A mixed research on teacher feelings and teacher identity development of preservice mathematics teachers

The aim of this study was to analyze how preservice mathematics teachers see themselves as teachers, how they construct their professional identities and in what conditions they feel as teachers. In addition, this study investigates the relationship between feeling as a teacher and teacher identity. A Turkish version of Early Teacher Identity Measure (ETIM) developed by Friesen and Besley (2013) was administered to 184 preservice mathematics teachers. In addition, 19 teacher candidates were interviewed. The audio recordings were transcribed and analyzed through content analysis. While ANOVA models were run to test the similarities of the means of academic years, Spearman Correlation coefficients were calculated to analyze the relationship between teacher feeling and teacher identity. According to the results of the study, having an interaction with students has a triggering role in preservice teachers' self-categorization and feeling as a teacher. In addition, it was concluded that feeling as a teacher is a crucial component for teacher identity development and the affective dimension should not be omitted in researches on identity.