The public face of teacher identity - narrative construction of teacher identity in public policy documents

This article will illuminate how public narratives about teachers within the Norwegian national curriculum documents regulating teacher education (1999 and 2003) and elementary school (1997) construct teacher identities. The aim is not to define what identity Norwegian teachers as a group or individuals possess, but to describe how teacher identity is narratively constructed in some selected public policy texts. The policy documents are analysed within a theoretical framework based on poststructuralist and discourse theory combined with theories of narrative identity. The article describes how a narrative plot in the documents constructs and/or presupposes a certain construction of teacher identity. The understanding of learning as an immanent force in children is a point of departure for this narrative plot. The article argues that public narratives about teachers inscribed in the documents give the educational policy documents a rather strong governing function. This governing function is called narrative control and goes beyond the administrative regulation of elementary school and teacher education, as it produces and draws on teacher identities with significance for the Norwegian teacher discourse.