Teachers Conformity Essay

Another agreed-upon explored form of teachers’ conformity is Identification Approach, through which teachers do not behave in a particular way because such behavior is intrinsically satisfying. Rather, teachers adopt a particular behavior because it puts them in a satisfying relationship to the colleagues or authorities with whom they are identifying. They do come to believe in the opinions and values they adopt, though not very strongly. They want to be like some particular colleagues or authorities in the institute. Continuous reward or punishment is not necessary in identification approach. All that is needed is the teacher’s desire to be like the popular figure in the institute. The teacher will continue to conform and hold beliefs similar

In this example, the model teacher is the owner of meanings prevailing within this participant’s mind and actions. In fact, a range of meanings are nurtured by this model teacher, each of which stands for the definition of certain events, actions, or artifacts in the mind of this participant. These meanings, in the mind of this participant, have different varying degrees of supremacy, a situation Wenger (1998) construes as the “ownership of meanings” (p. 200). This participant may have diverse degrees of control over his extracted meanings from the model teacher; that is, the relations of ownership of meanings, that construct the negotiability of the participant’s meanings conducing to his varying degrees of conformity to the model teacher’s nurtured meanings. In other words, negotiability here pertains to the extent to which the participant can use, modify, and claim meanings in his conformity. If such negotiability is absent, an identity of non-participation in conformity can result; the participant’s conformity may become irrelevant because it cannot be asserted and recognized as a form of competence derived from the model teacher’s actions, behaviors, and meanings (Wenger, 1998, p. 203). Thus, such constant negotiation of model-related ownership of meanings may lead to the participant’s formation of conformative