Ser un docente estratégico: cuando cambiar la estrategia no basta

The purpose of this paper is two-fold: on the one hand, our aim is to expand the conceptual frame on which the notion of strategic lecturer is based in order to make it more explicative and to help understand teachers' difficulties when they must face conflictive and unsettling situations at different levels (conceptual, strategic and emotional). In the first part we define and characterise the concepts of teachers' identity and self together with critical incident, which is optimum to reach the teacher's self. In the second part, we present a descriptive case study dealing with the relationships between the identity and self of two university teachers. The results obtained in this study demonstrate the existing level of coherence between the characteristics of the teacher's identity and his/her real teaching performance (self). On the other hand, the study presents evidence on how teachers act when faced with critical incidents and how they change to adjust to the conflict situation. Finally, we address the potential and limitations of using critical incidents as a methodological research tool in this study field and in teacher training.