THE TEACHER’S ROLE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
THE TEACHER’S ROLE AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Summary/Abstract: The text addresses the theme of teachers’ professional development. The role of a teacher is defined by cultural and social events and the environment, and they influence the differences that occur in the concept of teacher roles within different cultures, societies, including the geographic environment. Thus, in the first part of the paper, based on an analysis of the literature, we identify factors that significantly influence teachers’ perception of their role and consequently, determine their professional identity. In the second part, based on the results of the empirical research, we show that factors such as teachers’ beliefs about their own qualifications, as well as years of work experience and subject area, statistically significantly influenced the development of the teachers’ professional identity. The main findings of the study are that teachers with several years of service experience feel better qualified to perform their duties (tasks related to planning and teaching were rated the most highly) than teachers with less work experience, and that teachers with more work experience evaluated the claims related to their educational activity statistically significantly higher. An important finding is that teachers define their professional identity and consequently, their role through their personality traits, which shows that we must not ignore teachers’ personality traits, as they play an important role in teachers’ professional development and identity.

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