Conference Agenda

Background：vocational education teachers’ roles has been a long-standing yet insufficiently explained issue in international vocational education scholarship. Although higher vocational college teachers are institutionally expected to undertake teaching, research, and social service, research engagement is often treated as marginal in everyday practice. To varying degrees, the belief that vocational college teachers “do not need to do research” or “are unable to do research” continues to shape institutional arrangements and resource allocation. Under utilitarian evaluation regimes, existing studies have largely focused on teachers’ research competence, emphasizing outcomes of competence acquisition and narrowing research participation to basic skills such as project applications and data collection. This framing overlooks a crucial question: how the identity of “researcher” is understood and enacted within specific institutional contexts.

Theoretical framework： To examine the generative mechanisms through which higher vocational college teachers become researchers, this study adopts a structuration perspective. Teachers are conceptualized as professional agents situated within vocational colleges. From this view, becoming a researcher is not simply the cumulative result of individual competence; rather, it is an ongoing process produced through teachers’ meaning-making of the researcher role and their strategic actions under the dual conditions of structural constraint and enablement (rules and resources).

Questions： (RQ1) What are the overall levels and distributions of higher vocational college teachers’ research competence and research participationt? (RQ2) How is the “researcher” role interpreted and negotiated by teachers within vocational colleges under existing rules and resource conditions? (RQ3) Through what mechanisms do structural constraints/enablers and teacher agency interact to produce divergent pathways of becoming a researcher?

Methods：A mixed-methods design is employed. First, a questionnaire survey (N = 202) maps overall patterns of teachers’ research competence, research participation behaviors, and perceived institutional support environments. Building on the survey findings, semi-structured interviews (n = 15) are conducted with teachers selected across different levels of research competence and different contexts of perceived institutional support, in order to explain the mechanisms behind differentiated research practices.

Findings：Survey results indicate that teachers’ overall research competence is at a moderate level. Mean scores (out of 5) for four dimensions—research support competence, research autonomy competence, research cognitive competence, and research practical competence—are 3.589, 3.650, 3.743, and 3.636, respectively, with an overall mean of 3.654. At the same time, research participation behaviors show clear differentiation, and teachers commonly perceive constraints related to research evaluation, resource support, and organizational positioning. Interview analysis further reveals a process logic characterized by “role understanding—structural constraints—agentic strategies.” Teachers’ understandings of the researcher identity are markedly divergent: some uncritically benchmark against university academics and equate research with journal publication, detaching inquiry from educational practice; others overemphasize vocational education’s practical orientation and deny the professional value of academic research. Multiple structural factors—evaluation rules, resource provision, organizational positioning, and broader social perceptions—jointly make practice-based inquiry difficult to be recognized as legitimate research, reinforcing externalized and instrumental participation. Under these conditions, some teachers stabilize a researcher identity by embedding inquiry into teaching improvement and industry-related problems, mobilizing cross-boundary collaboration and informal support networks, and selectively responding to institutional evaluation demands.

Contribution and implications：Overall, barriers for vocational college teachers to become researchers do not primarily stem from a lack of individual competence. Rather, the institutional foundation for legitimizing and sustaining the researcher role within the vocational education field remains comparatively weak. While grounded in the Chinese higher vocational education context, the issues resonate with European debates on teacher agency, practice-based research, and the professionalization of vocational education. The study suggests that strengthening vocational teachers’ research engagement requires not only competence development, but also institutional alignment in rules and resources that recognizes practice-embedded inquiry as legitimate knowledge production.

Research on leadership in European vocational education and training (VET) is still scarce and predominantly qualitative. Previous studies have focused on themes such as distributed pedagogical leadership (Jäppinen & Maunonen-Eskelinen, 2012), leadership identities, practices and structures (Thomassen et al., 2025), leadership practices regarding knowledge sharing (Glosvik & Sekkingstad, 2025), and enthusiasm-enhancing leadership (Wenström et al., 2019). There is still a need for a broader understanding of VET leadership to support teachers’ well-being and professional development in the changing VET landscape, and to further develop supportive leadership practices.

VET systems across European countries are currently undergoing significant transformations, encompassing diverse student populations, technology-enhanced learning environments, and increasingly complex collaboration with workplaces and other stakeholders (e.g., Hiim, 2023; Herrero et al., 2024). These changes require VET leaders to adopt new leadership roles and practices. Recent literature in educational leadership has emphasized the importance of pedagogical leadership (e.g., Fonsén & Lahtero, 2024, Llanos et al., 2024) and agency-promoting leadership (Brewer et al., 2020; Hökkä et al., 2014, 2019), since these kinds of leadership practices together foster continuous learning among teachers and empower them as active and future-oriented practitioners. In the evolving and complex VET landscape, such leadership practices have not been extensively examined, but they are seen as having the potential to enable teaching and guidance staff to work as thriving and proactive professionals who act competently and collaboratively in their work and communities (e.g. Vähäsantanen, 2015).

This mixed-method study aims to generate new insights into VET leadership by focusing on agency-promoting leadership and pedagogical leadership. In this study, agency-promoting leadership empowers teachers and teams to take initiatives, exercise influence their work and environment, fostering innovation and development, and providing clear frameworks for autonomous action, contrasting with top-down models (Hökkä et al., 2019). Leaders practicing this kind of leadership support professional identity of staff members, encourage collaboration, and create conditions where staff members feel capable of driving positive change, rather than just following directives (Dağdeviren Ertaş et al, 2025; Hökkä et al., 2014). Second, we focus on pedagogical leadership, which at the organizational level involves defining strategic direction, setting pedagogical goals, and supporting teaching and guidance staff in achieving these goals (Fonsén & Lahtero, 2024). Through their leadership practices, pedagogical leaders foster a culture of learning, ensure the quality of teaching, and create conditions for collaboration and knowledge sharing across the organization. At the same time, they guide and evaluate pedagogical practices holistically, ensuring that organizational structures, resources, and ways of working support continuous learning (Fonsén & Lahtero, 2024, Llanos et al., 2024).

This study was conducted in the contexts of Finnish vocational education. The research questions are as follows: 1. How do VET leaders view their agency-promoting leadership practices and supporting resources?, 2. How do VET leaders describe their pedagogical leadership practices in their work and institutions?

In recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in vocational teachers’ professional identity in the field of vocational education and training (VET) across Europe (e.g., Antera & Teräs, 2024; Berger & Lê Van, 2018; Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Lensjø, 2025), including Finland (e.g., Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019). In Finland, significant changes have occurred in vocational teachers’ working environments, such as the VET reform, which have reshaped teachers’ work roles towards, for instance, intensified working life collaboration and technology-mediated teaching (Rintala & Nokelainen, 2022; Seitamaa & Hakoköngäs, 2024). Another key challenge shifting the landscape of European VET lies in its increasingly diversified target groups from youth to adults (Misra, 2011), and how vocational teachers are able to adapt to students’ individual needs (Lehtonen et al., 2018). The continuously evolving teaching contexts in VET pose a challenge for the professional identity of vocational teachers, as they are expected to adapt to the increasingly fragmented work roles. Identity tensions, accompanied by unpleasant emotional experiences and reduced intention to remain in teaching, may emerge when teachers’ existing professional identities conflict with their work roles (Vilppola et al., 2023; Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019).

Vocational teachers’ professional identity refers to the perceptions of themselves as a teacher and their professional goals, values, and educational beliefs (Köpsen, 2014; Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019). Much of the previous research has been qualitative in nature and has focused on two identity positions: 1) a teacher and expert in pedagogy and 2) a professional and expert in one’s field (e.g., Sarastuen, 2020; Tyler & Dymock, 2021). However, vocational teachers’ professional identities are multifaceted (Lensjø, 2025), and there is some evidence of enacting the roles of a caretaker (e.g., parental figures) (Barak & Shoshana, 2022; Köpsen, 2014). Still, more nuanced insights into identity remain scarce. The need for quantitative examination with more holistic approaches to vocational teachers’ professional identity to capture its complexity is evident, as the field of VET is continuously evolving.

These considerations also highlight the importance of examining how vocational teachers’ professional identity relates to their professional agency. Teachers’ identity negotiations take place between individual agency and social structures (see Day et al., 2006), which can pose external expectations and demands on what constitutes vocational teachers’ key work roles. Here, professional agency is conceptualised as an action-based phenomenon. It manifests in collaboration and development within the work community, influence over individual and collective work-related matters, and the enactment of professional goals and interests (Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Vähäsantanen et al., 2022). Yet, the research community in VET lacks a comprehensive understanding of vocational teachers’ agency (see some exceptions Goodson & Ümarik, 2019; Vähäsantanen, 2015) and notably its connection to professional identity based on quantitative evidence: Are teachers who are attached to certain identity positions more agentic actors than others? There is an urgent need to understand the mechanisms of professional agency, given its contribution to teachers’ well-being and retention (e.g., Kayi-Aydar & Steadman, 2019; Lasky, 2005). Despite its importance as an empirical lens on professional identity, quantitative examinations of the relationship between vocational teachers’ professional identity and agency remain limited.

In light of these research gaps presented above, the main aims of this study were to examine how Finnish vocational teachers experience their professional identity and how it relates to their professional agency. We posed the following research questions:

RQ1) How do Finnish vocational teachers perceive their professional identity in the work context?

RQ2) How is vocational teachers’ professional identity associated with their professional agency?

Vocational Education and Training (VET) teachers occupy a distinct and complex professional position at the intersection of vocational practice, education, and labor market regulation. Across Europe, VET teachers are expected to maintain strong occupational competence while simultaneously developing pedagogical expertise, engaging with educational reforms, and supporting increasingly diverse student populations. Research has repeatedly shown that this “double identity” – as both vocational practitioners and teachers – is a defining characteristic of the VET teaching profession (Grollmann, 2008; Köpsén, 2014; Misra, 2011). However, far less attention has been paid to how this double identity shapes VET teachers’ professional development needs after completing formal teacher education.

Existing research has documented fragmented pathways into the VET teaching profession, variations in qualification requirements, and weak or uneven structures for continuing professional development (CPD) for VET teachers (Grollmann, 2008; Misra, 2011). Studies focusing on vocational teacher identity highlight how teachers continuously negotiate boundaries between occupational and educational practices, often prioritizing vocational credibility over pedagogical development, or vice versa, depending on institutional context and career trajectories (Andersson & Köpsén, 2017; Köpsén, 2014). At the same time, research on competencies in VET teaching points to expanding expectations related to digitalization, assessment, inclusion, and collaboration with industry, adding further complexity to teachers’ professional roles (Tapani & Salonen, 2019).

While these studies provide important insights, there remains a significant research gap concerning how VET teachers themselves experience professional development opportunities and barriers in the years following teacher qualification. In particular, there is limited empirical knowledge about what motivates VET teachers to engage in further learning, how they prioritize vocational versus pedagogical development, and how institutional and organizational conditions enable or constrain their professional learning.

This paper addresses this gap by examining the professional development needs of VET teachers in Norway, with a specific focus on how the functions of the double identity shape teachers’ motivations, learning priorities, and perceived barriers to professional development. Norway represents a relevant case within a European context, as VET teacher education is formally regulated and research-based, yet VET teachers operate in a system characterised by strong labor market linkages, vocational specialization, and increasing policy demands for quality, inclusion, and innovation.

The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. What barriers to professional development do VET teachers experience in their everyday professional practice?
2. How do VET teachers negotiate professional development needs connected to their vocational identity and their identity as teachers?

The conceptual framework draws on research on vocational teacher professionalism and identity, particularly the notion of double identity as an analytical lens rather than a fixed attribute. Building on Grollmann’s (2008) emphasis on institutional roles and professional reality, and Köpsén’s (2014) work on identity formation through boundary-crossing, professional development is understood as a situated and context-dependent process shaped by organizational structures, professional cultures, and individual career trajectories. Rather than conceptualizing professional development as participation in formal courses alone, the study adopts a broader understanding that includes informal learning, workplace-based learning, and identity work over time.

The European relevance of the study lies in its contribution to ongoing discussions on how VET systems can support sustainable professional development for teachers operating under hybrid professional expectations. Although the empirical focus is Norway, the challenges addressed – fragmented CPD provision, tensions between vocational and pedagogical learning, and limited institutional support for long-term professional development – resonate across European VET systems (Misra, 2011; Zirkle, Smeplass & Leraand, 2024). By foregrounding teachers’ perspectives, the study offers empirically grounded insights that can inform comparative research, policy development, and the design of professional development structures for VET teachers in Europe.