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all students the opportunity for success. The complexities of being an effective teacher today are related to questions such as: what motivates teachers to choose and persevere in this profession? how do they meet the conflicting challenges of “high-stakes testing” and simultaneously be accountable to an increasingly diverse population in their classrooms? Thus, the primary aim of this study is to help them better understand the core beliefs, commitment, and those experiences shaping their professional identity. It is essential for educators not only to be motivated on what is to be learned but also on how it should be taught (Banilower, Heck, & Weis, 2007). Learning to teach in ways that are culturally responsive has often been construed as acquiring competence. This occurs through a process in which experiences are assimilated and accommodated into an ongoing mental construction of how to think, act, and believe (Settlage, Southerland, Smith, & Ceglie, 2009). It is the process of attaching consequences to student standardized test performance. For many teachers, this idea of “accountability” can be somewhat intimidating (Henning, Stone, & Kelly, 2009). We believe that a study on understanding teacher identity through self-regulation is timely since at the heart of the selfregulation construct is the notion that teachers are striversconstantly trying to better themselves. Competencies and expertise are on a continuum of professional development through a purposeful engagement involving their teaching experiences and self inquiry: How does one keep motivated in dealing with the complexity of state mandates in education? How does one build public and student confidence within these constraints? The answers to these questions may be embedded in the work of several researchers who studied the motivational variables that guide teachers to learn about their self-regulated Looking at teacher identity through self-regulation