Abstract
Education reform is expected to change teacher’s identity is expected to undergo changes, which in turn may influence various aspects of their professional life. As such, teacher identity in education reform context has received strong attention in the literature in the last decade or so. This article provides a systematic and critical review of the empirical research published after 2010 on Chinese teachers’ identity construction. It conceptualizes teacher identity construction in times of education reform and the factors mediating this process. A thematic synthesis was adopted to undertake the review of 28 articles. Teacher identity categories in K12 and tertiary education were extracted from the studies to give a contour of teacher identity trajectory. Teacher identities as thriving, as survival, and as exclusion emerge as the three main teacher identity categories. Guided by Wenger’s identity theory, we then discuss three types of teacher identity trajectories: contrive to thrive, adjust to survive, and alienate to wither; and three distinctive factor themes: power relations, agency, and emotion. This contextualized review unfolds stories and mediators of teacher identity construction against the backdrop of education reform in China through which implications for enhancing strong teacher identities are drawn.
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