Points for Debate – Writing Otherwise on Teacher Professional Identity

Abstract

This section explores what may unfold when academic writing intentionally departs from conventional norms. Rather than treating writing as a neutral representational tool, the approach adopted here embraces ambiguity, experimentation, and playfulness as pathways towards generating new understandings. Writing is framed as an ethical and imaginative practice that resists institutional pressures limiting creativity and narrowing scholarly inquiry. Building on this orientation, the chapter introduces a series of alternative modalities – real and fictional vignettes, artistic practices, dilemmas and journaling, metaphor, performative reflection, anecdote, chance-based exercises, and haiku – to disrupt habitual academic forms and open more expansive epistemic possibilities concerning teacher professional development. Through these creative approaches, scholarship on teacher professional identity and the teacher Self becomes a space of inquiry that is fluid, reflective, and ethically responsive. The exploration culminates in a focus on drawing the ‘teacher identity island’, offering a nuanced lens through which to consider how educators negotiate and inhabit their evolving professional selves.