Conference Agenda

Initial Teacher Education (ITE) represents a key opportunity for the construction of professional identity, as it constitutes the first institutional context in which knowledge, practices, values, and expectations about what it means to be a teacher are negotiated. However, this stage has been widely questioned in the international literature, as ITE models tend to oscillate between two opposing poles: technocratic training—focused on practical tools for immediate labor effectiveness—and highly theoretical training, strongly disciplinary in nature and largely disconnected from classroom realities (Wang et al., 2023; Ell et al., 2019). This polarization has not only shaped the curricular design of teacher education programs but has also had direct effects on the identity construction processes of future teachers (Carrasco-Aguilar et al., 2025). Research shows that achieving a balance between these approaches does not depend solely on the prescribed curriculum, but rather on how university professors interpret, negotiate, and enact it, positioning them as central actors in shaping formative experiences (Leite & Sousa-Pereira, 2022). From this perspective, teacher identity in formation is not built exclusively through content, but through interactions, role models, and pedagogical practices that explicitly and implicitly convey particular conceptions of teaching.

Since the 1990s, Initial Teacher Education for Primary School teachers in Spain has undergone a gradual process of reform aimed at fostering a professional identity grounded in pedagogical renewal. This process culminated in the institutionalization of what is now the four-year Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education, offered by Faculties of Education at universities and affiliated institutions (Luzón & Montes, 2018). Since the integration of Primary teacher education into Spanish universities, teacher preparation has faced multiple challenges related to the system’s capacity to promote motivation toward the profession, the development of socio-emotional competencies, and adequate professional preparation, among others (Garcia-Vila et al., 2021; Magro et al., 2021; Muntaner-Guasp et al., 2021).

Within this context, one of the most significant tensions in ITE concerns how to foster a teacher identity that is both professional and critical. This requires acknowledging that teaching is not a neutral activity, but rather a situated practice shaped by power relations, ethical decisions, and political frameworks. From this standpoint, authors such as Giroux (1997) argue for understanding teachers as transformative intellectuals—professionals capable of critically reflecting on their practice, questioning structures that reproduce inequality within the education system, and acting as agents of change committed to an emancipatory and democratic pedagogy. In initial teacher education, this perspective demands moving beyond the mere transmission of teaching methods and creating spaces to critically examine the social meaning of education.

Promoting this type of identity also requires questioning the formative role of university professors. ITE unfolds within a social environment dominated by processes of standardization, control, and accountability, which tend to restrict space for critical perspectives on teacher education. In this context, educating reflective and politically aware teachers implies that those who train teachers must critically examine their own practices, assumptions, and positions regarding knowledge, childhood, and schooling (Imbernon, 2017). The identity of teacher educators is thus constructed within a relational framework in which pedagogical example and formative discourse become particularly relevant. University professors project expectations onto their students, imagining future professional trajectories that may ultimately shape their career paths.

This paper examines the model of teacher identity that university professors project onto their Primary Education students, focusing on the future expectations they construct about them.

Across international research and policy contexts, teacher education (TE) faces a persistent challenge: novice teachers often struggle to connect theoretical coursework with the complex realities of classroom practice. A growing body of research argues that Teacher Core Practices (TCP) offer a promising response to this problem because they focus not on decontextualized behaviours but on complex, holistic activities that are fundamental to teaching and grounded in disciplinary goals. TCP, such as eliciting student thinking, leading classroom discussions, or giving feedback, are teachable, learnable, and oriented toward improving learning opportunities for all students.

However, despite the international momentum behind TCP, definitional work remains underdeveloped. Frameworks vary in granularity, scope, and subject specificity, and the field continues to grapple with how to conceptualize and teach TCP in ways that avoid rote imitation while cultivating professional judgment. Frameworks of TCP not only differ across countries, institutional contexts, and research environments, but – and this is the study’s assumption – conversations about joint observed teaching practices differ between schoolteachers, teacher educators, and researchers in terms of attention to and interpretation of important incidents as well as in terms of the used terminology, and how TCP are conceived. Hence, this study pursues the research question:

How can teacher core practices be conceptualized as a shared language between research, TE and schools?

Since Lortie (1975) the call for a common professional language about teaching practice has been persistent. This call for a common language has been renewed and connected to the TCP-approach as a turn to more practice-based TE. Attempts to work on shared frameworks across contexts, subjects and grades have been carried out (Grossman et al., 2019). For student teachers to achieve deep understanding of TCP – McDonald and colleagues argue – definitional work of core practices in K12-school should be combined with pedagogies of TE (McDonald et al., 2013). Also, Kloser and colleagues work on the development and refinement of a shared language about instruction combining student teachers’ learning of the core practice in university method courses with their approximated activities (Kloser et al., 2019). Recently Blikstad-Balas and colleagues have argued for the potential of creating a common language of teaching through targeted discussions about video clips (Blikstad-Balas et al., 2024) and Kavanagh and colleagues delimit core practice from best practice (Kavanagh et al. 2024).

By shared language, we do not mean a common language in the sense of a predefined, democratically adopted or one-sided hegemonic vocabulary, but rather a language that emerges from joint conversations observing the same teaching. We talk about shared language when the participants understand each other’s vocabulary and perspectives and can engage in shared discussions about the qualities of teaching.

Data for this study comes from a bigger project between researchers, teacher educators from three teacher educations and schoolteachers from three schools. The TEACOP projects focusses on TCP in the subjects L1 (Danish), mathematics, and natural science. Through three iterative DBR cycles over three semesters, the study aims to identify a culturally situated repertoire of TCP that is grounded in real classroom contingencies, sensitive to disciplinary variation, and aligned with the overarching goal of engaging learning for all. While teacher educators work with their student teachers and schoolteachers work on the same core practices in video clubs all participants meet in one day Research Circles (RC) to discuss jointly their work and experiences. The RC-meetings are documented and audio taped and thus provide a good basis for studying how teachers, teacher educators, and researchers co‑construct meaning around TCP through structured conversations grounded in authentic classroom video.