Beginning teachers' professional identity work and its support

Learning to be a teacher is a complex and multi-faceted process associated with building a realistic professional teacher identity. Beginning teachers' professional identity making is seen as to a large extent unique and continuous process of reconciling the personal and contextual. Teachers' contexts either provide them with opportunities to cultivate or to constrain their professional identity development. This chapter highlights the professional identity of beginning teachers and how to support them in their work on their professional identity to become the teacher they wish to be and act as such.