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The concept of teacher professional identity (TPI) has emerged as a useful analytical lens in teacher education, gaining increased attention in the past three decades (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009; Cheung et al., 2015; Gracia et al., 2021; Li & Li, 2021; Liu & Xu, 2013; Nazari et al., 2021; Noonan, 2019; Richards, 2023; Song & Wei, 2007; Varghese et al., 2005; Zhang & Sun, 2023). Studies have revealed the correlation between TPI and various aspects of teachers’ personal and professional lives (Beijaard & Meijer, 2017; Pennington & Richards, 2016; Song, 2016; Yazan, 2018), as well as the effect of TPI on learners (Yazdani & Ghasedi, 2021).
Extant literature has documented myriad definitions of TPI from different theoretical perspectives. These include perspectives such as understanding “who I am as a teacher” (Beijaard et al., 2000), a positive evaluation of the teaching profession (Wei et al., 2013), the ways in which teachers make sense of themselves and the images they present in their situated institutional and sociocultural contexts (Yuan & Zhang, 2019), and the “theories, attitudes and beliefs that teachers have about themselves which are developed through their teaching careers as they interact with others” (Carlyon, 2016, p. 99). In this study, TPI is defined as the extent to which a teacher identifies with the teaching profession, encompassing the teacher’s perceptions of themselves as an English teacher both in the present and the future (Yan et al., 2024).
Many studies have explored the development of teachers’ professional identities, delving into TPI in relation to coursework participation (Menon, 2020; Tsybulsky & Muchnik-Rozanov, 2023), mentor support (Izadinia, 2016), visiting scholar experience (Bao & Feng, 2022; Yang & Huang, 2022), and the transition from university to the teaching post (Seyri & Nazari, 2022; Stenberg & Maaranen, 2021; Wang, 2021). Additional studies have examined the association between TPI and teacher agency (Chávez et al., 2023; Hiver & Whitehead, 2018; Rosenfeld et al., 2022), as well as teacher emotion (Nichols et al., 2017; Teng, 2017; Wolff & De Costa, 2017). These studies are qualitative in nature.
Recently, there has been a notable shift toward the evaluation of TPI using quantitative or mixed-research methods (Canrinus et al., 2012; Hanna et al., 2019; Shi & Cheng, 2020; Xun & Zheng, 2015; Yan & Bava Harji, 2023). This trend is evident by the increasing studies assessing TPI levels (Cai, 2021; Haghighi Irani et al., 2020; Liu & Cai, 2021; Pu, 2021) and exploring relationships among TPI and other constructs (Dilek & Altas, 2022; Fu & Zhou, 2019; Yu & Zhou, 2021; Zarrinabadi et al., 2023).