The professional identity of the Iranian teachers: a case of professional practices

ABSTRACT

The study intended to explore teachers’ professional identity in terms of teachers’ perceptions of their practices. The study employed mixed-methods design, including 80 survey participants and 19 interviews with teachers. In the quantitative section, teachers’ perceptions of their commitment to professional practices and how their perceptions were influenced by variables such as gender, age, educational degree, and teaching experience were explored. The results of descriptive statistics revealed that teachers were strongly committed to professional practices. Additionally, data analysis indicated significant differences in teachers’ perceptions with reference to age and teaching experience, but teachers’ gender and education degree did not appear significant. The qualitative findings revealed that teachers mainly tended to exercise professional practices of personal growth and interactional practices, and considered ‘teaching/learning materials’ as an important contributing factor in implementing professional practices. The data also showed that teachers’ professional identity practices were influenced by contextual factors and macro-political policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Commitment
• professional identity
• professional practices
• interactional practices
• teaching/learning materials

Acknowledgments

We would like to sincerely thank all teachers who gave their time to participate in this study. This research received no grant from funding agencies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2022.2076729

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Aliakbari

Mohammad Aliakbari is Professor of TEFL at Ilam University, Iran. His areas of interest embrace SLA, educational psychology, and sociolinguistics. He has published extensively in scholarly journals, including Journal of Pragmatics, Educational Psychology, System, and International Journal of Applied Linguistics.

Setayesh Sadeghi

Setayesh Sadeghi holds a PhD in TEFL from Ilam University. She is interested in teacher education, professional development, and sociolinguistics.