118 Chapter 4 important trigger for self-reflection regarding professional development as an educator. In addition to personal contact with students, contacts with peers and mentors with an articulated awareness of their educational identity and drive for teaching may contribute to an educator’s development of their educational identity and mission. One way to embed these relationships is through personal networks or communities of practice in the workplace,34 or through more formal longitudinal programmes,31 which can create a sense of belonging and connectedness with like-minded colleagues. Since the context in which educators work can be both supportive and challenging to the professional development of educators,27,31 it is important to take the context into account and to address the informal educational culture. A supportive leadership at all levels of the organisation, rewarding teaching in career paths, encouraging teacher networks and communities, and minimising conflicts created by competing tasks, are examples of how the context of the workplace can be beneficial to the development of an educator’s mission. Limitations and future research suggestions We purposefully selected participants known for their exemplary teaching. This may have resulted in less variation in the two areas of inquiry, and may explain why the most teaching-centred belief orientation and the least elaborate teacher profile were not present in our dataset. As well, since we purposefully focused on preclinical curricula, we need to be cautious when extending conclusions from our findings to other contexts. Nevertheless, we expect that the alignment between educators’ personal motivation to contribute to student learning and their learningcentred beliefs, both deeply rooted, will not be limited to one particular educational context. A future study carried out in other contexts can provide further insights. It would also be interesting to study the perspectives of younger educators regarding their educational mission, identity and teaching orientation, since they are often educated in learning-centred curricula with more emphasis on self-reflection. According to Korthagen,12 teachers’ beliefs, identity and mission can be developed and can influence each other in both directions. Further research is needed into whether beliefs about teaching and learning can change from teaching-centredness to learning-centredness, and to confirm if increasing awareness of identity and mission will influence beliefs, and vice versa. This could be explored by means of a longitudinal study with repeated interviews over time. In conclusion, our findings display an alignment between educators‘ learningcentred beliefs and their awareness of their educational identity and mission in learning-centred education, thus confirming Korthagen’s model.12,13 Until now, the educational identity and mission of educators, that is, their deepest inspiration
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw