less relevant, which is not too surprising given the context in which Eric is operating.

6. Discussion

In this article, I have conducted an analysis of two speeches delivered by students portraying teachers addressing their peers in a rhetoric class, as well as one interactional sequence in which a pre-service teacher works with his secondary school class during his teaching placement. The analysis integrates the concepts of layers of discourse [18] and discourse domains [12] into a model to map the discursive resources employed by the students to construct teacher identity. The focus in this section is a reflection of the limitations and potential of using this model, followed by a discussion about its potential use in future research.

A few things need to be said about the limits of this study and the model. Applying the concepts of layers of discourse and discourse domains as they are used in the model is not the same as fully performing a vertical identity analysis or presenting an exhaustive description of language use in teacher identity production. For those wishing to delve deeper into the two concepts of layers of discourse and discourse domains, it is recommended to consult the relevant literature for a more detailed exploration of the concepts’ origin and potential. In this article, they are used to grasp the idea of identity construction at different societal levels and the typical language use in teacher education. The concepts are then integrated into a model that is an initial attempt to visualize and better understand how pre-service teachers can use discursive resources in their identity construction. Moreover, mapping resources with the aid of the model is not meant to replace a detailed analysis of the functions of discursive resources in teacher identity production. For instance, this study focuses on discourses in place [20,24] and employs the notion of mapping to describe how the discursive resources are used. This is only one of possibly several ways of doing it.

The heuristic model also has some theoretical limitations. The boundaries between the three layers of discourse and the three discourse domains are not rigid but fluid and often blurred. As Norris [18] (p. 179) points out, “there are often many more layers if we were to tease them all apart”. Additionally, the results suggest that the complex nature of discursive resources makes them difficult to categorize, as they can serve multiple purposes simultaneously and span different layers of discourse and discourse domains. Nonetheless, if we aim to understand how pre-service teachers use these resources to construct their teacher identity, we need to manage this complexity and, to some extent, simplify reality. The primary reason for testing this model is to create a clearer and more manageable overview of the resources used in teacher identity construction.

What, then, can we see with the help of the model? As James Wertsch [56] notes, studying resources (or mediational means) from the perspective of their use may reinforce the assumption that these resources are specifically designed to facilitate the intended action. Instead, as this study has hopefully shown, it is more likely that these resources are adapted by social actors to achieve a certain goal with their actions. This adaptability is visible in the results, as when Eric uses a scene from a Hollywood film to explain a historical turn of events, or when Jessica uses ideas from an academic instructional text to present herself as a language teacher.

Another aspect that becomes visible in the model are the resources that pre-service teachers deem as realistic or important to use when acting as a teacher, which is highly relevant for teacher identity. In the cases covered in this article, it concerns the actions of persuading colleagues in an argumentation and explaining a historical event for pupils. For example, both Stefan and Jessica reference regulatory documents such as curricula (Stefan through a direct quote and Jessica with a brief mention), which naturally requires knowledge of such texts. In general, written texts seem to be a relevant discursive resource for Stefan and Jessica [10], as becoming familiar with such documents is an essential aspect of both teacher education and the teaching profession. Eric, however, being more concerned with his relationship with the pupils, uses the discursive resource of a film to connect with his class and illustrate a point related to subject knowledge. This reveals how students draw on their knowledge of everyday issues, the teaching profession and their education in identity construction processes. Placing the resources in the model suggests that, when interacting with pupils, discursive resources that are connected to everyday and professional discourse domains could be predominant. In contrast, resources connected to the academic discourse domain appear more prevalent in the speeches given in the rhetoric class, where students speak as teachers to other (imagined) teachers. However, based on the limited data, such conclusions require further research.

Regarding the discursive resources used by the students, it is important to note that the choice of resources used naturally depends on the setting and what is available. Stefan’s and Jessica’s speeches are examples of institutional, one-sided interactions that do not elicit spoken responses from the audience, while Eric interacts with pupils in a more professional setting. Furthermore, the students may have different goals. Stefan and Jessica are likely to be more focused on completing their tasks and earning a pass grade than on accurately portraying a teacher. In contrast, Eric, who is teaching at a school, is likely more concerned with activities such as building relationships with pupils and teaching according to a lesson plan [47]. Additionally, one aspect of Eric’s teaching is that he is being assessed by a professional present in the classroom.

In future research, it would be interesting to use the model to investigate discursive resources in, for example, written communication. Additionally, it would be beneficial to find ways of developing the model to better grasp how the discursive resources that operate across multiple layers of discourse or discourse domains move between them. Discursive resources are complex and, as the examples in this article suggest, may be used on several different levels and in several discourse domains simultaneously. This is a potential challenge. For future reference, I argue that it would be fruitful to use the model in two ways, depending on the focus of this study, either by (1) describing the multifunctionality of a chosen discursive recourse in a specific situation or (2) providing an overview of the multitude of discursive resources used in a larger scale activity.