Learning to Become a Physics Teacher: A Case Study of Experienced Teachers

Abstract

This paper focuses on Wegner’s concept of learning to examine how experienced physics teachers conceptualize and explain their professional identity. Participants were four female physics teachers with more than 15 years of teaching experience. These four teachers were selected as illustrative and contrastive cases for the purpose of the study. The data collection included semi-structured interviews and field notes from classroom observations in each participant’s classroom. Interview and classroom observation data were analyzed through the constant-comparative method. The results showed that these teachers had positive and negative experiences in different types of schools; and higher-achieving students motivated these teachers to solve different types of problems. Although teachers believed that science should be taught through experiments or inquiry-based instruction, they did not have any opportunity to teach in a laboratory. Their role was confined to teaching in a classroom to solve problems. They defined their concept of learning to become a physics teacher with metaphors that focused on the cognitive demands of teaching and the learning process. Further research on teacher education should support teacher development through addressing social and epistemic demands of teaching and learning.

1. Introduction

Expert physics teachers have sufficient content knowledge, knowledge of student conceptions, and knowledge of topic-specific instructional strategies [1]. It is believed that expert teachers can choose appropriate problems and know how and when to facilitate student participation through developing commitment to and identity of their profession.

According to Cheung (2008), teacher identity involves teachers’ personal and professional roles, beliefs, perceptions of their rights and conceptions, pedagogy, and metacognition [2]. For example, changes in the curriculum and assessments can change teachers’ pedagogical approaches, their commitment, and identity [2]. Etkina (2010) also indicated that physics teachers needed to develop planning, assessing, and pedagogical strategies to explain and apply the processes of scientific inquiry to be competent in teaching specific physics topics [3]. However, after an intense teacher education program, school standards force teachers to transfer knowledge in a didactic way. Karaolis and Philippou (2019) argued that secondary teachers’ professional activity was complex and related to their decision making, motivation, and attitudes; teachers’ life experiences could impact their professional role and reveal the problems in job satisfaction, professional commitment, self-efficacy, and motivation [4]. Riley and Aubrey (2022) also discussed the use of different educational theories for the construction of teacher identity; the authors referred to Lave and Wenger’s socially situated learning and communities of practice [5]. Wenger (2022) described teachers’ professional development as a continuous process of active engagement within a community of learners in several dimensions such as social, cultural, and political dimensions [6]. The characterization of experienced teachers’ professional identity can guide to the understanding teachers’ knowledge, experiences, and abilities and their interactions with others and contextual issues to improve teaching and learning processes. In a recently published work, Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2020) discussed the role of social learning spaces in value creation, personal experiences, community relations, and diverse practices [7]. Therefore, this multiple case study examined Turkish physics teachers’ professional identity using Wenger (1998)’s theory of learning [8,9]. The following research question guides the study: How do experienced in-service female physics teachers understand and describe their professional identity?

1.1. Conceptual Framework

Molla and Nolan (2020) refer to teacher professionalism to emphasize teacher quality, expertise, autonomy, recognition, norms, and values [10]. Teachers’ professional performance is assessed referring to how they teach at particular instances in different contexts since human actions are based on institutional rules as well as their perceptions, intentions, and motivations. Caza and Creary (2016) define professional identity as one’s subjective psychological image involving beliefs, values, and experiences as a professional [11]. Individuals describe themselves in the context of their work through the interaction among personal characteristics, community relations, and professional practices to understand what they know, how they do, and why and when they do things [12]. Professional identity depends on both the person and context to develop a teaching culture. Avraamidou (2014) defined teacher identity as the roles of teachers, what a teacher should know and do, teachers’ professional experiences, and teaching practices or interactions in a specific institution, society, or community [13]. She stated, “a. teacher identity is socially constructed and constituted; b. teacher identity is dynamic and fluid and constantly being formed and reformed; and c. teacher identity is complex and multifaceted, consisting of various sub-identities that are interrelated” (p. 164) [13]. Professional identity can be defined as an individual construct related to self-efficacy, moral decision making, and career success that is shaped through personal, professional, and institutional interactions in a dynamic way to conceptualize one’s own role in a context.

Farnsworth, Kleanthous, and Wenger-Trayner (2016) situate teacher identity as a community of practice to create a variety of communities such as online learning or inclusive education in the process of professional development considering the historical and cultural context [9]. It is believed that teachers’ membership within a community helps their identity formation through their perceived roles, goals, values, expectations, and relationships with others or previous experiences in other communities [9]. The community of practice of teachers can be considered as a process of their engagement in the activity of teaching community for the similar purposes. Teachers may experience different interactions within the school community at different points of their profession and learn how to become a teacher through negotiating their membership in different situations [9]. Experienced teachers are considered as having central participation, who experienced social relationships, autonomy, and competence in teaching and learning context through overcoming multiple challenges.

Teacher identity is ongoing and not static to recognize one’s meaning making in a specific context through integrating both personal and professional elements of being a teacher [14]. A teacher’s professional identity is described as a complex and dynamic construct, in which teachers’ personal roles and individual factors are in interaction with their professional roles in society. According to Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2022) [7] and Wenger (1998) [8], learning theory focuses on learning in several dimensions: (1) meaning: an ability to experience and make sense of one’s life in a context; (2) practice: implementation or action based on the context; (3) community: belonging to a community in which the activities come to an action; and (4) identity: defining views, orientations, knowledge, and beliefs to characterize the participants’ science identities in the context of the community. Wenger’s conception of learning is mutually connected to understanding teachers’ experiences in multiple learning activities and contexts while exploring the complex process of becoming a teacher.

1.2. Review of the Literature

Research on professional identity has been largely conducted with elementary science teachers [15,16] or beginning or pre-service teachers [17,18]. It was observed in Williams (2010)’s study that pre-service teachers had difficulty when they began the teaching profession since they were used to being novices in the field [19]. Elementary teachers’ science learning was categorized in different ways as related to everyday in-school and out-of-school experiences, the development of subject matter knowledge, being an active participant of a science experiment, or engaging in science in the cognitive and affective dimensions [20]. A study by Madden and Weibe (2015) [17] examined three female elementary teachers’ science teaching identity through classroom observations, science notebooks, and student interviews. The results showed that three teachers defined the nature of their teaching as hands-on focused, math-oriented, or classroom manager. In their institution, experimentation-oriented teachers had more science-related interactions and acted as the teacher of science for other teachers. The classroom manager was considered as the classroom leader or extrinsic motivator who tended to talk about science informally. Math person was perceived as a didactic and uninterested teacher in teaching science. These three female elementary teachers framed their science teaching identity in parallel to their strengths. In another study, Danielsson and Warwick (2014) found that beginning primary science teachers had challenges in embracing an inquiry approach to science teaching since they had a lack of content knowledge and resources for conducting experiments and time constraints. They defined primary science teaching as social caring and an enjoyable activity rather than subject learning and modeling scientists’ work [21]. Saka et al. (2013) explained that even though a beginning middle school science teacher had high self-efficacy, the teacher developed negative feelings since the administration did not value his efforts in using reform-based instruction; the influence of high-stakes testing was also inevitable in the development of teacher identity [22]. Upadhyay (2009) indicated that an inquiry-oriented female science teacher could plan science lessons to engage students in meaningful science learning through a hands-on, exploratory, and conceptually challenging teaching approach while preparing students for the test [23]. The study indicated that teachers might develop a temporary identity reversal to utilize a teacher-centered approach to teach for the test [23]. Deneroff (2016) exemplified the role of professional development to improve a high school science teacher’s identity as an inquiry teacher despite bureaucratic treatment and low-achieving diverse students [24].

In a community, each member develops an identity by becoming a legitimate participant while improving their abilities by their interactions with experts through metacognitive practices to understand who they are, what they know and do not know, and how their practices develop over time [25]. Teachers’ mutual engagement is related to the process of negotiation and recognition—how they make sense of the events and interactions in the context of the teaching community in different but recognized ways including traditional and authentic practices. Teacher learning is dependent on the social and contextual environment and how teachers’ meaning making is shaped by their conceptualization of abstractions within the field based on specific groups and cultures. Teachers share common goals with common resources; and their knowledge, beliefs, and practices represent their identity through legitimate, recognized participation—how teachers perceive their experiences might be shaped by their interactions within a community [26]. Quan et al. (2022) referred to science identity development related to how science was presented: when science is defined as memorizing facts, students might not understand what conducting science means, so the authors believed that science should be defined in the form of making scientific argumentation [26]. In Limbere et al. (2022)’s study [27], in-service science teachers also tended to have authoritative positions to cover the school curriculum in a limited period, although they discussed the need for facilitating student-centered instruction. There was a contradiction between teachers’ beliefs and practices that required a balance in their professional identity. Moreover, teachers might perceive themselves differently within the reform: some teachers defined their work as the implication of designer products, scientists, a scientist who teaches, pipeline ideology, or a traditional teacher [28]. In another study, Thomson and Gregory (2013) found that in-service elementary teachers tended to believe that science teaching and learning was traditional and structured to prepare students for standardized testing, and these teachers showed emotional reactions to inquiry-based or reform-based education [29]. These studies showed that that teachers needed to reshape their professional identity for the reform calls to choose appropriate teaching strategies and resources, define the learning objectives, and teach scientific inquiry with confidence.

Teachers should be evaluated not by looking at the exam scores of their students but by considering the different dimensions of their work. Teachers’ development can be self-regulated in a continuum and supported by early experiences, family interactions, and mentoring practices. Physics teachers develop views of the nature of science and scientific inquiry through formal and informal experiences to identify themselves as a science person with competency in science content, scientific processes, and thinking skills [30,31]. However, a physics teacher’s identity may not be directly observed in their teaching practices due to logistical or personal constraints such as student-teaching experiences, motivation, and national standards [32]. Additionally, Zohar and Bronshtein (2005) claimed that the issue of power relationships tended to influence girls’ attendance to a science-related major, attendance to a teaching science program, or their choice of studying science [33]. Studies have focused on female teacher identity at the elementary school level [16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. Only a few recent studies discussed the role of women in teaching physics [26]. Larsson and Danielsson (2023) also conducted a study with pre-service physics teachers and argued that women in physics tended to have difficulties in studying physics and negotiate their identity in relation to masculine norms which were dominant in the field of physics [34]. These studies emphasized the need to understand the experiences of female physics teachers about how they make meaning of their participation and continuation in physics. Therefore, it is important to examine what kinds of factors, variables, constraints, contexts, experiences, and relationships impact the construction of female teachers’ professional identities and how physics teacher identities mediate classroom practice.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Research Design, Context, and Participants

This study employed a multiple case study approach [35] to examine experienced physics teachers’ conceptualizations of their professional identity. Multiple case studies allowed the research process to analyze the individual cases in detail and identify the commonalities across the cases [36]. The study was not interested in the changes in teachers’ identity but focused on their existing professional identity since the participants had more than 15 years of teaching experience. The study focused on the identity of four female high school physics teachers in a large city in the northwest region of Turkey. High schools in Turkey can be public or private schools in different categories including science (8%), Anatolian (61%), vocational and technical Anatolian (9%), religion-based Anatolian (16%), social science (2%), fine arts (2%), and sports (2%) high school categories [37]. Science high schools aim to advance students’ capabilities in science subjects to increase their attendance to science careers. Anatolian high schools aim to address diverse students’ needs in both natural and social sciences; but the success rate of these students is generally less than students at science high schools. Vocational and technical Anatolian high schools aim to improve students’ abilities in a specialization to gain proficiency; but the university entrance rate from these schools is very low. Religion-based Anatolian high schools aim to give advanced religious lessons in addition to natural and social sciences. Students at these schools tend to select religion-related majors. Social science high schools aim to focus on social, political, and literal problems to prepare students for social science programs. Fine arts high schools aim to raise qualified individuals in the field of fine arts. Sports high schools provide students with basic knowledge and skills in the field of physical education and sports. In this study, the instructional context was selected as public Anatolian high schools, which is the largest category. Students at these schools have a high science and mathematics background compared to vocational, religion-related, social science, fine arts, and sports high schools. In Anatolian high schools, each class included 20–30 students with medium or high socio-economic status. In Anatolian high schools, the physics lessons were taught for two hours a week in the ninth and tenth grades and for four hours per week in the eleventh and twelfth grades.

The participants were selected among 32 physics teachers (22 male, 10 female) who were teaching at Anatolian high schools and voluntarily participated in the researcher’s project on physics teacher identity. Selecting these physics teachers was convenient and purposeful since the researcher was working in the same metropolitan region to present different professional identities. Among 32 physics teachers, 4 female physics teachers were selected due to the characteristics of their teacher education programs. Physics teaching programs at Turkish universities have different curriculums and expectations based on students’ rankings in the university entrance examination. Higher-ranking students mostly prefer education faculties with education in a foreign language other than Turkish. Four female physics teachers completed a five-year physics teaching program in the faculty of education, which had an education language different from Turkish (English or German). These participants were also selected among 10 female physics teachers due to their illustrative and contrastive descriptions of their work in metaphors. Participants’ names were Deva, Ladonna, Sandy, and Serana as pseudonyms. Ladonna and Sandy graduated from the same university in the same metropolitan area (research site) of Turkey; but Deva and Serana graduated from different universities in another metropolitan city of Turkey. These four teachers were unique since they worked at Anatolian high schools for more than 10 years. The participants’ ages were around 30 or 50 with over 15 years of teaching experience. These teachers had taught in different regions and schools (vocational and technical Anatolian or science high schools) before coming to Anatolian high schools.

Table 1. Demographic information of participants.

Teacher (Pseudonyms)	Teaching Experience	Education	Previous Teaching Background	Language of Education Faculty
Deva	15	Bachelor	Vocational School Anatolian High School	German
Sandy	20	Bachelor	Vocational School Anatolian High School	English
Ladonna	29	Bachelor	Middle School Vocational School Science School	English
Serana	27	Master of Science	Science School Anatolian High School	English

summarizes the background information of the participants.

2.2. Data Collection and Analysis

During the data collection process, qualitative methods were utilized to explore participating physics teachers’ beliefs, experiences, community relations, and practices. Each physics teacher was invited for a one-hour interview in their schools. Semi-structured interviews focused on Wenger’s (1998) concept of learning [8], and sample questions were modified from Timostsuk and Ugaste (2010) [38] and are presented in Appendix A. Besides teacher interviews, classroom observations were conducted by the researcher in each teacher’s classroom. Each teacher was observed for at least one hour of lesson time through taking qualitative field notes about the role of the teacher and students, classroom discourse, and teaching materials. During the classroom observation, lesson artifacts (assessment tasks, problems, etc.) were also collected from each teacher’s classroom.

For data analysis, teacher interviews were transcribed verbatim. The constant-comparative method was utilized to analyze data sources, transcriptions of interviews, and field notes [39]. Codes were determined based on theory and data. Taking into account the similarities or differences of the codes, it was aimed to create a logical set of relationships by categorizing and creating themes. The synthesis was made by considering the themes of experience, belief, practice, and community of Wenger’s (1998) learning theory [8]. The themes and codes are represented in

Table 2. An overview of codes and themes.

Themes	Categories	Codes
Experience	Selecting a major	Role model
		Interest
	Teaching physics program	Courses
	Working as an in-service teacher	Curriculum
		Student profile
		Classroom context
		Teacher development
Belief	Teaching Science	Assimilation and accommodation
		Student-centered instruction
		Use of experiments
	Learning Science	Individual effort
		Active participation
		Exploration
	Student Ability	Readiness/prior knowledge
		Tendency to memorize
		Depending on internet
		Bias about physics
Community	Interactions with	Students
		School/projects
		University
		Society
Practices	Instructional Strategies	Triadic dialogue
		Daily life examples
		Information-seeking
		Use of board/smartboard
Metaphor	Teacher role	Plain text
		Exam coach
		Bridge
		Anchorwoman

. The interrater reliability of the coding process was established by the author and a graduate student: two researchers coded 30% of the total qualitative data. After establishing moderate agreement (70%) in coding, researchers discussed the disagreements to resolve inconsistencies and establish high consistency in coding.

3. Results

The multiple case study presented in this paper showed the physics teachers’ experiences, community interactions, practices, and beliefs in different school contexts. Case studies were described under the larger themes of Wegner’s learning theory to explain how these expert physics teachers identified their role with a metaphor of becoming a teacher.

3.1. Teachers’ Experiences

Participating teachers referred to their experiences as learners and in-service teachers. First, they explained the process of how they decided to choose teaching physics as a major: they had a role model to become a teacher or specific interest towards studying physics. For example, Deva and Serana emphasized the role of exemplary teachers who impressed them positively and encouraged them to attend a physics-related major. Deva had uncertainties in selecting a major: Deva started university life in a software development major, but she disliked being in front of the computer for hours and stated the following:

I was having bad times thinking whether I was in the right place. I did not want to work in a private company. My mother has been a role model for me as a teacher since my childhood, I thought that the teaching profession could always be comfortable for me. I had an interest in physics, so I chose to be a physics teacher.

Not only schoolteachers but also Deva’s family members were influential in her decision to choose a teaching-related major.

Participating teachers also had the perseverance and interest toward becoming a physics teacher. Ladonna said that she was a good physics student, and she did not have difficulty in content. Sandy indicated her experience in two different physics-related majors: she first registered in the physics department in the faculty of science, but teacher assignments were problematic for faculty of science students. She said the following:

People asked me, ‘What will I do after finishing the physics department?’ There was uncertainty. I needed more support to continue, maybe, I could go abroad and study in one of physics fields. Now, I work as a standard teacher.

Physics was a valuable field for Sandy, but she was discouraged from continuing in the physics department. She took the university entrance examination again to attend a physics teaching program in the faculty of education, and she put the teaching profession at the center of her life to work as a high school physics teacher.

These teachers also referred to their experiences as pre-service teachers during the teacher education program. They took advanced physics classes, but they emphasized that they did not learn how to become a physics teacher since the university physics and high school physics curriculums were independent from each other. They graduated from physics teaching programs without developing knowledge of the high school physics curriculum. For example, Deva said the following:

Very interesting. When I started, I thought there were teacher guidebooks. As it turns out, this only existed in elementary school. There was no such thing in high school anyway. “What am I going to tell you now? What am I going to do?” I did not know anything, I felt dissatisfied. I took only one curriculum development lesson, and it was not enough to be ready to teach. I sat down and worked on it by myself.

She studied hard and solved a lot of problems to learn the high school curriculum when she started working as a physics teacher.

After they became in-service teachers, they worked at different schools including vocational and technical Anatolian, science, and Anatolian high schools in different cities. They emphasized that different types of schools had different student profiles, which could influence teachers’ motivation to teach. For instance, Ladonna was appointed to work in two vocational and technical Anatolian high schools and stated that she chose to teach the simplest physics to teach basic vocabulary and mathematical calculations in science. Sandy stated:

I really had a bad experience; it was difficult to teach physics in a vocational school. Students did not know simple operations, subtraction, addition. That process was exhausting. I thought I should get out of this school as soon as possible because, as I said, I was dealing with more academically senior students. I worked there for three months, then I was appointed to teach in an Anatolian High School again.

Sandy defined that those students at vocational schools had a low middle school background and needed special help. Ladonna also preferred to work in a science or Anatolian high school where students tended to be interested in solving complex problems and talking about the role of science in society. Serana always worked in several science or Anatolian high schools and said the following:

I have always worked in qualified schools. I have always worked in Anatolian or Science high schools. That’s why I worked with children who inevitably had ideals and expectations. They were curious about learning new things, they were more ready to learn, socialize, and they gave value to your work as a teacher.

Serana emphasized that when students had an aim to achieve to be a doctor or an engineer, she as a physics teacher would be much more ready to address students’ needs. She thought that students’ readiness to learn influenced her teaching practices and said the following:

You can make a direct instruction, these students perceive it directly, understand it. They research, question and have a good background knowledge. Some students are in front of me on some subjects. I think students contribute to the development of the teacher a lot in such cases. As a teacher, you need to make it more interesting through questions to make students participate more actively in class. Sometimes I say, “It was great”, “That was very true”, “You made an important point” to encourage them a little more.

In addition, as in-service physics teachers, these teachers had challenges referring to the curriculum. Ladonna stated the following:

After I started to work as a teacher, there was a curriculum that we didn’t understand why it changed a lot, it was constantly changing. There was a period of pressure to focus on the curriculum. If it was obvious, I would understand, interpret it accordingly. It was not obvious. I taught based on my notes but covered the same content on the curriculum.

Ladonna experienced the pressure of the national standards and curriculum that put limitations on what to teach and what not to teach. Sandy also said that she took a course on experimental physics, and she dreamed of herself with a white coat and teaching in a physics laboratory by building circuits and demonstrating the induction of magnetism. However, Sandy added that the national requirements forced her to teach for the exam, so she aimed to train students with good academic competence. Participating teachers said that they were not able to teach the subject by experimenting and observing since the aim was to cover too much content and complete a lot of questions for university exam preparation. This helped physics teachers to develop competency and self-confidence for teaching physics content. Ladonna also talked about teaching physics through experiments and stated the following:

I learned physics through discussing with peers in college, but the use of laboratory is very difficult. 30 people in the classroom environment. The class rules are clear, groups of 5 people are doing the experiments, they will talk in each group, some students can be off task. I also saw the student who put his hand in the socket. It would be easier to control if there were fewer students.

Ladonna explained that high school classes were too crowded to control physics experiments safely. These teachers discussed that it might not be possible to teach every topic in the laboratory due to insufficient equipment and a lack of teacher knowledge for physics experiments.

In terms of the professional development of teachers, participating teachers addressed their experiences in various contexts. For example, Ladonna explained that her experiences in a middle school helped her learn from other expert teachers as a mentor. She stated, “I met with different teachers in terms of their approaches, their reactions, their responses, their relationships with students, their relationships with other teachers. They influenced me a lot”. She indicated that having a mentor teacher in the beginning years of her career had a positive impact on her. Sandy explained her goals for physics education referring to real science experiments such as CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) and that physics teachers should get into the scientific part of physics teaching through experimentation. Deva added that physics teachers needed guidance to teach physics through experiments since she could not find any support and materials in inquiry-based physics teaching. Serana referred to her master’s program in teaching physics: she thought that she learned alternative instructional models such as the 5E learning cycle, but she could only integrate simple materials and technology to make demonstrations in her classroom.

3.2. Teachers’ Beliefs

The participating teachers indicated their beliefs about teaching and learning science and their beliefs about students’ abilities. Teachers’ beliefs of teaching science addressed their emphasis of the process of assimilation and accommodation, student-centered instruction, and the use of experiments in physics teaching. For example, Deva stated the following:

We call it adaptation to a new situation, we are not able to get to synthesis level, but at least if the student sees this thing, something he sees in mathematics, when he sees it in physics, he learns it if he says, “There is a triangle here, I make it from similarity”.

Deva focused on the role of assimilation in physics learning since students could transfer their prior knowledge in solving physics problems, but she thought accommodation occurred rarely in classrooms. Sandy and Ladonna defined themselves as student-centered teachers, who involved students in the learning process through asking questions and giving responsibility to teach scientific thinking. Sandy thought that a teacher should have good communication skills to get to know the students well to understand their needs and levels. Serana also thought that a physics lesson should start by raising an awareness in the students’ minds to understand the derivation of physics formulas. She supported lecturing with questioning and demonstrations with tangible materials to explain physics in the context of daily life events. Serana stated the following:

You prepare, you create awareness, and then let’s say you want the child to find F = kx. You gave different springs to his hand and said, ‘Let’s apply force, take a measure and see how far it lasted. Is the spring deformed?’ There is no other way. When you set an experimental setup where the students will find F = kx, their awareness increases even more, hearing ‘Oh yes, I found it too. It wasn’t too difficult actually’ is so important.

Serana supported the use of experiments in the classroom to help students develop conceptual understanding rather than the memorization of formulas. For the use of experiments, Sandy said the following:

Learning by observing and doing is becoming more permanent learning. When the student sees it, he admits and says, “Oh, that’s how it was”. Otherwise, when we say that it is like this, he says “Is it so?”. When there is an experiment, it is “Oh like this”, so the experiment is of course much more meaningful, teaching by experimenting.

Sandy believed that physics should be taught and learned through experimentation and observation. Ladonna added the following:

I see it as teaching scientific thinking to do this with the knowledge of physics, to be able to infer cause and effect relationships, to analyze the events around it with scientific thinking.

Ladonna valued working in groups to conduct experiments to learn by experimentation. She indicated that a teacher’s role was to prepare lessons to guide students to work as a group to accomplish the task.

In addition, all four cases agreed that learning occurs through interest, curiosity, and individual effort, and it includes exploration, developing a mechanism, conducting observations with simulations, and problem-solving strategies to construct knowledge. Sandy defined learning and stated the following:

If we’re going to talk about how learning takes place, there must be an interest and curiosity to learn. If we want to learn, we resort to various ways to learn.

Sandy defined learning as an active process requiring individual interest and motivation. Serana thought that learning occurred through asking questions and exploration. She said the following:

Learning is very active. If I was able to attract his interest, and he was able to start moving forward with that interest, then the learning has somehow taken place. It’s a purely biological thing. We have received this training, biological, very difficult to learn but the learning is individual.

Serana thought that the learning process was influenced by prior knowledge, so learning is required to challenge students’ thinking through questioning and applying it in daily life.

In terms of students’ abilities, participating physics teachers focused on students’ readiness to study physics concepts, their tendency to memorize, their dependence on the internet, and bias towards physics. For example, Ladonna talked about students’ diversity from different aspects and stated the following:

There is what we call a readiness, or what kind of background, students come with, once there is that difference at the beginning. I think the socio-cultural thing of families comes out there to a degree, how many scientific books are met or talked about. You can notice all this, and other than that, I had students who needed to work after school, but if they were ambitious, they could be successful.

Ladonna discussed that there might be differences in students’ prior knowledge, socioeconomic status, family characteristics, and perseverance, and teachers should be aware of students’ needs to guide them. Deva thought that some students usually lacked a mathematics background to use in physics, but good students are generally interested in physics concepts at Anatolian high schools. Serana also thought that good students tended to have sufficient prior knowledge from middle school, ask good questions, and take initiative to research. She added that good students were committed and interested in conducting project work in a group or preparing for Olympiads to socialize in a scientific way. For low achievers, Serana thought that these students had a bias towards physics as physics was difficult and unachievable. Sandy agreed that these students needed good background knowledge and analytical thinking ability to be successful in physics since students tended to memorize concepts and formulas and did not have the ability to realize and observe physical events in daily life. Sandy talked about the new generation of students and said the following:

Students are often addicted, they are too busy with too much social media, phones, computers. When they come to school, they can be sleepless and tired. In other words, the reason why they cannot adapt is not related to the physics course...

She explained that students’ low concentration and hyperactivity might lead to their low achievement in physics, so most students needed guidance to concentrate.

3.3. Teachers’ Community Relations

Teachers had different interactions within their community including students, teachers at their school, pre-service physics teachers from the universities, and national education requirements. These interactions influenced their work in diverse ways. For example, Ladonna indicated that she valued the differences among her students. She stated the following:

I had a student who was not in a very good financial situation. Even though he won the science high school, he went to vocational school to work in the tourism profession to earn serious money from tips. He was extremely determined, there were 10 h of vocational lessons, other than that, he was studying with me and other teachers for the university examination. He could enter the medicine school.

Ladonna said that her experiences during the first years of her career taught her to have good communication with her students to understand their needs. She aimed to address students’ needs by collaborating with other teachers at school to organize study sessions for her students.

In terms of national community, these teachers complained about the exam-based education that prevented them from having effective physics lessons and using and developing creative thinking. For instance, Ladonna was assigned to work at an office to organize and manage the science-based projects at high schools. She worked in coordinating national projects such as Tubitak (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkiye (Tubitak)), Teknofest (Aerospace and Technology Festival), or robotics competitions among high schools to cooperate with students, other science and technology teachers, and administrators. Ladonna stated the difficulty of working as a project coordinator at high schools:

I don’t think anything will come out of this … that other countries are doing so much, getting so many patents. Teachers do not have any specific education on planning and doing projects. There should not be any force on teachers to work on projects.

She thought that teachers needed support and training to conduct projects collaboratively. Sandy also explained the need to work as a group with other teachers and students to accomplish science-related projects. She said:

I can refer students to … join projects, but I am not able to do these projects, my career has been based on preparing for university examination. I am a known physics teacher who can make physics full or who makes good students prepare for university. Making a project is my weak part.

She thought that her career was channeled into exam preparation. She did not have a chance to work in a physics project as a group. Deva also defined her role as a teacher as monitoring a class discussion while covering the content; she was not able to facilitate collaboration activities in her class. She thought that the school context was not available to conduct physics experiments, there was a lack of materials, and too many students for a laboratory environment. Two physics teachers at Deva’s school were working hard to cover the physics curriculum to help students get ready for the exam.

To address the problems of teacher education, Sandy also talked about the role of university in physics education and stated the following:

The main problem in the university is that students who enter the university as physics teacher candidates, and they enter with very low rankings. So it’s like ‘I can’t win anything, let me write physics’. I think that has been the biggest problem since I entered the physics department.

She explained that teacher candidates chose to be a physics teacher with low rankings since fewer people chose physics or got scores that were too low to be admitted to the program. She thought that having a lack of a physics and mathematics background and low interest could make teacher candidates have difficulty during and after their program.

As pre-service physics teachers started to go to high schools for internships, in-service physics teachers could serve as mentors for them in their school. Serana stated the following:

When pre-service teachers come, my eyes light up that year, why? Because they come with an incredible experimental background, they know how to prepare an experiment. I ask them to prepare a lesson with experiments. Their professor wants two lectures, I ask four or five times. They come with the most up-to-date information, and they do incredibly good experiments for children.

Serana emphasized the significance of collaboration between in-service and pre-service physics teachers to contribute to teacher development. She also addressed the need for quality of collaboration between teacher educators and in-service teachers. Because Deva stated that she started a master’s degree to study teaching physics through the history of science, but she was not able to complete her thesis. She said, “I felt not enough and shy to go forward, and I could not get enough support in this area”. Serana said, “The disconnect between the university and teachers should be resolved, the university should reach teachers to keep them updated all the time”. Serana noted that she valued the seminars, workshops, and academic studies for the development of in-service teachers to improve through learning research-based resources.

3.4. Teachers’ Practices

Physics teachers’ practices were not so much different from each other. These teachers focused on asking questions to elicit students’ ideas, receiving responses to evaluate and ask further questions. This triadic format was used to enhance students’ voices during the discussion. For example, Deva’s teaching started with reminding students about what they had learned in the previous lesson. She asked questions, students provided short responses, and the teacher evaluated them to ask another question. An example dialogue is provided below:

• Teacher: We talked about pressure and buoyancy of liquids. Why did the flow of water change when you pulled the syringe down?
• Student: Its pressure decreases.
• Teacher: Decreases. What is the formula for pressure of solids?
• Student: Inversely proportional to area.
• Teacher: What is its unit?
• Student: Newton/meter square
• Teacher: Duck or chicken, which one can easily sink in a mood?
• Student: …
• Teacher: Which one has a larger palette?
• Student: So, chicken sinks.

After this triadic dialogue (Initiate–Response–Evaluate), the teacher wrote the formula of the pressure of solids as P = Force/Area on the board and indicated its unit as “pascal”. All four cases followed the same format while introducing the topic and solving the questions. They usually opened the textbook or multiple-choice test on smartboard, and students solved related problems. After students provided the responses, teachers solved the question on the board by sketching the graphs, figures, and diagrams and showing mathematical calculations. These teachers’ teaching was based on providing the quickest and simplest ways for students to learn for exam preparation.

Ladonna also opened the textbook on the smartboard and talked about the characteristics of simple harmonic motion by showing a spring connected to a mass and drawing figures on the board. She focused on giving daily life examples such as a swing or a clock. Moreover, Serana aimed to enhance students’ voices through questioning on the board. Serana started the lesson by asking questions such as “What is force? What is weight? What do Newton Laws tell us?” After a brief explanation of her questions, she sketched two diagrams to explain weight and gravitational acceleration. The dialogue in the classroom is given below:

• Teacher: What is tension force?
• Student: If two people pull each other, we have tension force
• Student: The forces will be equal. Two equal forces.
• Teacher: Action-reaction force. Does it require contact force?
• Student: If one object touches another object, there is a contact force.
• Teacher: It has a reaction force. Think about falling motion. How does it happen?
• Students: It falls due to gravity.
• Teacher: How about inclined plane?
• Student: It has two dimensions; one dimension pulls the objects on inclined plane down.
• Teacher: You can also observe action-reaction on objects in liquids with buoyancy force.

The teacher asked the questions through drawing sample sketches or diagrams on the board. The lesson did not include evidence-based explanations from an experiment. The teacher elicited students’ understandings through questioning. The lesson included a high student voice; students made extensive explanations of the teacher’s questions.

3.5. Teachers’ Metaphors for Their Work

Participating teachers were asked about how they represented themselves with a metaphor. Their descriptions were variable and based on their experiences. For example, Deva complained about a lack of support for physics teachers to teach physics through experiments. She could not find any support and materials in inquiry-based physics teaching, so she thought that her teaching was like a plain text and based on solving sample questions on the smartboard. Sandy addressed the national context that forced teachers to teach for the exam, so she aimed to train students with good academic expertise. When she was asked about her goals for physics education, she stated that her focus was preparing students for the exam, so she defined her role as an exam coach.

Ladonna discussed the differences in students’ characteristics such as background knowledge, socioeconomic status, and family composition and that teachers should act as a guide to support students’ goals. Ladonna thought that she could act as a bridge between students and the path they needed to take. Moreover, Serana talked about her role as an anchorwoman and said the following:

Sometimes I liken the physicist to a TV speaker. If you listen, you learn; if you don’t listen, you won’t learn. It’s about your area of interest. Can the teacher’s job be that simple? If you’re into direct instruction, you can’t catch the child. Everything starts with curiosity and interest. When we have good communication with students, they can be interested more.

As a physics teacher, Serana aimed to increase students’ interest through using different real-life examples and demonstrations. She also thought that physics was a scary lesson, and she needed to attract students’ attention through performing more of a theatrical show.

4. Discussion

Teacher learning requires actively performing in both individual and social learning processes to enhance teacher awareness and recognition. This study aimed to explore four Turkish female physics teachers’ understanding and the description of their professional identities. These teachers engaged in describing their identity trajectories while working in Anatolian high schools. The development of their identity was subjective and isolated interpretations of their experiences, social interactions, practices, and beliefs were based on Wenger’s (1998) theory of learning [8]. These teachers were chosen according to the curriculum of the teacher education programs that they attended and their definitions of their work in metaphors. Although they were trained in a foreign language-based physics education program, their descriptions of professional identity were developed in different ways based on their experiences and social interaction. Participants preferred to become physics teachers by referring to a role model, either a family member or high school physics teacher, or they had an interest to study physics since they were academically competent physics students [26]. For example, Deva and Sandy changed majors at the beginning of their college life due to their interest in being physics teachers. However, they experienced the difficulty of not having enough knowledge of the school curriculum after they finished a foreign language-based teacher education program. They did not receive enough support from the national community in terms of the curriculum and felt the pressure for content mastery. In addition, they felt exhausted and dissatisfied when they worked in vocational and technical Anatolian high schools: students at these schools had poor prior knowledge and a lack of interest. These teachers emphasized that students in science and Anatolian high schools helped them improve teacher learning by asking questions and conducting science projects. These teachers believed that physics should be taught through experiments, but they did not have enough support and time to teach through inquiry. They defined their role to directly explain the topic and solve problems in a simple format; they believed that higher achieving students could learn in a quick way with good prior knowledge. These results agreed with the results from previous research [26,27,28]: participating female physics teachers tended to act as an authority to cover the curriculum, although they valued or believed in the value of using experiments in physics instruction. The results suggested that science teachers could give emotional reactions or have negative experiences in teaching and learning processes, so they should not be isolated and rather they should be involved in inquiry-based communities [40]. Like suggestions from Shulman (2015) [41], teacher development is continuous to reshape teachers’ professional identity through short- or long-term mentoring activities. Teachers should be guided in the development of thorough pedagogical content knowledge for reform-based teaching including curriculum literacy and alternative strategies to address diverse students’ needs in physics classrooms.

Teachers may have challenges after they graduate from the university as they change their teaching and learning context, and their experiences may lead to changes in their beliefs and values. Participating teachers also talked about their beliefs about teaching and learning science as well as students’ abilities. They emphasized focusing on scientific thinking through exploration, experimentation, and students’ active involvement. However, they stated that students generally learned in real classrooms through memorizing the formulas and questions at the memory, comprehension, and application levels, and students rarely engaged in the analysis and synthesis levels. The reform movement in science education including the recommendations from the Next Generation Science Standards (National Research Council, 2013) suggest that science teaching should engage students in the practices of scientists and the nature of science to enhance their understanding of the cognitive, social, and epistemic aspects of science [42]. It is suggested to prepare 21st century citizens to be able to be productive according to the changes in society, to engage in research and investigation, and to develop problem-solving skills. Physics teachers should develop knowledge of inquiry or constructivist pedagogy to emphasize the students’ engagement in 21st century skills.

Moreover, these teachers defined their role within a community of practice including students, schools, physics teaching programs, and national standards. They referred to their students’ readiness, prior knowledge, socioeconomic status, and family characteristics as indicators of students’ achievement. They participated in some institutional or national projects to work with other teachers and interested students. However, they emphasized that the school context was not appropriate for interactive teaching and learning with insufficient equipment. They defined their role as covering content to prepare students for standardized testing. Some teachers emphasized the role of teacher education programs to support physics teachers in attending graduate school to negotiate their membership in teaching through inquiry-based instruction. As Melville and Bartley (2010) suggested, teacher identity development includes more than acquisition of knowledge; teachers’ participation in a community or mentoring interaction to exchange knowledge and experiences and to be recognized by others could support their professional identity [40].

Teachers might define their experiences at different stages of their professional development with different metaphors [43]. Experienced physics teachers graduated from high-ranking universities; they defined themselves as good physics students. For their professional identity, they referred to the cognitive demand of their work since they defined themselves as plain text, exam coach, bridge, and anchorwoman to facilitate physics teaching and learning in a structured process for standardized testing. These descriptions reflected their challenges to enact inquiry-based activities and their resolutions to teach for the university entrance examination [28,29]. These expert physics teachers focused on the final image of their role depending on their experiences. These results showed the necessity of supporting beginning science teachers through professional development designs to examine the various factors influencing the changes in their professional identity.

Four physics teachers described the meanings of their experiences, beliefs, community relations, and practices. They described the meanings of teaching physics for them and how they perceived their role as physics teachers in their cultural context. These results do not provide universal conclusions for physics teachers’ professional identity, but they provide their interpretations of teaching and learning physics in Turkey. Therefore, these teachers were sometimes not able to enact their beliefs into practices, and they experienced teaching diverse students at different school contexts. Teachers’ experiences with curriculum changes filtered their science teaching and use of innovative strategies in a systematic way. These results suggest that further research should explore physics teachers’ identity for teaching specific topics, inquiry-based science, or the nature of science through long-term training. Teacher education should continue after graduation from the university to support the construction of teacher identity in different trajectories. In-service teachers should be supported to develop reform-oriented identities to address the recommendations of reform efforts. There is a need for understanding the process of change in teachers’ professional identity in reform-based science practices through large-scale and longitudinal studies. The teacher education programs at universities should design professional development programs to analyze in-service science teachers’ understandings about the nature of science and scientists’ work and their self-regulative approaches to solve the problems in the development of their professional identity.