Employing James Gee’s Analytic Lens for Identity to Investigate Teacher Identity Development

The current article is an exploration of the construction and development of teacher identities at the tertiary level in Pakistan. Identity is the sense of who one is as a professional, and it is becoming evident that it is important for teachers at all levels to develop a clear sense of identity as it leads to better practices and high level of commitment to the profession. The researcher adopted a constructivist stance for the investigation of identity and used data triangulation by using life histories, semi-structured interviews (based on the James Gee’s Lens for Identity) and fieldnotes as the sources of data. Six participants from urban tertiary institutions in various cities of Pakistan were selected and interviewed. The gathered data was analyzed iteratively through coding and contrastive analysis and highlighted the similarities and disparities of the various perspectives of identity; it was discovered that the participants had a better awareness and acceptance of their nature identity, whereas the institutional and discursive identities were the ones that posed conflict for them. The researcher also found that affinity identity was the weakest link in the Gee lens for teachers of Pakistan.