CONSTRUCTING A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

This quantitative study measured the professional identity of teachers at elementary and junior high schools in Central Taiwan and applied an analysis framework to test the effects of self-expectation (SE), teachers’ duties (TD), and external influential factors (EF) on pedagogy (PE) as well as instructional skills and knowledge (SK) on teachers’ citizenship behavior (CB), which were identified as 6 latent concepts of teachers’ professional identity. Structural equation modeling techniques were applied to test the associations among variables in a structural model. The results of the data analysis reveal that (a) most of the scores of 22 items were above a rating of 3.75 according to descriptive statistics; (b) SE, TD, and EF exerted a significant direct effect on PE; (c) SE and TD had a significant direct effect on SK; (d) SE, PE, and SK exerted a significant direct effect on CB; and (e) the standardized total effects of SE, TD, and EF on CB were.49, .38, and .09, respectively. Implications for educational practices and future research are provided.