Your browser does not fully support modern features. Please upgrade for a smoother experience.
Dimensions of Teacher Professional Identity: A Scoping Review: History
View Latest Version
Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Contributor: Esra Çakar Özkan

The rapid institutional and technological transformations of the 2020–2025 period have had a significant impact on teacher professional identity. Drawing on Rosa’s social acceleration thesis and Harvey’s concept of time–space compression, this scoping review examined the dimensions of professional identity emerging in the literature published between 2020 and 2025 among in-service pre-kindergarten through 12th grade (PK-12) teachers, the educational contexts in which these dimensions were addressed, and how they interrelate. Following the PRISMA-ScR guidelines, 45 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases were analyzed through inductive thematic coding and a dimension–context interaction matrix. Six analytically distinct yet interrelated identity dimensions were identified: Biographical and Personal, Professional and Pedagogical, Emotional and Psychological, Social and Relational, Political and Agentic, and Prospective and Imagined. These dimensions were organized within a dialogical space model distinguishing internal/individual and external/structural domains. The Emotional and Psychological dimension achieved near-universal representation, while the Prospective and Imagined dimension remained the least studied. Six convergence, five divergence, and six gap patterns were identified across seven educational contexts. The findings reveal that, in this period, teacher professional identity is not a fixed attribute carried by the individual but rather a dynamic process continuously negotiated under structural pressures.

  • teacher professional identity
  • scoping review
  • identity dimensions
  • PK-12 teachers
  • educational context
  • post-pandemic period
The rapid social, technological, and educational changes of the past twenty years have triggered a wave of reforms in global education systems, placing teachers at the forefront of these reforms as key stakeholders. Teacher quality is recognized as the most fundamental determinant of student achievement, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s (2025) [1] report “Unlocking High-Quality Teaching” confirms that no in-school factor has as decisive an impact on academic success as teaching quality. Reinforcing this, the OECD [2] identifies the reframing of teacher professionalism as a critical policy issue.
A review of the relevant literature reveals that reform efforts often create tensions between teachers’ deeply held values and the demands of new policies [3]. Over the past two decades, research has demonstrated that teacher identity has a dynamic, flexible, and hybrid structure. This structure is shaped by multiple intersecting forces: personal biographies and narratives [4], emotions [5], social relationships [6], school organizations [7], and working conditions [8]. Within this framework, teacher identity is defined as a socially constructed process shaped by discourse, narrative, and emotions and influenced by social and organizational contexts [9]. It has been clearly documented that the 2020–2025 period brought unprecedented institutional and emotional pressures that disrupted teachers’ professional routines [10]. These disruptions reveal that teacher identity is not merely an answer to “who I am” but a structure constantly renegotiated between macro-policies and micro-classroom practices.
While existing systematic reviews (e.g., [9][11]) offer broad perspectives on teacher professional identity, they have not distinguished the post-2020 period as a theoretically grounded timeframe. This study’s decision to focus on 2020–2025 is grounded in social theory.
This study’s decision to focus on the 2020–2025 period is grounded in two complementary social theories: Rosa’s thesis of social acceleration [12] and Harvey’s concept of time–space compression [13]. Taken together, these perspectives position the period not merely as a crisis but as a distinctive conjuncture in which teacher identity was renegotiated under intensified structural pressures. The theoretical elaboration of both frameworks is provided in Section 1.1.
Consequently, this study focuses on the years 2020 to 2025 and encompasses two primary objectives: (1) to map the dimensions within which teacher professional identity was addressed and the educational contexts in which it was examined in studies published between 2020 and 2025; (2) to present an integrated synthesis revealing which dimensions of teacher identity are highlighted across different educational contexts.

Conceptual and Theoretical Framework

Teacher professional identity has been recognized as a critical variable for understanding teachers’ professional lives, motivations, and pedagogical practices [3][7][14]. Although definitions vary across theoretical traditions, they converge in emphasizing identity’s dynamic, multidimensional, and socially constructed nature. To avoid fragmenting across incommensurable theoretical lenses or flattening period-specific dynamics into generic identity claims, this section develops the framework in three steps: (i) the foundational theoretical perspectives; (ii) two period-specific extensions required by the structural conditions of 2020–2025; and (iii) the analytical implications of this framework for the present review.
(i) Foundational theoretical perspectives. Four theoretical perspectives dominate contemporary teacher identity scholarship; each addresses a functionally distinct question, and their combination is therefore necessary.
The narrative perspective [15], systematized by Beijaard and colleagues [14], addresses how identity acquires coherence over time, conceptualizing it as a continuous reinterpretation of experience, embedded in personal and professional contexts, encompassing multiple sub-identities, and requiring teachers to act as agents in their development. Within this framework, identity is understood through teachers’ answers to “who they are now” and “who they want to become” [14].
The process-oriented perspective [16] addresses what drives identity transformation, defining identity as a dynamic process shaped by the continuous reinterpretation of values and experiences across personal, social, and cognitive factors, shifting analytical attention from identity-as-state to identity-as-becoming.
The dialogical perspective [17] addresses how identity reconciles internal multiplicity, conceptualizing teacher identity as simultaneously singular and plural, continuous and discontinuous, individual and social—dissolving binary oppositions by locating identity in the dialogue between internal voices.
The discursive-structural perspective [18] addresses how identity is shaped from outside, foregrounding power relations, institutional discourses, and external structural conditions as decisive in identity construction.
A productive tension exists between the last two perspectives: Akkerman and Meijer locate identity plurality in inner dialogue, while Beauchamp and Thomas attribute it to external structural pressures. The present review treats this tension not as a contradiction but as an analytical architecture for 2020–2025, when teachers were compelled to renegotiate identity simultaneously through ruptures in inner dialogue and intensified structural pressures. This architecture provides the conceptual basis for the dimensional model developed in this review, in which the internal/individual and external/structural domains operationalize, respectively, the dialogical and discursive-structural perspectives, with teacher professional identity positioned at their intersection.
(ii) Period-specific theoretical extensions: Acceleration and compression. While these four perspectives account for the contextual nature of identity, they were developed under structural conditions substantively different from those of 2020–2025 and do not fully capture the period’s structural speed and intensity—pandemic disruption, forced digitalization, and accountability intensification telescoped into a timeframe far shorter than the reflective adaptation cycles they implicitly assume. Two additional lenses are therefore required.
Rosa’s theory of social acceleration [12] posits that when the pace of change exceeds adaptive capacity, resonance loss occurs and the capacity to assimilate experience is impaired. During 2020–2025, teachers experienced successive accelerations—the mandatory shift to remote teaching, mounting accountability pressures, and cascading reform mandates—compressed into a timeframe too short for reflective adaptation.
Harvey’s concept of time–space compression [13] addresses the spatial counterpart, explaining how boundaries between teachers’ private and professional identities eroded as home and workspaces became intertwined [19]. Empirical evidence converges on this point: Flack and colleagues [20] and Ehren and colleagues [21] document blurred boundaries between professional and personal lives during remote teaching, while König and colleagues [22] show that early career teachers faced competence gaps because digital adaptation occurred too rapidly for pedagogical integration. Together, these perspectives position 2020–2025 not as another instance of gradual change but as an extraordinary conjuncture in which identity had to be renegotiated under conditions exceeding existing adaptive capacity.
The foundational perspectives and period-specific extensions thus form a layered framework: the former specify what identity is and how it functions generally, while the latter specify why 2020–2025 produced distinctive identity dynamics. Nazari and Seyri [23] show post-pandemic teacher identity as an active response to external conditions, and Xu and Tao [24] demonstrate its evolution into a structure continuously negotiated under contextual pressures—empirical support for this layered approach.
Drawing on this integrated framework, teacher professional identity is defined as a multidimensional self-understanding emerging from the interaction between teachers’ personal histories, values, and beliefs and their professional knowledge, experiences, and social contexts—having both emotional and cognitive dimensions, constructed individually and socially, and continuously renegotiated under structural conditions that may either enable or foreclose reflective adaptation. Identity is thus shaped in the dynamic tension between individual and structural domains—a tension the 2020–2025 period intensified to an unprecedented degree.
(iii) Analytical implications. The framework outlined above is not merely a conceptual backdrop; it shapes four analytical decisions in this review.
First, adopting inductive thematic coding rather than a predetermined scheme reflects the framework’s process-oriented and dialogical commitments: imposing a pre-2020 coding taxonomy would foreclose the detection of period-specific dimensional reconfigurations. The dimensions identified in this review therefore emerge from the data and are theoretically grounded post hoc to ensure coherence.
Second, the dimensional model of teacher professional identity operationalizes the tension between the dialogical [17] and discursive-structural [18] perspectives: its internal/individual and external/structural domains are analytical translations of this tension, with teacher professional identity located at their intersection.
Third, the dimension–context interaction matrix follows from the framework’s claim that identity dynamics in 2020–2025 cannot be explained by dimensional analysis alone—since acceleration and compression operate through specific contexts, the dimension–context interaction becomes the analytically consequential unit.
Fourth, the convergence/divergence/gap classification reflects a commitment, derived from the process-oriented perspective, to treat the literature as a dynamic corpus in which consistency indicates structural regularity, contradiction indicates contextually mediated variation, and absence indicates foreclosure.

The Purpose and Significance of the Study

The primary objective of this study is to analyze research conducted between 2020 and 2025 regarding the professional identity of in-service pre-kindergarten through 12th grade (PK-12) teachers using a scoping review method.
Within the scope of this research, the theoretical dimensions framing the concept of teacher professional identity, as well as the specific contexts (such as technology integration, the pandemic, and educational reforms) in which these dimensions are operationalized, were examined in detail. The findings were synthesized through a “dimension–context interaction matrix” to reveal patterns of convergence, divergence, and gaps in the literature across different contexts and dimensions of teacher professional identity, thereby providing a comprehensive scoping review and synthesis for the field.
To achieve this purpose, the study addresses the following three interrelated research questions:
  • RQ1: In what dimensions (e.g., professional, personal, and social) have the professional identities of PK-12 in-service teachers been conceptualized between 2020 and 2025?
  • RQ2: In what educational contexts do studies from this period focus on professional identity?
  • RQ3: What are the convergences, divergences, and gaps in the literature observed in the interactions between educational contexts and dimensions of professional identity?
These questions are addressed considering the significant changes that have shaped PK-12 education between 2020 and 2025.
The significance of the study rests on three core justifications. First, there is no consensus in the literature regarding the dimensions of teacher identity; Rushton and colleagues [9] and Yan [11] demonstrate that different theoretical approaches yield conceptual heterogeneity, which complicates cross-contextual comparisons.
Second, the 2020–2025 period (marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, digitalization, and policy transformations) has fundamentally reshaped teachers’ professional roles, yet the findings from this period have not yet been addressed within a holistic framework [25][26].
Finally, many existing systematic reviews have examined different teacher groups and educational levels together, often conflating in-service and pre-service teachers, while identity processes specific to grade levels or contexts have remained insufficiently explored [27][28]. A comprehensive scoping study focused exclusively on PK-12 in-service teachers has yet to be conducted. The findings of this study are expected to provide a theoretical and conceptual foundation for future research in teacher education and professional development.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/encyclopedia6050099

References

  1. OECD. Unlocking High-Quality Teaching; OECD Publishing: Paris, France, 2025.
  2. OECD. Teacher Professional Identity; OECD Education Working Papers, No. 267; OECD Publishing: Paris, France, 2022.
  3. Lasky, S. A sociocultural approach to understanding teacher identity, agency and professional vulnerability in a context of secondary school reform. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2005, 21, 899–916.
  4. Alsup, J. Teacher Identity Discourses: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ, USA, 2006.
  5. Day, C.; Leitch, R. Teachers’ and teacher educators’ lives: The role of emotion. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2001, 17, 403–415.
  6. Beijaard, D.; Verloop, N.; Vermunt, J. Teachers’ perceptions of professional identity: An exploratory study from a personal knowledge perspective. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2000, 16, 749–764.
  7. Day, C.; Elliot, B.; Kington, A. Reform, standards and teacher identity: Challenges of sustaining commitment. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2005, 21, 563–577.
  8. Canrinus, E.T.; Helms-Lorenz, M.; Beijaard, D.; Buitink, J.; Hofman, A. Profiling teachers’ sense of professional identity. Educ. Stud. 2011, 37, 593–608.
  9. Rushton, E.A.C.; Smith, S.R.; Steadman, S.; Towers, E. Understanding teacher identity in teachers’ professional lives: A systematic review of the literature. Rev. Educ. 2023, 11, e3417.
  10. Kim, L.E.; Fields, D.; Asbury, K. “It feels like I’m back to being a teacher”: A longitudinal trajectory analysis of teachers’ experiences during the first 8 months of COVID-19 in England. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 2023, 93, 1105–1122.
  11. Yan, Y. Bibliometric review of teacher professional identity scholarship over two decades. SAGE Open 2024, 14, 21582440241241173.
  12. Rosa, H. Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity; Trejo-Mathys, J., Translator; Columbia University Press: New York, NY, USA, 2013.
  13. Harvey, D. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change; Blackwell Publishers: Oxford, UK, 1989; Available online: https://files.libcom.org/files/David%20Harvey%20-%20The%20Condition%20of%20Postmodernity.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2025).
  14. Beijaard, D.; Meijer, P.C.; Verloop, N. Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2004, 20, 107–128.
  15. Connelly, F.M.; Clandinin, D.J. (Eds.) Shaping a Professional Identity: Stories of Educational Practice; Teachers College Press: New York, NY, USA, 1999.
  16. Flores, M.A.; Day, C. Contexts which shape and reshape new teachers’ identities: A multi-perspective study. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2006, 22, 219–232.
  17. Akkerman, S.F.; Meijer, P.C. A dialogical approach to conceptualizing teacher identity. Teach. Teach. Educ. 2011, 27, 308–319.
  18. Beauchamp, C.; Thomas, L. Understanding teacher identity: An overview of issues in the literature and implications for teacher education. Camb. J. Educ. 2009, 39, 175–189.
  19. Maddrell, A.; Ho, E.L.E.; Lobo, M. The multiple intensities of COVID-19 space-times. Soc. Cult. Geogr. 2023, 24, 385–390.
  20. Flack, C.B.; Walker, L.; Bickerstaff, A.; Earle, H.; Margetts, C. Educator Perspectives on the Impact of COVID-19 on Teaching and Learning in Australia and New Zealand; Pivot Professional Learning: Melbourne, Australia, 2020; Available online: https://docs.pivotpl.com/research/COVID-19/Pivot+Professional+Learning-+Impact+of+COVID-19+on+Teaching+and+Learning+Whitepaper+April+2020.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2025).
  21. Ehren, M.; Paterson, A.; Baxter, J. Accountability and trust: Two sides of the same coin? J. Educ. Change 2020, 21, 183–213.
  22. König, J.; Jäger-Biela, D.J.; Glutsch, N. Adapting to online teaching during COVID-19 school closure: Teacher education and teacher competence effects among early career teachers in Germany. Eur. J. Teach. Educ. 2020, 43, 608–622.
  23. Nazari, M.; Seyri, H. Covidentity: Examining transitions in teacher identity construction from personal to online classes. Eur. J. Teach. Educ. 2023, 46, 397–416.
  24. Xu, Y.; Tao, J. The pedagogical and socio-affective dimensions of identity tensions and teacher agency: Case studies of university English teachers teaching online. Lang. Teach. Res. 2023, 29, 3592–3613.
  25. Kim, L.E.; Asbury, K. ‘Like a rug had been pulled from under you’: The impact of COVID-19 on teachers in England during the first six weeks of the UK lockdown. Br. J. Educ. Psychol. 2020, 90, 1062–1083.
  26. Watermeyer, R.; Crick, T.; Knight, C.; Goodall, J. COVID-19 and digital disruption in UK universities: Afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration. High. Educ. 2021, 81, 623–641.
  27. Andrews, P.G.; Wright, A.L. Middle-level teacher development and identity: A review of the literature. Educ. Sci. 2024, 14, 1207.
  28. Zhang, J.; Zhou, M. A systematic review of quantitative measurements of teacher identity. Curr. Psychol. 2025, 44, 9265–9286.
More
© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
This entry is offline, you can click here to edit this entry!
Academic Video Service
Feedback

Quick Survey

Encyclopedia MDPI is conducting a targeted survey to identify the specific barriers hindering efficient research. We invite you to spend 3 minutes defining the priorities for our next generation of structured knowledge tools.
Take Survey