Conference Agenda

The influence of neo-liberalism on education, which informs state expectations and visions for teacher identity, poses several navigational challenges on teachers. In such circumstances, teacher identity as a way of making sense of oneself is further shaped by the state’s expectations and their vision of an ideal teacher. This study explored the longitudinally national representation of teacher identity in Finland and India. The distinct educational and sociopolitical contexts of Finland and India offer a valuable framework for examining how contrasting systemic influences shape teacher identity. Moreover, research on teacher identity and its contextual development have been overlooked between these countries. To understand this interplay between systemic influences and identity, the study operated with the research question: How does the representation of teacher identity in government policy documents for teacher education compare between Finland and India?

The representation of teacher identity in the official documents of Finland and India for teacher education was understood through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The Finnish documents included the Government Decree on University Degrees and Professional Specialisation Programmes (MEC, 2004) and the second edition of Teacher Education Development Programme (MEC, 2022). The Indian documents included the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE, 2009) and the National Education Policy (NEP, 2020). The study adopted Fairclough’s (1995) three-dimensional model of discourse analysis as an analytical tool to explore the dimensions of social practice, discursive practice, and text.

The analysis of the selected texts showcased that, in Finland, the discourses of competence, university inclusion, aspirations, and teacher shortage suggested a teacher identity of a competent research-oriented teacher. In India, the discourses of neglect, inadequacy, isolation, and urgency suggested an attempt to reconnect teacher identity with the national ethos and traditional values. The ideal teacher identity was stable across the examined Finnish documents but varied between the Indian documents.

The Finnish discourses showcased an overt reliance on research at the expense of practical community-based teaching which places their teacher identity at crossroads (Hansén et al., 2023). It calls for reimagining teacher identity, possibly drawing strength from the discourses of competence, university inclusion and aspirations. On the other hand, Indian discourses appeared consequential and hegemonic in nature. That is, the state’s neglect leads to teacher inadequacy and teacher isolation, which are further manifested in a constant urgency to improve the teaching profession. The implications for Indian teacher identity, hegemonically shaped by systemic neglect, corporatization, institutional isolation, and policy-practice disconnects (e.g., Batra, 2014), position teachers more as technical functionaries than as empowered professionals. This diverging contextual identities should however not be reduced to the binary of good or bad; it should be reasoned through context and the lack of national immunity to the consequences of teacher shortage against evolving global influences on national development.

The study argues that national definitions of teacher identity depend on the capability of the state to afford and provide education, which has a large imprint on the avenues for teachers’ professional development and support. Moreover, the evolutionary nature of teacher identity mandates a constant re-evaluation of the individual-context interplay by teachers, teacher educators, preservice teachers, educational and state institutions for effective teacher development.

Community language schools play a crucial yet often marginalised role in supporting heritage language maintenance and multilingual education across Europe and beyond (Hancock, 2012). In the UK and other European contexts characterised by increasing linguistic diversity, these schools frequently operate outside mainstream education systems while responding to unmet educational, cultural, and social needs of minority communities. Despite their growing significance, limited research has examined how teachers working in community language schools construct and negotiate their professional identities, particularly in relation to broader social, institutional, and policy contexts (Nordstrom, 2020). Addressing this gap, this paper investigates how contextual factors influence the formation and development of teacher role identities in a Chinese community school in Scotland (CCSS).

The study is guided by the following research question: How do contextual factors at macro-, meso-, and micro-levels shape the formation and development of teacher role identities in a Chinese community language school in Scotland? The research aims to contribute to European and international debates on teacher identity, multilingual education, and educational equity by foregrounding the lived experiences of community language teachers situated at the periphery of formal education systems.

The study adopts the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) (Kaplan & Garner, 2017) as its conceptual and theoretical framework. DSMRI conceptualises role identity as an open, self-organising system anchored in action and composed of interacting elements, including ontological and epistemological beliefs, purposes and goals, self-perceptions and self-definitions, perceived action possibilities, and emotions. Identity development is understood as iterative, non-linear, and emergent, shaped by both internal dynamics and external control parameters, such as context, culture, domain, and disposition. This framework is particularly well suited to examining teacher identity in community language schools, where teachers often navigate multiple social roles (e.g. parent, volunteer, migrant, professional), institutional marginalisation, and competing cultural expectations.

Drawing on a qualitative case study design, the research explores teacher identity construction across multiple contextual levels. At the micro level, findings highlight the central role of parental identity as a powerful attractor within many participants’ identity systems. For a significant number of teachers, motivations to teach, emotional commitment, and pedagogical practices were closely aligned with parental responsibilities and aspirations, particularly the desire to support children’s heritage language maintenance and cultural belonging. This alignment contributed to identity coherence and sustained engagement, even in the absence of formal recognition or material rewards.

Drawing on a qualitative case study design, the research explores teacher identity construction across multiple contextual levels. At the micro level, findings highlight the central role of parental identity as a powerful attractor within many participants’ identity systems. For a significant number of teachers, motivations to teach, emotional commitment, and pedagogical practices were closely aligned with parental responsibilities and aspirations, particularly the desire to support children’s heritage language maintenance and cultural belonging. This alignment contributed to identity coherence and sustained engagement, even in the absence of formal recognition or material rewards.

At the macro level, the Scottish multilingual and multicultural social context offers a broadly supportive environment for community language education. However, the study identifies a notable disjuncture between policy discourses promoting linguistic diversity and the lived realities of community language teachers. In the absence of dedicated mechanisms for professional development, accreditation, and career progression, macro-level policy conditions function more as constraining parameters than enabling resources. This finding resonates with wider European concerns regarding the recognition and professional status of teachers working in complementary and non-formal education sectors.

Teacher retention has emerged as a persistent global challenge, contributing to workforce instability, higher costs, and diminished instructional quality across education systems. While this issue has been widely documented internationally, it is also particularly salient in high-performing education systems, such as Finland. Despite the country’s formidable reputation in teacher education, studies indicate that approximately 40–50% of Finnish teachers report intentions to leave the profession at some point in their careers (Pyhältö et al., 2015). This paradox highlights the urgent need to move beyond structural explanations of attrition and to focus on individual and developmental factors that may predict teachers’ long-term engagement with the profession.

One construct that has attracted growing attention in international research is teacher resilience. Teacher resilience is a dynamic process shaped by the interplay of individual resources and contextual conditions, enabling teachers to adapt to, recover from, and grow through professional challenges (Metsäpelto et al., 2022). Research consistently shows that resilient teachers are more likely to remain committed to the profession, cope effectively with stress, and sustain motivation over time (Tait, 2008). Importantly, resilience is not a fixed trait but a developmental capacity that can be fostered during teacher education, making it a critical focus for research and policy across European and international contexts. Intricately linked to resilience is teachers’ professional identity, which is widely conceptualized as an evolving and multidimensional construct shaped through continuous interpretation of individual experiences and professional contexts (Metsäpelto et al., 2022). Teacher education plays a significant role in initiating this identity formation process, yet professional identity continues to develop throughout teachers’ careers. Hanna et al. (2019) identify six core domains of teacher identity (self-image, motivation, commitment, self-efficacy, task perception, and job satisfaction), although the relative importance and interrelationships among these domains remain underexplored (Canrinus et al., 2012).

This study focuses on two empirically and theoretically central domains of professional identity: motivation for a teaching career and commitment to the profession. Motivation has been strongly linked to teacher engagement, well-being, and retention across diverse educational systems (Collie, 2023). Understanding how motivation develops longitudinally during teacher education is, therefore, essential for strengthening sustainable career commitment. Commitment to teaching is another key predictor of persistence and professional well-being (Klassen & Chiu, 2011). Although motivation and commitment are theoretically interconnected, empirical research directly examining their combined and longitudinal effects, particularly in relation to resilience and dropout intentions, remains limited (Canrinus et al., 2012). Identifying the individual-level factors that support stable commitment is thus critical for addressing teacher attrition across educational levels and national contexts.

Given these relational facts, this study aims to quantitatively examine whether teacher education in Finland facilitates the development of professional identity among preservice teachers.

In alignment with these objectives, this longitudinal study will investigate the following research questions:

1. What are the associations among preservice teachers’ motivation for their studies, commitment, resilience, and intentions to leave the profession?
2. Do preservice teachers' professional identity, as empirically examined here through motivation and commitment, and resilience change over their teacher education years?
3. Is there a sustained effect of preservice teachers' professional identity development, as empirically examined here through motivation and commitment, on their resilience and their intentions to drop out?

Distance education places particular emphasis on the design of learning activities and tasks, as instructional interaction and pedagogical guidance are largely mediated through learning materials. In such contexts, learning activities play a central role in structuring learning processes, shaping student engagement and reaching curricular goals. Despite the expansion of distance and digitally mediated schooling across Europe, empirical research examining the types of learning activities offered to secondary school students remains limited.

This study examines the categorisation of learning activities and tasks used in distance education schools in Latvia. The empirical focus is on Grade 9 and Grade 12, which are high-stakes examination years in the Latvian education system. Three examination subjects, English, Latvian and Mathematics, are included to allow exploration of task design across language and non-language disciplines and across lower and upper secondary levels.

The primary objective of the study is to systematically categorise learning activities used in distance education and to map their distribution across subjects and grade levels. The study adopts a descriptive and analytical perspective, aiming to document how learning activities are structured and presented to students rather than to evaluate learning outcomes or instructional effectiveness.

The study is informed by multiple established frameworks in learning design and distance education. These include learning design taxonomies that distinguish types of learning activities (e.g. the Open University Learning Design framework), models of pedagogical dialogue and teaching-learning processes (e.g. Laurillard’s Conversational Framework), theories of interaction in distance education (e.g. Moore’s and Anderson’s interaction models), taxonomies addressing cognitive demand (e.g. Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy) and frameworks conceptualising modes of learner engagement (e.g. the ICAP framework). Together, these perspectives support a multi-dimensional examination of learning activities in terms of instructional intent, interaction, cognitive complexity and learner activity.

The study addresses the following research questions:

1. What types of learning activities and tasks are offered to students in distance education in Grades 9 and 12?
2. How are these task types distributed across subjects and grade levels?
3. What patterns of similarity and variation can be observed in task design across examination subjects?

While the empirical focus is national, the study is situated within broader European and international discussions on distance education, curriculum digitalisation and secondary-level learning design.