Becoming Teachers: identity trajectories, gender, and professionalism in Italian primary schools. A narrative analysis of Focus Groups

Abstract

The paper examines the identity trajectories of female teachers in early childhood and primary education through an intersectional lens. Drawing on a focus group with six Italian teachers analyzed through Reflexive Thematic Analysis, the study identifies three thematic clusters: narratives of professional choice as a vocation discovered retrospectively and mediated by gendered biographical contingencies; the meanings attributed to teaching read as spaces of female agency; the tension between personal identity and professional role in the way participants negotiate or resist the expectations embedded in the figure of the “maestra.” The paper contributes to debates on teachers' professional identity and on the feminization of schooling as an outcome of a sexual division of labor that symbolically devalues the profession. At the level of teacher education, it advocates biographical and intersectional approaches capable of making visible the gendered structures inscribed in professional narratives.