Vocational Teacher Educators’ Role Identity: A Case Study in Malta

Alison Said

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.18.1.03

Authors

Alison Said Lancaster University, UK https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3577-9176

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.18.1.03

Keywords:

Vocational Teacher Educators (VTEs), Role Identities, Vocational Education (VET) Context, Identity Theory

Abstract

This paper gains a deeper understanding of the professional role identities of vocational teacher educators (VTEs) when compared with mainstream teacher educators (MTEs) in Malta. It is framed using identity theory from the structural symbolic interactionism perspective (Burke and Stets 2009). Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, adopting thematic analysis. Findings show that VTEs and MTEs underpin their teaching differently, influenced by the perceptions they have about their professional role identities. There is no “one size fits all” solution for each country, yet this study contributes to a field with a limited research base and offers new insights to identity theory.

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Author Biography

Alison Said, Lancaster University, UK

Alison Said is a warranted engineer by profession who worked in Malta’s telecommunications industry before her current senior lecturing role within Malta’s main vocational education and training institution, MCAST. She received her B.Sc. (Hons.) ICT in Communications and Computer Engineering and M.Sc. ICT in Telecommunications from the University of Malta in 2010 and 2012, respectively. In 2020, she was awarded a Ph.D. in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement by Lancaster University. Her doctoral research was partially funded by the Tertiary Education Scholarship Scheme (TESS) Grant offered by the Maltese Ministry for Education and Employment, which she had won in 2018. Her main research interests focus on vocational teaching and learning, higher education, and professional identities.

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