What Teachers Wear: Working the Wardrobe across 15 Years

Abstract Preservice teachers are in the process of constructing their own personal and professional teacher identities. In order to explore questions and assumptions implicit to such an undertaking, this study examined teacher images created by preservice teachers over the course of a 15-year case study, focusing (in this essay) on the results of the clothing and color choices attributed to teachers in the resulting images. Semiotic analyses of these images showed that preservice teachers drew images of teachers that were most often clothed in some interpretation of casual professional clothing. The dominant colors of the rendered clothing were most frequently shades of blue and black. Communicative, cultural, and functional dress codes indicate that these clothing and color choices signify that these preservice teachers saw the teaching profession as one that was conformist, service-oriented, chaste, and modestly prestigious. The examination of preservice teachers’ “teacher” and/or “teaching profession” ideologies through communicative non-verbal cues in their constructed teacher images can be an important part of understanding their beliefs and values about the teaching profession, as well as their professional identity development and career choices.