Teacher educators are an occupational group who appear to suffer from an identity crisis. They do not seem to be able to agree on what their role or professional learning needs are. This situation has dire consequences for the next generation of teacher educators who enter the field in the same rather haphazard and ad hoc way as the ones before.…

This article examines how the crisis of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) became a crucible, or a means of transformation, for global educators. How teachers leverage their lived experience of teaching through the implications of COVID-19 to transform identity and practice is a new phenomenon and merits examination. Through a collection of…

The formation of identity in a secularized world is different from formation in a religious oriented society. In this situation, educating young people and guiding their personhood formation is even more a task of connecting to the pupils from out of your own heart. A Catholic religious teacher can be a mirror for these young people when answering…

Against a background of public management reform strengthening managerialism, this study examines the professional identity of secondary school teachers in the Netherlands. It uses the Good Work framework of "excellence," "ethics" and "engagement" to explore what teachers think they should do -- self-image -- versus…

This study investigated the relation between teachers' interpersonal role identity on the one hand and teachers' self-efficacy, burnout and work engagement on the other. Data was collected using questionnaires and semi-structured and video-stimulated interviews. Results especially showed differences for self-efficacy between the teachers'…

The first years in the teaching profession are often a challenge and most beginning teachers struggle with concerns. To support beginning teachers, induction programmes have been developed which should lead to an acceleration of growth in teaching skills and prevent drop-out. In this study, we explore the concerns of beginning teachers in…

Interpersonal relationships between teachers and students play a crucial role in teachers' professional identity, yet have hardly been focused on in research. This study aimed to explore teachers' interpersonal role identity over time by focusing on teachers' appraisals of classroom situations and the relation with their interpersonal identity…

In CLIL contexts, school subjects are taught in an additional language, allowing learners to acquire the target language through meaningful use. This places language teachers in an ambiguous position. What is their role in this context? On the one hand, language teachers are expected to collaborate with subject teacher colleagues; on the other…

Beginning medical teachers often see themselves as doctors or researchers rather than as teachers. Using both figured worlds theory and dialogical self theory, this study explores how beginning teachers in the field of undergraduate medical education integrate the teacher role into their identity. A qualitative study was performed, involving 18…

Four narrative fragments involving research disseminated globally -- namely, United States, Israel, The Netherlands, The People's Republic of China -- are used to instantiate the phenomenon of teachers teaching their best-loved selves, without becoming the curriculum themselves. Next, the development of the best-loved self-conceptualization as it…

This article reports on a qualitative-interpretative study about how Dutch primary teachers understand socialisation at school, which pedagogical tasks and activities they perform and how they fit this within their professional identity. Teachers unanimously report socialisation to be part of their job. Four types of views on the pedagogical…

This article investigates the link between teachers' appraisal of specific interpersonal situations in classrooms and their more general interpersonal identity standard, which together form their interpersonal role identity. Using semi-structured and video-stimulated interviews, data on teachers' appraisals and interpersonal identity standards…

This article discusses how teachers perceive their role in supporting and guiding students in transitions. Do teachers see themselves more as gatekeepers or as supporters? The analysis draws upon qualitative data collected in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Finland. Based on the analysis of teachers' interviews, we developed three…

This study reports on interviews with 24 beginning teachers about tensions they experienced regarding their professional identity. The interviewees reported a total of 59 tensions of tension that fell into three themes: (1) the change in role from student to teacher; (2) conflicts between desired and actual support given to students; and (3)…

This study shows that professional identity should not be viewed as a composed variable with a uniform structure. Based on the literature and previous research, we view teachers' job satisfaction, self-efficacy, occupational commitment and change in the level of motivation as indicators of teachers' professional identity. Using two-step cluster…