Journey of “Becoming”: Secondary teacher candidates’ concerns and struggles

Abstract

To better facilitate teacher candidates’ professional identity development, it is important for teacher educators to be aware of the concerns and struggles candidates face. In this study, seven secondary teacher candidates were followed over the last two years of their teacher education program to examine and describe the concerns they had and sources of those concerns. Based on the findings, we noted that the concerns of teacher candidates shifted from content knowledge, classroom management, and individual student interaction to instructional strategies and teachers’ roles. The sources of such concerns and the implications for teacher education are also discussed. (100 words)