Different social situations compel us to attach ourselves to different self-identities. These different selves lead to constructed images dichotomized between what we want to be (the ideal self) and how others see us (the limited self). Many different social contexts concerning my identity roles at the hospital are developed within this self-questioning, autoethnographic study of my life as a part-time medical translator. My perceptual self within those social subgroups changed—and continues to do so—as a result of hidden agendas and other manifested selves interacting with each other. The result was a negotiated identity. Thus this relived journey demonstrates the inseparable duality existing within aspects of fieldwork and self-reflexive qualitative research.

The Successful Middle School: This We Believe calls for specialized middle-level certification/licensure and teacher development. Certification/licensure has an impact on teacher preparation and, likely, the recruitment and retention of middle-level educators. In order to continue to advocate for specialized certification/licensure, research needs to determine the nature of certification/licensure, the origins and impacts of their shifts, and the recruitment and retention of middle-level educators, especially related to their pathway. This literature review is part of the development of a research agenda for the American Educational Research Association’s (AERA) Middle Level Education Research (MLER) Special Interest Group (SIG). The purpose of this review is to examine the current status of the research related to middle-level certification/licensure and the research questions generated for the MLER SIG research agenda. The literature from the last 23 years was explored to conduct this combination of literature and scoping literature review. Gaps of research were identified, and some questions were unable to be answered through this type of study. From this literature review, it is clear that ongoing and additional research needs to be conducted related to middle-level certification/licensure related to the research questions we initially generated as part of the research agenda.