Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on New Approaches in Education
Year: 2025
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Introducing Innovation: The Role of Student Identity
Jo Ann Netto-Shek
ABSTRACT:
In this paper, I present the purpose, aims, context and significance of innovating a teacher education course on children’s literature. Against this backdrop, I present the findings of a focused qualitative investigation into student response to the innovations introduced in a specific course. Discussion about the findings begins from current thinking on the implementation of innovation to findings from the study that alert us to an issue of learner identity that seems to be missed in this body of thinking. In this paper, I demonstrate and discuss how despite learner perseverance, student teachers as tertiary students struggle with how their identities might or should be reconstructed in preparation of working in real world contexts. I consequently argue that unless tertiary education courses attend to the impact of innovations on the development of learner identities, little by way of learner preparation will be achieved no matter the representation of innovation introduced in courses.
Keywords: tertiary education, teacher education, teacher development, children’s literature, identity development