Problem-based Learning in Initial Teacher Education: The Construction and Adaption of Professional Identity

The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether problem-based learning as a learning model has the potential to develop and adapt students’ professional identity. I argue that in an ever-changing educational environment and a consistent neo-liberal ideology of educational policy, that teachers’ professionalism is a vital component within teacher education. The research took place within a four-year undergraduate teacher education degree in a university located in the South-East of England. The purposive sample of eight students in the second year of their studies was chosen from a year group of 256. Professional studies was a core module that ran throughout the four years of the degree and was seen as the ‘spine’ of the degree. Problem-based learning was located within the second year professional studies module. The sample of eight students were interviewed four times using a qualitative methodology; before, during and after their experience of problem-based learning. The first interviews investigated the sample’s previous educational experiences, the second and third examined the sample’s experience of problem-based learning and the fourth considered the sample’s emerging professional identity and the transferable nature of the skills and attitudes that were nurtured within a problem-based learning environment. The main findings, which emerged from the interviews of the sample of eight students, were the ways that learner identity was constructed and deconstructed throughout the student teachers educational life. Learner identity and professional identity were inextricably linked and learner identity was seen, within the analysis of the interviews, as a powerful precursor to the construction of professional identity. I argue that the discourses associated with problem-based learning acts as organising structure that can, in the safe, critical and supportive environment, promote a collaborative, critical and reflective professional identity that, I argue is vital in the ever changing environment of education in the United Kingdom.