Investigation of the teachers' perceptions of professional identity and typologies of professional identity

The purpose of this research is to determine teachers' perceptions of professional identity and typologies of professional identity. In this regard, it was intented to determine the components that make up teachers' professional identity perceptions and their perceptions of these components, the identity typologies of teachers, the differentiation status of teachers' professional identity typologies in terms of demographic variables, and the factors affecting teachers' professional identity perceptions. In the research, exploratory sequential design, one of the mixed method designs, was used. In the first stage of the research, interviews were conducted to determine the components that make up the perception of professional identity of teachers and their typologies of professional identity, and to get their views on the factors affecting their perception of professional identity. At this stage, data were collected from the study group consisting of 20 volunteer teachers working in pre-school, primary, secondary and high schools, determined by criterion sampling. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed by inductive content analysis. In the second stage of the research, the Teachers' Professional Identity Perception Scale (TPIPS) was developed to determine teachers' perceptions of professional identity, and the Teachers' Professional Identity Typologies Scale (TPITS) was developed to determine identity typologies. The developed scales were applied to teachers online due to the Covid-19 epidemic. The sample of this stage consisted of 1167 preschool, primary, secondary and high school teachers working in public and private schools, determined by convenient sampling. Descriptive statistics, clustering analysis, chi-square test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Sidak test were used in the analysis of the data obtained by TPIPS and TPITS. According to the results of the research, the factors affecting teachers' professional identity perceptions were classified under 7 themes as pre-service experiences, in-service experiences, occupational effects, social influence, media influence, educational policies and thoughts about the future. The components that make up the professional identity perceptions of the teachers were examined under 2 themes as individual and professional characteristics. It was concluded that, among the components that make up the teachers' professional identity perceptions, their professional motivation is at a very high level, their professional commitment and professional self-perceptions are at a high level, and their job satisfaction is at a moderate level. It was been determined that teachers have 4 dominant identities as technician, social, intellectual and critical teacher identities as their professional identity typologies. In the study, when the professional identity typologies of teachers were compared according to demographic variables, it was concluded that the number of teachers with intellectual identity was the highest and the number of teachers with technician identity was the lowest in all variables. When the teachers' views on the components that make up their professional identity perceptions were compared according to the teacher identity typologies, it was concluded that social teachers' professional commitment, professional motivation, job satisfaction and professional self-perceptions were higher than other teachers.