Constructing Personal and Professional Identity during Teacher Education.

This paper provides an overview of teaching as a gendered profession in Finland, focusing on recent research on teachers and their professional development. Currently, women are better educated than men in Finland, but they still do not achieve employment positions and salaries equal to those of men. Though there tend to be more female than male teachers, most principals and professors are male. This researcher examined preservice teachers' and adult education teachers' biographies and professional socialization from a feminist point of view, noting the importance of using the life history approach to studying teachers. The study explored student teachers' identity making process during the one-year secondary teacher education program at Tampere University, comparing school teachers and adult education teachers and the ways in which their career paths and construction of personal and professional identities differed. Data were collected via life history interviews, student journals, portfolios, in-class assignments, and home assignments. (Contains 46 references.) (SM)