In recent years, there has been a growing scholarly interest in vocational teachers’ professional identity in the field of vocational education and training (VET) across Europe (e.g., Antera & Teräs, 2024; Berger & Lê Van, 2018; Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Lensjø, 2025), including Finland (e.g., Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019). In Finland, significant changes have occurred in vocational teachers’ working environments, such as the VET reform, which have reshaped teachers’ work roles towards, for instance, intensified working life collaboration and technology-mediated teaching (Rintala & Nokelainen, 2022; Seitamaa & Hakoköngäs, 2024). Another key challenge shifting the landscape of European VET lies in its increasingly diversified target groups from youth to adults (Misra, 2011), and how vocational teachers are able to adapt to students’ individual needs (Lehtonen et al., 2018). The continuously evolving teaching contexts in VET pose a challenge for the professional identity of vocational teachers, as they are expected to adapt to the increasingly fragmented work roles. Identity tensions, accompanied by unpleasant emotional experiences and reduced intention to remain in teaching, may emerge when teachers’ existing professional identities conflict with their work roles (Vilppola et al., 2023; Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019).

Vocational teachers’ professional identity refers to the perceptions of themselves as a teacher and their professional goals, values, and educational beliefs (Köpsen, 2014; Vähäsantanen & Hämäläinen, 2019). Much of the previous research has been qualitative in nature and has focused on two identity positions: 1) a teacher and expert in pedagogy and 2) a professional and expert in one’s field (e.g., Sarastuen, 2020; Tyler & Dymock, 2021). However, vocational teachers’ professional identities are multifaceted (Lensjø, 2025), and there is some evidence of enacting the roles of a caretaker (e.g., parental figures) (Barak & Shoshana, 2022; Köpsen, 2014). Still, more nuanced insights into identity remain scarce. The need for quantitative examination with more holistic approaches to vocational teachers’ professional identity to capture its complexity is evident, as the field of VET is continuously evolving.   

These considerations also highlight the importance of examining how vocational teachers’ professional identity relates to their professional agency. Teachers’ identity negotiations take place between individual agency and social structures (see Day et al., 2006), which can pose external expectations and demands on what constitutes vocational teachers’ key work roles. Here, professional agency is conceptualised as an action-based phenomenon. It manifests in collaboration and development within the work community, influence over individual and collective work-related matters, and the enactment of professional goals and interests (Eteläpelto et al., 2013; Vähäsantanen et al., 2022). Yet, the research community in VET lacks a comprehensive understanding of vocational teachers’ agency (see some exceptions Goodson & Ümarik, 2019; Vähäsantanen, 2015) and notably its connection to professional identity based on quantitative evidence: Are teachers who are attached to certain identity positions more agentic actors than others? There is an urgent need to understand the mechanisms of professional agency, given its contribution to teachers’ well-being and retention (e.g., Kayi-Aydar & Steadman, 2019; Lasky, 2005). Despite its importance as an empirical lens on professional identity, quantitative examinations of the relationship between vocational teachers’ professional identity and agency remain limited.  

In light of these research gaps presented above, the main aims of this study were to examine how Finnish vocational teachers experience their professional identity and how it relates to their professional agency. We posed the following research questions: 

RQ1) How do Finnish vocational teachers perceive their professional identity in the work context? 

RQ2) How is vocational teachers’ professional identity associated with their professional agency? 

In this study, we collected quantitative data (N = 1,015) from vocational teachers through a Webropol questionnaire in the autumn of 2025. The data collection was conducted with vocational teachers in different vocational institutions across Finland. The participants filled in a consent form to participate prior to data collection. Participation was entirely voluntary. Of the participants, 51.7% identified as women (n = 525), 44.7% as men (n = 454), while others selected “Other” or did not disclose their gender (3.5%, n = 36). The mean age of the teachers was 51.59 years (SD = 7.88, range = 27–64). The questionnaire measured the professional identity and agency of vocational teachers. To measure professional identity, a scale was developed for a more holistic approach to identity, as existing frameworks have focused on the dichotomy between 1) teacher and 2) professional of one’s field (e.g., Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024; Tyler & Dymock, 2021). A literature review was conducted to identify empirical identity positions among vocational teachers that could be converted into measurable items (see Mishel, 1998). The identity positions were documented, and broad thematic categorisation was conducted to combine similar identity positions (e.g., parent, nurturing). The developed scale for measuring professional identity among vocational teachers included 15 identity positions (e.g., “Caretaker”). All items were answered on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all … 7 = Very much), indicating the extent to which participants personally identified with each identity position. Professional agency was explored with the previously validated Professional Agency Measure (PAM, Vähäsantanen et al., 2022). The PAM includes three factors: Influencing at work, Participation at work, and Negotiating professional identity, each consisting of three items. All nine items were measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Strongly disagree … 5 = Strongly agree). In terms of analysis, exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were run for the 15 identity items to model and confirm the dimensional structure of the teacher identity scale. To examine the associations between the professional identity and agency factors, Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated. In this ongoing study, more detailed analyses will be conducted via structural equation modelling (Muthén & Muthén, 2017) to map the relationships between the professional identity and agency of vocational teachers.

The results of the EFA showed that a three-factor structure of the identity measure was the most statistically and theoretically sound solution. The suggested model included three identity domains: 1) Promoter of students’ professionalism (α = .82, M = 5.9, SD = 0.8), 2) Networked developer (α = .82, M = 5.2, SD = 1.0), and 3) Caretaker (α = .81, M = 5.2, SD = 1.1), consisting of four identity items per factor. CFA with robust Maximum Likelihood procedure and Huber-White standard errors was conducted, illustrating a good fit (χ2(46) = 153.833, p < .001; CFI = .95; TLI = .92; RMSEA = .078, 90 % CI [.058, .078]; SRMR = .055), thus confirming the structural validity of the identity scale. Our preliminary findings illustrate that the professionalism and developer identity dimensions were identified in the dataset. The promoter of students’ professionalism was rated the highest, consistent with how vocational teachers’ identity has been mainly conceptualised in the literature (e.g., Bükki & Fehérvári, 2024). In addition, our results suggest that there is an identity dimension of a caretaker, which underscores the nurturing nature of their work, but also their aim to foster future citizens. However, the caretaker identity was the one the participants identified with the least. Additionally, the findings indicate that vocational teachers’ professional identity is connected to their professional agency, with Pearson correlations ranging between .15–.47 (p < .001). Compared to other identity positions, developer identity tended to show the strongest associations with professional agency. This novel identity measure, designed for VET, can be applied in various national contexts, offering a valuable tool for European research. Overall, our findings underscore the importance to go beyond the teacher–professional dichotomy that echoes in the literature, prompting the question “teacher, professional, developer – and what else?”

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