1.     Research Problems

Teacher professional identity is widely considered an essential belief that significantly influences teachers. In professional identity formation, teachers experience internal struggles between the ‘personal’ and the ‘professional’ sides of teacher identity, which can be named ‘PIT’ (professional identity tension) (Pillen et al., 2013a).

       In China, a core-competence-oriented national curriculum reform has been practised in the past few years, which advocates educational ideas contradictory to the Chinese traditional test-based instruction. It has led many primary and secondary teachers to confront conflicting teaching beliefs and practices. This is particularly the case for teachers without pre-service teacher education. Analysing the PITs in the context of curriculum reform can not only guide the teachers in coping with the tensions and practising core-competence-oriented instruction effectively but also provide new insight into studying teachers’ adjustment towards a changing educational context.  

In the past decade, a number of PITs were reported in relevant research. For example, teachers experience tension between a desire to be friendly and a need to be tough (Pillen et al.,2013b). To cope with the PITs, teachers have adopted multiple coping strategies, including ‘reflection’ (Anspal et al., 2019; Lau et al., 2022; Schaap et al., 2021; Song, 2016; Trent, 2015), ‘seeking external support’ (Pillen et al., 2013a), etc. Such tensions have both positive and negative consequences. If teachers cope with the tensions effectively, tensions can help develop teacher identity (Leijen & Kullasepp, 2013). On the contrary, if the personal and professional identities are too distinct or contradictory, the tensions may cause teachers to make negative professional decisions, such as opting out of the profession (Alsup, 2006).

2.     Research Questions

This study aims to explore the categories, impact and corresponding coping strategies of the PITs of primary and secondary teachers experiencing the national curriculum reform in China. The following research questions directed this research:

RQ1: What PITs are Chinese primary and secondary school teachers confronting? Are there any variations between teachers with and without full-time teacher training experience?

RQ2: How do PITs impact Chinese primary and secondary school teachers?

RQ3: How do Chinese primary and secondary school teachers cope with PITs?

3.     Research Context

This study will be conducted in primary and secondary schools in mainland China. The country's foundational education system has three potential PIT resources. 

Firstly, a core-competence-oriented national curriculum reform emphasises higher standards of teacher professional development and teaching effectiveness. In China, the new editions of the National High School Curriculum Scheme and the National Compulsory Education Curriculum Scheme were published in 2017 and 2022, which recommended core-competence-oriented instruction, aiming to change the long-lasting traditional exam-focused instruction in China. This reform has increasingly led teachers to confront multiple and even contradictory teaching beliefs.

Secondly, the national curriculum reform stresses teachers' duty to implement moral education. Homeroom teachers, who usually play central roles in classes (Da'as, 2025), are responsible for implementing moral education and they also serve as subject teachers. They might frequently confront a conflict between the identity of a moral instructor and that of a subject expert (Anspal et al., 2019; Steinberger & Magen-Nagar, 2017).

       Thirdly, not all primary and secondary teachers in China have accepted full-time pre-service teacher education. Teachers with differentiated educational backgrounds may hold contradicting teaching beliefs and face different professional dilemmas.

4. Methods 4.1 Participants and Data Collection The research data will be collected from at least 300 pre-service or in-service primary and secondary school teachers in mainland China. The participating in-service teachers will include beginning and experienced teachers. At least 15 will be selected to take semi-structured interviews. All the participants will take a Likert Scale aiming at the PIT categories, impacts, and corresponding coping strategies. 4.2 Data Analysis This research will involve the multi-analysis of multi-data collected via qualitative and quantitative means, including a two-step semi-structured interview and a large-scale questionnaire survey. The interview data will be coded to describe tensions as well as their corresponding coping strategies and to analyse their impacts. After the questionnaire survey, independent-sample t-tests will allow the researcher to compare the tensions teachers with different educational backgrounds have experienced. Regression analysis will be used to confirm the impacts of PITs. Latent profile analysis will explore the possible sub-groups of participating teachers.

The anticipated findings are as follows:  a systematic literature review;  categories of PITs;  impacts of PITs on teachers;  teachers’ coping strategies.

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