Comprehension of the Co-Operation of Professional Identity and Metacognition of English Teachers in Pedagogical Problem Solving

Abstract

Teaching is a metacognitive pedagogical problem-solving process. Teachers’ commitment to this process can be partly influenced by their professional identity (PI) in the pursuit of identity-congruent actions and identity verification. For these pursuits, teachers produce cognitive, affective, and behavioural responses, which are the representations of PI, and use metacognition by monitoring and regulating these responses for successful pedagogical problem solving. Teachers, in turn, improve their PI and metacognition. Based on a narrative approach, the problem-solving processes of five Korean teachers of English are explored along with their PI and metacognition operation. This exploration provides the rationales for the conceptualised co-operation mechanism of teacher PI and metacognition, and also reveals the possibility of its variation. Comprehension of the mechanism enables teacher educators and policy makers to establish specific plans and procedures for principled professional development or policy support. Thus, based on the conceptualisation and findings, systematic interventions via problem-solving-based teacher education and contextual support, which help teachers develop PI and metacognition, are discussed.