“My Inquiry Question is …”: How Novice Social Studies Educators in Mixed Video Groups Explore Their Teacher Role Identities

This paper investigates how pre-service (PST) and in-service teachers (IST) in mixed video groups in a Methods class explore and develop their role identities as social studies teachers during weekly meetings over the course of the semester. Ordered Network Analyses of the video group protocol and video group discourse suggest that the video group protocol heavily influenced novice social studies teachers’ identity exploration by promoting discussion of ontological beliefs and action possibilities, resulting in highly similar connections between identity components for PSTs and ISTs. However, the protocol was not determinative and significant differences were found between the ISTs and PSTs’ identity exploration and development, with ISTs making relatively stronger connections between self-perceptions, dilemmas and other components of their identity systems than PSTs.