Research On The Influencing Factors And Formation Mechanism Of Kindergarten Teachers’ Professional Identity

The professionalization and stability of the kindergarten teacher workforce is a crucial link in achieving high-quality development of preschool education in China.However,the imbalance and normlessness in teacher career mobility are exactly the pains and challenges in the practice of preschool education management.From the perspective of teacher professionalization,the intrinsic motivation for promoting individual professional growth lies in their professional aspirations and identity in terms of cognition,emotion,and behavior.Questions such as the current state of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,the main factors influencing its formation,how those factors interact with each other,and how to enhance the level of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity are widely concerned by both theoretical and practical circles in preschool education management.These are also the origins of the research.Based on symbolic interaction theory and the systems theory framework of career development(STF),this paper employs various research methods and utilizes theory construction and empirical analysis to primarily address the following three questions: First,how to measure kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,so that its current status can be understood;second,how various factors interact one another to exert influence on individual teachers constructing their kindergarten teachers’ professional identity;and third,how to promote and enhance the level of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity.To answer these three questions,three interrelated and progressive sub-studies are designed and carried out in this research.The first study developed a questionnaire on kindergarten teachers’ professional identity and investigated its current status.The questionnaire items and initial draft of the questionnaire were obtained through Delphi method,interviews,and literature reviews.A random sample of 177 kindergarten teachers took part in the pilot survey,and four second-order factors with good factor loadings were extracted through item analysis and exploratory factor analysis.This resulted in the final draft of the questionnaire with 12 questions in total composed of four dimensions: career goals,career emotions,career abilities,and career engagement.The questionnaire demonstrates good internal reliability and structural validity.Based on a survey of5915 kindergarten teachers,it was found that there are significant differences in the professional identity of kindergarten teachers in terms of demographic background variables such as marriage,age,teaching experience,position,job title,education level,and salary: married individuals score significantly higher than unmarried ones;and the professional identity and its four factors of career goals,career emotions,career abilities,and career engagement increase significantly with the increase in kindergarten teachers’ age,teaching experience,position,job title,education level,and salary.Significant differences also reveal in the professional identity of kindergarten teachers in terms of school background variables such as kindergarten type,and nature of employment: The teachers in the eastern region score generally lower;urban kindergarten teachers generally score higher than those in township and rural kindergartens;and the career emotion factor of teachers with permanent positions in public kindergartens is significantly higher than that of teachers without permanent positions in public or private kindergartens.The second study constructed a theoretical model of the formation mechanism of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity.Through in-depth interviews,case studies with purposeful sampling and maximum variation,11 in-service kindergarten teachers and 4 ex-kindergarten teachers were interviewed.Using open,axial and selective coding in Grounded Theory,102 labels,68 concepts,28 categories,8 focal factors,and 3 core categories were formed.The study identified 3-level factors that influence the professional identity construction of kindergarten teachers,including individual personality traits and emotional labor under the individual structural level,social support and workplace culture under the organizational structural level,and professional image under the socio-cultural structural level.Each factor exhibits three possibilities of vectors in functions: positive,negative,and variable functions.Among them,individual proactive personality and perceived social support are positive functional factors,the professional image of kindergarten teachers is a negative functional factor,and emotional labor and workplace culture are variable functional factors.The exertion of factor functions centers on individual self-identification,based on which a theoretical model of the "three-level and three-vector" mechanism in the formation of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,focusing on individual self-identification,was constructed.The third study validated the theoretical model of the formation mechanism of professional identity.Based on literature analysis and the theoretical model constructed in the second study,the third study proposed relevant hypotheses of three models: In the individual structural level,the surface play of emotional labor is negatively correlated with career identity,while the deep play is positively correlated with career identity,a moderation model among proactive personality,emotional labor,and career identity in individual structural factors,a moderation model among perceived social support,organizational recognition,and professional identity in organizational structural factors,and a mediation model among individual perception of professional image,public perception of professional image,and professional identity in sociocultural structural factors.A sample data from 11,025 valid participants was used to test those hypotheses.The results found that six predictor variables account for 48.3% of the variance in kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,including proactive personality,individual perception of professional image,perceived social support,organizational recognition,emotional labor towards young children,and public perception of professional image.Among the individual structural factors,both proactive personality and emotional labor significantly predicted kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,and proactive personality played a significant role in moderating the relationship between emotional labor and professional identity.Among the organizational structural factors,both perceived social support and organizational recognition significantly predicted kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,and perceived social support played a significant role in moderating the relationship between organizational recognition and professional identity.Among the socio-cultural structural factors,professional image perception significantly predicted kindergarten teachers’ professional identity,and individual perception of professional image played a partial mediating role in the process of public perception of professional image influencing professional identity.At the end,based on the research results of current status of kindergarten teachers’ professional identity in the first study and the "three-level and three-vector" mechanism model focusing on individual self-identification proposed and validated in the second and third studies,The improvement strategies include focusing on the cultivation of professional identity among certain key groups,continuously maintaining positive functional factors,further optimizing modifiable functional factors,and deeply improving negative functional factors.