“To Tia with love”: Chilean mathematics teacher identities after professional development

Abstract

It is not easy for teachers to re-author their professional identities to incorporate change after participation in professional development (PD). In this article, we seek to understand Chilean teachers' collective identity performances after PD into collaborative problem-solving mathematics. We undertook a classical thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews held with 10 primary school teachers 18months after their participation in PD. We present an innovative report of our findings by combining the interview analysis into a movie synopsis and creating a fictional protagonist, Tia (aunty' in Spanish), who represents the common findings from the ten teachers. We found the attractive identities performed by teachers, in particular the mother-saviour' and the successful' teacher, conflicted with their understandings of the teacher role promoted by PD. We argue the unique method of combining data allowed for reporting findings with both breadth and depth and this enabled us to see the way in which identities are culturally and contextually produced. We suggest PD needs to cater to these attractive teacher identities in order to be successful and sustainable in the long term.