It is widely acknowledged that contemporary lifestyles are accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, ecological degradation, and social inequality (Evans & Abrahamse, 2009). Humanity faces an existential choice between continuing along an unsustainable trajectory or radically changing course (UNESCO, 2024). In response to these planetary crises, the pivotal role of education is increasingly emphasized; however, education itself must also be critically examined, as it is part of the system that maintains social order and cultural norms (Sterling, 2025). To promote peaceful, just, and sustainable futures, educational policy and practice require transformation (ICFE, 2021). Teachers occupy a key position within the educational system in fostering societal, cultural, and ecological change. Nevertheless, the purposes teachers attribute to their work may sometimes conflict with the ideal of teachers’ transformative agency (Evans et al., 2017; Timm et al., 2023).

Although many teachers recognize and accept the need for educational transformation, they may feel uncertain or even reluctant to take an active role in promoting social, behavioral, and cultural change. A deeper understanding of the processes shaping teachers’ societal and professional purposes (Kuusisto & Rissanen, 2023) is therefore needed, as well as greater knowledge of the factors that enable—or hinder—teachers in assuming the role of change agents within their work communities.

In this study, we explore Finnish transformative teachers’ role identity through the following research question: What kinds of role identities emerge in the professional development narratives of teachers with strong change agency?

This paper presents an ongoing mixed-methods research project that examines the core features of teachers’ transformative mindsets and how these can be influenced in pre- and in-service teacher education. We report findings from the initial narrative phase of the project, in which 14 Finnish teachers with particularly strong change agency were interviewed. The narrative interviews were grounded in the concept of narrative configuration, a process through which events are integrated into a temporally organized whole and thereby acquire narrative meaning (Polkinghorne, 1995). The in-depth interviews focused on participants’ life histories, with particular attention to the development of their professional purposes and agency in fostering sustainable futures.

The interviews were analyzed using abductive qualitative content analysis. The components of the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI; Kaplan & Garner, 2017; Garner & Kaplan, 2019) served as deductive main categories, while subcategories were formed inductively from the data. DSMRI is a meta-theoretical framework that integrates motivational and identity-formation perspectives from social psychological role theory with socio-cultural and psychosocial approaches. The model conceptualizes teachers’ role identity as comprising four components: (1) self-perceptions and self-definitions, (2) ontological and epistemological beliefs, (3) purposes and goals, and (4) perceived action possibilities.

(1)Self-perceptions and self-definitions refer to teachers’ understandings of their own characteristics and group affiliations. Change agency teachers were identified as aware, purposeful, relational, brave, and autonomous professionals. (2)Ontological and epistemological beliefs concern teachers’ understandings of the nature of teaching and the contexts in which it occurs. These teachers expressed an active and hopeful view of humanity, emphasized equality and fundamental similarity among people, and understood the world as relational, good, and beautiful. They also valued experiential and multidisciplinary knowledge. (3)Purposes and goals reflect teachers’ broad yet specific commitments in their work. Change agency teachers articulated two central aims: fostering equality, justice, and cultural diversity, and promoting sustainability-related change, including sustainable lifestyles, biodiversity protection, and climate change mitigation. (4)Perceived action possibilities encompass teachers’ intentions, perceptions, and emotions regarding what they can or cannot do to achieve these goals. Identified actions included community building, participation in communities, creating meaningful experiences, acting as role models, facilitating significant encounters, and shaping educational structures. The findings suggest that childhood and life experiences lay important groundwork for change agency; however, teacher education may enable breakthroughs or positive societal tipping points (Lenton et al., 2023), particularly for individuals with a sufficient foundation. At the same time, life histories strongly influence what teachers seek to accomplish through their work, highlighting a close connection between personal experience and professional agency. These findings inform the next phases of the project, which include survey data collection to test a model of teachers’ transformative mindsets and the development of interventions to support teachers’ change agency. By identifying key factors underlying teachers’ change agency, this research contributes to understanding how these factors can be intentionally fostered in teacher education.

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