Teacher Professional Identity Research Articles

LOTE (Languages Other than English) Teachers’ Emotions and Professional Identity in Response to Educational Reforms: A Social-Psychological Perspective

Teachers’ emotions and professional identities in response to educational reforms play a key role in teacher development and policy implementation. However, little attention has been paid to the shifting emotions of teachers of LOTEs (languages other than English). Taking a social-psychological approach, this study examines the emotional reactions and professional identities of LOTE teachers who were inspired to cater for the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. Semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis were used to probe the emotions and professional identities of 15 LOTE teachers in a Chinese foreign language university. The analysis identifies four categories of LOTE teachers’ identities: The enthusiastic accommodators, the lonely fighters, the drifting followers, and the passive executors. The findings indicate that current educational policies might lead to tensions among LOTE teachers without sufficient support, and suggest that the voices of LOTE teachers should be accommodated in the process of policy-making along with the affordances of support. The study reveals the necessity of adopting a social-psychological perspective on teacher development in the global multilingual educational context.

Study on the Emotional Labor of Young International Chinese Teachers

This paper uses educational ethnography to examine in depth the emotional labor of the development of the particular professional identity of young international Chinese teachers and the underlying mechanisms behind emotions. The study found that the performance and strategy of young international Chinese teachers' emotional labor was dominated by deep acting, and that professional self-esteem, professional constraint, and cross-cultural conflict were important factors contributing to the emotional labor overload of this professional group. Although emotional labor constructs the meaning of daily life, it also reinforces this group's sense of self-alienation and professional burnout. Based on this, it is important to pay attention to the professional needs of young international Chinese teachers, establish a community mechanism for international Chinese teachers, and improve the professional assessment system for young international Chinese teachers in order to promote the maintenance of emotional labor at a normal and reasonable level, reduce emotional exhaustion, and enhance job satisfaction and professional gain.

The professional identity of Iranian young-learner teachers of English: A narrative inquiry

Drawing on positioning analysis and the concept of master narrative, this narrative inquiry explored seven Iranian English-to-young-learner teachers' professional identities. It was conducted through examining the master narratives on the activity of teaching English to young learners (TEYL) and their impact on teachers' self- and other-positioning within their professional communities. The findings revealed that TEYL is dismissed as an appendix to ELT and oversimplified as the activity of teaching basic language to young learners without due attention to the important educational and pedagogical aspects involved in it. As such, young-learner teachers are treated as second-class citizens due to the dominant master narratives of TEYL being inconsequential and inferior as opposed to adult ELT. This treatment has created a discriminatory division, marginalizing young-learner teachers and challenging novice young-learner teachers' self-positioning as legitimate practitioners, and pushing them to consider for themselves a peripheral position at the margin of ELT. This study found such division to negatively impact young-learner teachers' professional commitment and practice. We discuss implications along with suggestions for further research.

The development of the relationship between professional identity tensions and teacher identity: A quantitative longitudinal study among Dutch primary student teachers

This longitudinal study investigated reciprocal associations among various professional identity tensions and Dutch primary student teachers’ teacher identity. Students (N = 201, 82.9% female) completed the professional identity tensions scale and the teacher identity measurement scale across three waves. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that five out of nine investigated professional identity tensions were negatively associated with teacher identity at the inter-individual level. At the intra-individual level, no significant cross-lagged relationships were detected. Our findings imply that the development of professional identity tensions and teacher identity are not automatically interrelated and should, therefore, be both explicitly addressed in teacher education. The development of the relationship between professional identity tensions and teacher identity: A quantitative longitudinal study among Dutch primary student teachers.

Exploring the professional teacher identity as ethical self-formation of two multilingual native English teachers

The past decades have witnessed an increasing number of studies documenting native English teachers’ (NETs’) challenges in professional development and collaboration with nonnative English teachers’ (NNETs’) across multiple educational contexts. There are also debates in TESOL regarding the essentialized dichotomy of NETs and NNETs with insufficient recognition of the educational and cultural experiences of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) / English as a second language (ESL). Little research has been conducted on the lived experiences of transnational multilingual NETs who work in heritage contexts; and how they position themselves when they conduct their teacher identity work and negotiate between heritage identity and NET identity. This study, drawing on the notion of ethical self-formation and its application in teacher identity research as a theoretical lens, addresses the gap by investigating the identity construction of two transnational NETs of Chinese ethnicity returning to their home context in Hong Kong to teach. The findings indicate that (1) the participants negotiated their multilingual identity and the monolingual NET identity ascribed in the workplace, (2) they developed counter-strategies to turn the knowledge of the local language and culture into resources in teaching, and (3) they agentively expanded the definition of NET and situated them in the full institutional and social context to consider their identity conflict and self-empowerment. The findings have implications for education policy to accommodate and value the plural-competences of NETs and NNETs.

The link between English foreign language teacher's professional identity and their critical thinking that leads to teacher's success in the Chinese context: Leaders motivational language as a moderator.

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between English foreign language teacher’s professional identity and employee success via mediating role of critical thinking. Further, we examined the moderating role of leader motivational language between employee professional identity and critical thing and also indirect effect on employee success via critical thinking. We collected data from Chinese MNC’s school by using time lagged study design. We used hierarchical linear regression for direct hypotheses and Hayes PROCESS model’s for mediation, moderation, and mediation moderation analysis. The results show that there is positive relation between employee’s professional identity and teacher’s success. Further, critical thinking mediates the link between professional identity and employee success. The results of the moderated mediation analysis show that critical thinking mediated the interaction of employee’s professional identity and leader’s motivational language on teacher’s success.

‘Kindness and empathy beyond all else’: Challenges to professional identities of Higher Education teachers during COVID-19 times

COVID-19 has continued to effect higher education globally in significant ways. During 2020, many institutions shifted learning online overnight as the sector closed its doors and opened new sites for remote teaching. This article reports on an international study [Phillips et al., 2021] that sought to capture how cross-sectoral teachers experienced these emergency changes during the first months of restrictions. The data, analysed using narrative identity theory, revealed concerns that fall into two broad categories: technologies and relationships. Significantly, it was not a loss of content delivery or changes to assessment that prompted the greatest anxiety for our colleagues, but that they held significant concerns about their students’ mental health; inequities of access to a range of services including technological; and challenges connecting emotionally with their students at a distance. The results provide actionable strategies for higher education institutions to apply in future emergencies where remote teaching is necessary.

School Choice, Teachers' Work, and Professional Identity.

Teacher professional identity, or what it means to be a teacher, informs the types of schools teachers seek for work. With the marketization of schools in the US and abroad, teachers' professional identities are changing. However, we know little about how teachers negotiate-and renegotiate-their professional identities during the job search in contexts with school choice, such as charter schools. This study uses qualitative interview data from 46 teachers in San Antonio, Texas, where over 25% of students attend charter schools. Our findings illuminate the job search as a critical juncture where teachers evaluate their professional identity as they make choices about the sector-charter or traditional public school-and/or school organization they prefer. In particular, the choice context legitimated flexibility and fluidity in teachers' professional identity as teachers moved between sectors to find jobs, even if the school did not align with their personal or professional values. We also found that employability and teachers' perception of the job market played an important role in how teachers strategically presented their professional identity on the job search. Findings offer implications for teacher education and teacher workforce policies.

Unpacking the Perceived Personal and Contextual Conditions Shaping English Language Teachers’ Professional Identity Formation in Secondary Schools

It is crucial for teachers to become aware of and understand their professional identity as this has implications for their day-to-day professional practices. Teachers who are more aware of their professional identities are more willing to endure thwarting contextual conditions by adjusting their identities. However, presently most teachers seem to overlook their professional identity while they often tend to associate the poor quality education with a lack of external resources alone. The aim of this study was thus to create this awareness in teachers by unveiling how the perceived personal and contextual conditions constitute the professional identities of experienced EFL teachers working in secondary schools. In this study, teacher professional identity is conceptualized and understood within the theory of symbolic interactionism. Data were generated through a one-on-one semi-structured in-depth interview with two EFL teachers (Fazi and Tare). Thematic analysis was used across participants within a qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological frame. The findings revealed that the participating teachers’ professional identity is a multidimensional and dynamic reality shaped by personal agency and daunting contextual conditions that were represented through two pertinent themes: challenges and teacher emotions. Challenges and emotions that the participating teachers have experienced are found to be the constituents that come into play in the formation of their professional identity. The findings also revealed that the experienced teachers’ professional identity is both a coconstructed and negotiated process, which unveils itself not only by compliance to external pressures (e.g., tolerating student misbehaviors) but also by repelling and adapting the external demands that are made available to them (e.g., politics-oriented assignment of school principals, inappropriate curriculum contents). This article thus suggests that more attention should be paid to the implicit messages (revealed through challenges) that all stakeholders convey to the teaching personnel.

Professional identity of a French language teacher in Poland: constancy vs. change, sameness vs. difference, agency

Studies conducted on teacher identity have mostly focused on preservice language teachers. By contrast, this study looks at the professional identity of a veteran teacher of French as a foreign language in Poland. It describes a two-stage biographic study in which the narratives obtained are subjected to semantic deconstruction with the application of Bamberg’s (2010) model of identity. To this end, the author investigates: 1) what is constant and what changes in the participant’s professional career in terms of the emotions she experiences, 2) what are the similarities and differences between the teachers she refers to and herself, 3) what is the role of agency in the participant’s professional decisions. Through the analysis, the Author seeks to find out with what content Bamberg’s identity pillars may be filled, what teacher emotions and feelings can be inferred from what is said, and what insights can be gained into the identity of a French language teacher in Poland.

The interplay of teacher identities and agency: A case study of two native English-speaking teachers in South Korea

The case study, guided by a poststructural lens on teacher identity and agency, explores two native-English speaking teachers' (NESTs) negotiation of their roles and quests for legitimacy in South Korea. The qualitative analysis of the teachers' coursework completed in a United States online teacher education program, along with interviews, revealed that the two White, male NESTs navigated positions of privilege and periphery in establishing professional teacher identities. The findings highlighting individual teachers’ identities and agency in contextualized, sociohistorical, and institutional milieus have implications for teacher education research and programs that must address larger structures and policies that position teachers.

English as a Foreign Language Teachers' Work Engagement, Burnout, and Their Professional Identity.

Teacher-related variables have been considered as determining factors in shaping educational system. Teacher professional identity is also very important construct that affect teachers’ teaching practice Moreover, the positive and negative emotions are considered sporadically in Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) educational contexts; however, and there is a paucity of research in investigating the relationship between work engagement as a positive emotion and teacher burnout as a negative workrelated factor. This review also tried to examine how teachers’ professional identity is affected by teachers’ positive and negative emotions in Chinese contexts. Earlier studies have verified that teacher burnout is significantly correlated with professional identity. The earlier investigations showed the mediating role of job resources, such as job satisfaction and obligation, in the correlation between teacher burnout and professional identity. Moreover, studies have shown a significant negative correlation between teacher burnout and work engagement. Some variables, including personal features, instructive environment, work difficulties, job capital, character strengths, self-efficacy, close relationship with school colleagues, and emotional intelligence, mediate the correlation between teacher burnout and work engagement. Finally, this review specified that teachers’ professional identity is regarded as a critical variable in fostering work engagement. Emotional intelligence was also considered a mediating variable that affected the relationship between teacher professional identity and work engagement. Moreover, the study has pedagogical implications and suggestions for different teacher educators, administrators, and advisors. The ideas can improve their awareness of teacher burnout, professional identity, and work engagement in instructive contexts.

“I am Kichwa”: The Funds of Identity of an Indigenous Ecuadoran NNES Teacher

AbstractTo counter ongoing NES/NNES, NEST/NNEST dichotomies and the essentializing of NNESs (Ellis, 2016), we examine the personal and professional tensions of an Indigenous Ecuadoran NNES teaching in a dominant Spanish‐speaking context. We attend to the ways Roberto (pseudonym) responds to his students and his peers through the lens of his Kichwa identity, the historic oppressed positionality of and ongoing prejudice toward Indigenous peoples in Ecuador. In such contexts, Roberto cannot share “insider” cultural references to enhance his EFL instruction; rather, he is perpetually set as an outsider—both in the broader frame of NNES movement and more singularly and powerfully within his own professional context. We draw upon Esteban‐Guitart and Moll's (2014) “funds of identity” and teacher professional identity development (Sachs, 2005) to explore the following central tensions in Roberto's evolving professional teaching identity: (1) Roberto's sense of himself as (il)legitimate speaker of English, (2) role of structural oppression toward Kichwa as it mediates his perceptions and interactions, and (3) the increased use of communicative‐based language instruction. Attending to the multiple facets and resources that comprise “funds of identity,” EFL teacher educators can better account for the complex identity formation for EFL teachers and students.

The Predictive Role of Perceived Support from Principals and Professional Identity on Teachers' Motivation and Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study.

The aim of this study was to estimate the influence of perceived support from principals and teacher professional identity (TPI) on teacher’s motivation, vigour and burnout using a longitudinal design during a school year. A sample of 544 secondary teachers reported their perceived support from principals and TPI at the beginning of the year (T1) and their self-determined motivation, vigour, and burnout both at the beginning (T1) and at the end of the year (T2). Structural equation modelling (SEM) revealed that the support from principals was associated with T1 TPI. T1 TPI only partially predicted T2 self-determined motivation (controlling T1 scores), and T2 self-determined motivation was associated with T2 burnout and vigour (controlling T1 scores). The SEM revealed a positive process involving perceived support from principals, pedagogical expertise, autonomous motivation, and well-being indicators. In summary, the present study extends the knowledge about the teacher well-being process and the role of contextual and individual antecedents. In an applied perspective, to prevent burnout, teachers need efficient initial and continuing pedagogical education to be armed in front of the students and need the support of their principals during the school year.

English language teacher professional identity aesthetic depiction: an arts-based study from Afghanistan

ABSTRACT Despite a burgeoning body of research on teacher identity development, little is known about how incongruities between the ideal and real-life teaching practices create identity tensions. The present study adopted an arts-based approach and examined teachers’ ideal and actual teaching practices, and the associated identity tensions and related coping strategies in the context of Afghanistan. Data were collected from six English teachers via drawings and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis indicated that the teachers experienced unattainable ideal praxis in terms of ‘time, space and facility’, ‘ideal teaching methods’, ‘ideal instructional materials’, and ‘technology-enhanced classroom’, which resulted in various identity tensions. However, thinking reflectively about their imagined community and ideal practices offered affordances for the teachers to be creative to manage the tensions, and build resilience and reflexivity. The study concludes with implications for teachers, teacher educators, and policymakers in developing awareness of ideal-real mismatches to support teacher identity development.

Evaluating the Teacher Professional Identity of Student Teachers: Development and Validation of the Teacher Professional Identity Scale

This study sought to develop and validate an instrument to measure teacher professional identity of student teachers. Through a literature review, three indicators, namely teacher self-efficacy, commitment to teaching and professional orientation, were chosen to form the construct for validation. The factor structure was first tested through confirmatory factor analysis using a sample of 185 student teachers and cross-validated using a new sample of 412. Evidence from goodness-of-fit statistics, parameter estimates and internal consistency indicated that the three indicators are valid factors of the construct. The instrument can provide information to better meet the developmental needs of student teachers.

Pre-service teachers’ investments in English and construction of professional identity in the Indonesian context

This study explored the pre-service teachers (PSTs) professional identity construction during their teacher education training at a private university in Central Java, Indonesia. It particularly investigated their understanding of the teaching profession and their professional identity, guided by two research questions: 1) what have been the influential aspects of the Indonesian pre-service teachers’ investment in the teaching profession? and 2) what professional identities do the PSTs (re)construct during their teacher education training? A qualitative case study was adopted as the design of this study. Data of this study were collected using an open-ended questionnaire and in-depth semi-structured interviews. Participants of this study are eleven PSTs of a private university in Central Java. The obtained data were analyzed by using the theoretical grounding of situated learning, professional identity, and investments. An interpretive approach and thematic analysis were adopted in coding and analyzing the PSTs’ open-ended questionnaire responses and narrative accounts obtained from the interviews. It is found that most aspects of PSTs’ construction of professional identity are their continuous learning participation and contemplation during their training in the English teacher education (ETE) program and their dynamic inner dialogue with their two selves (i.e. the student-self and the teacher-self) during the teaching practicum at school. These influential aspects lead to the emerging professional identity of the PSTs as caring, motivational, pleasant, and empathetic teachers. This result implies the need to emphasize the acquisition of teacher identity and reflective teaching at the heart of teacher education.

“Because the rules out there are different…”: a case study of pre-service teachers’ experiences in remote Australian Indigenous education

ABSTRACT Pre-service teachers are required to become reflective practitioners who can adapt their skills to a range of contexts and the diverse needs of learners. Many consider the practicum experience as critical to forming values and dispositions that are essential to a professional teacher identity. This article focuses on the experiences of five White pre-service teachers who volunteered to teach in remote Indigenous communities in South Australia, specifically the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, a desert environment in the far northwest of the state. As these pre-service teachers document their experiences, we draw upon Gee’s work on identity to gain insights into how they understand the “rules” of their context and their own positionality. Our research reveals the ways privilege can foster possibilities and constraints, which afford certain subject positions for these pre-service teachers. We focus specifically on a prominent theme in their narratives – “authenticity” concerning their conception of teaching and learning.

Exploring How COVID-19 Shapes the Professional Identities of South African Student Teachers

This article contributes to the literature on teacher identities by exploring how the pandemic affected the professional identities of final year student teachers at a South African university. The researchers collected journals and interviews from seven participants, and analysed the data through thematic analysis. The findings show that the participants’ professional identities were enhanced or negatively affected by teaching in a pandemic. The participants whose professional identities were strengthened became more caring and hard working to support learners who had missed several months of school. Other participants, whose professional identities had been negatively affected by the lack of teaching practice, felt less confident and prepared to become teachers. While all the participants struggled with a heavy teaching load, one participant felt that the sheer amount of work prevented him from becoming a “relational” teacher. Schools and universities might strengthen pre-service teachers’ professional identities development by discussing what support student teachers require to enact their preferred professional identities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Transformative Experiences of EFL Lecturers’ Professional Identity in Online Education

<p style="text-align: justify;">English teachers had to retrain and build a new normal in order to prepare for an online classroom while keeping their teaching pedagogy and professional identity as a result of the sudden changes brought by the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in education. In this study, the effect of English teachers' professional identity transformations, attitudes toward online teaching was explored. The study's sample comprises 130 English as a foreign language (EFL) lecturers from a state and a foundation university in Turkey. The research data was gathered from a questionnaire, the Teacher Professional Identity scale, and a semi-structured interview with 12 volunteers. Qualitative data collected via semi-structured interviews were apportioned into pattern coding and analyzed through content analysis. EFL lecturers did not appear to be properly prepared for their online pedagogical and technological difficulties, which had a deeply corrosive effect on teachers' professional identities as they shift away from face-to-face education. The results showed that participants who were educated on EduTech during their undergraduate education or as professional development affected their perceptions of professional identity throughout the transition to online language teaching. Future studies can broaden the field of study by making use of exploratory action research, awareness of the teaching community, and continued professional development.</p>