Theoretical literature (Beauchamp, & Thomas, (2010), Pelini (2017),  Danielewicz, (2001), Vermunt et al (2017), Schultz, & Ravitch, (2013), Maaranen, & Stenberg, (2017),  Beijaard et al (2000), Beijaard et al (2004), Curry et al., (2016), Crosswell & Beutel (2017), Cuadra, & Castro-Carrasco, & Oyanadel, & González, & Živković, & Sandoval-Díaz, & Perez-Zapata, (2023), Beijard (2019) reveals that there are various concepts of identity and professional identity, but it is evident that teachers with a stronger teacher identity are more successful in the education system and less likely to drop out of the system, it is also evident that the most intensive professional identity formation occurs during the years of study, which can be called the most intensive years of becoming a teacher.

The Lithuanian education system faces various issues, such as the shortage of teaching staff and low teacher status in society, the attraction of the best candidates to the teaching profession, etc. Despite this, young people still choose to become teachers. This research explores the experiences of pre-service Lithuanian teachers. The research sought to answer the question 'What is the lived experience of becoming a teacher?’. Since the problem question highlights a concern with the experience of becoming a teacher and the focus is on the personal experience and seeking meaning in this experience, the study adopts the method of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (hereafter abbreviated as IPA), which is considered to be one of the most appropriate methods for this type of research question, thus allowing to go in more depth on the experience of the participant. The research aims to shed light on the experience of becoming a teacher and its characteristic features as they appear in the minds of the research participants. The analysis seeks to describe the results in a way that makes them understandable to the reader as a meaningful named reality. Although IPA belongs to a type of phenomenological research, it has some distinctive features that distinguish it from other phenomenological approaches (Peoples, 2021; Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009, 2022).

Achieving a deep understanding of a phenomenon requires purposive sampling by selecting participants who can share insights about the phenomenon they are experiencing which is identity formation during the years of study; achieving depth and insight requires an idiographic approach, whereby the experience of each participant is scrutinized in great depth and detail, and the aim of studying a particular experience requires the group of participants to be homogeneous. For this study, 11 students of full-time concurrent initial teacher training programmes were selected for in-depth interviews. The study follows the general steps, principles, and strategies of the IPA process offered by (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin, 2009, 2022). The process of analyzing one interview follows certain steps: multiple readings of the transcripts, making descriptive and conceptual comments, developing emergent themes, searching connections across emergent themes through the application of certain strategies and building the structure of each participant's superordinate themes. The process is hermeneutic, ongoing and dynamic. After analyzing each case individually, the results of separate cases were analysed and a general meta-theme structure of the entire cohort was developed and validated by repeated analysis of each case to see if the meta-theme was well represented at least in six participants' interviews in an attempt to reveal the authentic but similarly lived experience of the participants' professional teacher identity formation and meaning-making. The findings are discussed with a literature. This poster presentation represents part of the results – and discloses one of the meta-themes which is “The significant others”. It reveals what people occurred in the lived experience of the research participants and what meaning they had to them within the process of becoming a teacher. The findings are compared with other studies that focus on the social aspect of teacher identity formation.

In the narratives of all the participants in the study, the most significant actors in the process of becoming a teacher are, first of all, the children, and the students. Being able to participate in a teaching internship during the formal studies process or get their first jobs related to a future profession (teacher assistant, babysitter, teacher) allows pre-service teachers to try teaching or related to teaching activities themselves. For the majority of the participants in the study, the parents of the children or pupils were also significant others, especially for the participants studying preschool pedagogy. The study participants were quite often worried about their preparedness and competencies to work with parents, who in their stories were often unreasonably abusive, pretentious, demanding, confrontational and even aggressive, while others were indifferent to their children, withdrawn, alcoholics and lacking social skills. The parent's scepticism about young inexperienced pre-service teachers and even young in-service teachers, who don’t have children is evident. But the tension between generations of teachers is evident too. Many of the participants presented an infinite variety of positive and negative images of the teachers, mentors and potential employers they met in the past and within the study contexts. Some of those reinforced their choice to be a teacher, inspired, encouraged, strengthened, advised and trusted. The other group of teachers encountered were disturbing to the participants, causing contradictory and negative feelings, such as anger, intimidation, sadness, etc. - they were the kind of teachers that the participants did not want to be like in any way. These were disturbers of choice and of becoming a teacher - acting as antagonistic figures. Mentors emerge as particularly significant others for the development of identity and can have both positive and negative impacts.

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