Expectations placed on teachers have become increasingly diverse and intensified in contemporary education systems (Williamson & Myhill, 2008). This development can be understood through the lens of educationalisation, which captures the transformation of sociopolitical problems into pedagogical responsibilities (Fendler, 2018). Through educationalisation, schools and teachers are positioned as key agents expected to address complex societal challenges that originate beyond the educational sphere. Consequently, education systems are held accountable not only for what they can and should reasonably be expected to do, such as supporting student learning, but also for a broad range of social concerns, including poverty, crime prevention, and environmental sustainability (Bridges, 2008).

These intensified expectations become particularly visible during periods of social, political, or economic disturbance, when education systems are mobilised as sites of social repair and teachers are more readily constructed as scapegoats for systemic failures and unmet societal expectations (Mangez, 2022). In such contexts, teachers’ responsibility is intensified while constraining structural conditions remain largely unchanged. 

In the absence of clear boundaries regarding what falls within their professional role, teachers are often required to negotiate overlapping and sometimes conflicting expectations. These dynamics have direct implications for teacher professional identity, raising critical questions about how teachers understand who they are, what their work entails, and how they sustain a sense of professional purpose under conditions of persistent pressure.

From the sociocultural perspective, (professional) identity is understood as a dynamic, relational and contextually situated process that emerges through participation in social practices (Wenger, 2008). According to Lave and Wenger’s work, identity is formed through engagement in communities of practice, where individuals gradually learn and so become who they are (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Through participation, teachers come to appropriate shared meanings, values, and repertoires of practice, while developing a sense of belonging. Over time, participation may shift from legitimate peripheral participation toward more central forms of involvement, as teachers gain competence and recognition within their professional communities. Viewed through this lens, teacher professional identity is continuously shaped at the intersection of individual trajectories and the communities in which teachers participate.

Moreover, building and sustaining (professional) communities is itself a socially and emotionally demanding endeavour. Participation in school communities requires teachers to engage in complex relational work, manage emotionally charged interactions, and navigate tensions between individual capacities and collective expectations. This suggests that a view of identity development grounded in community participation cannot be understood independently of teachers’ individual socio-emotional capacities. Accordingly, fostering professional communities may depend not only on organisational structures, but also on teachers’ competencies to build and sustain relationships and to regulate the emotions that accompany professional interactions.

Building on these arguments, the present study examines whether integrating individual-oriented and community-oriented perspectives on teacher professional development offers a more robust framework for understanding and supporting strong teacher professional identity. Specifically, the study explores how teachers’ socio-emotional competencies relate to their professional identity, and the extent to which these relationships are mediated by teachers’ sense of belonging within the school community and their sense of professional competence.

This study constituted the first stage of the project ‘TEACHEMPOWER: Building Communities of Practice to Strengthen Teacher Identity and Foster a Better School Environment’, implemented by the Institute of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, with the support of the Uncredit Foundation. The project aims to strengthen positive teacher professional identity in 26 primary schools in Serbia through sustained participation in communities of practice, in which teachers collectively negotiate the boundaries of their professional roles and develop socio-emotional competencies that support the constructive negotiation of newly emerging professional boundaries with other members of the school community.

The sample consisted of 995 teachers, evenly split between subject and classroom teachers (85% female). The average age was 45.8 years, with a mean teaching experience of 18.15 years. Measures included the Social–Emotional Competence Teacher Rating Scale (SECTRS-SF; Grazzani et al., 2021), a 14-item instrument assessing four dimensions: (1) Teacher–student relationships assess perceived quality of interactions with students; (2) Emotion regulation captures teachers’ ability to manage their own emotions in challenging situations; (3) Social awareness reflects teachers’ capacity to recognize how their behaviors affect diverse students; (4) Interpersonal relationships evaluate the quality of teachers’ professional relationships with other school staff and with students’ families. The strength of teachers’ professional identity was assessed using an adapted and shortened version of the Social Identity Scale (Cameron, 2007). The scale comprised three items with the highest factor loadings representing the subdimensions of cognitive centrality, in-group affect, and in-group ties. Single-item indicators were used for measuring sense of belonging (I feel I belong to this school.) and sense of professional competence (Rate how successful you are in your job on a scale from 1 to 7) in line with their conceptual specificity and prior research using brief measures in large-scale studies. A CFA was used to test the structure of SECTRS-SF and teacher identity. The tested SECTRS-SF model demonstrated an adequate fit to the data, CFI = .94, TLI = .92, RMSEA = .066 (90% CI [.059, .073]), SRMR = .043, with all items loaded significantly on their intended factors. Composite reliability was satisfactory for most SECTRS-SF dimensions (CRs ≈ .70–.76), whereas the Social Awareness factor exhibited lower reliability (CR ≈ .55). Further, results supported a unidimensional structure of teacher identity, with excellent model fit: CFI = .99, TLI = .98, RMSEA = .063, SRMR = .012. All items loaded significantly on the latent factor (standardized loadings = .49–.83), and composite reliability indicated good internal consistency (CR = .75). After establishing satisfactory measurement properties, several theoretically plausible models were tested, including a fully mediated model, a partially mediated model, and a model specifying only direct effects of teachers' socio-emotional competences, belonging and self-efficacy on teacher identity. Belonging and sense of professional competence were included as observed single-item mediators. Because measurement error in single-item indicators cannot be modeled, the estimated paths involving belonging and professional competence are likely conservative; nevertheless, the observed effects were substantial. Indirect effects were tested using the product-of-coefficients approach. All analyses were conducted in Mplus 8.8.

Among the competing structural models tested, the model combining direct and indirect pathways demonstrated the best balance of model fit and theoretical interpretability and was therefore retained. This final model showed good fit to the data, CFI = .99, TLI = .95, RMSEA = .071, SRMR = .020 and explained 46% of the identity variance. Teachers’ sense of belonging emerged as the strongest direct predictor of teacher identity (β = .47), followed by sense of professional competence (β = .21). Interpersonal relationships predicted teacher identity primarily indirectly (total indirect effect = .25, p < .001) through both the sense of belonging (β = .42) and professional competence (β = .25), while also exerting a small direct effect (β = .08). Emotion regulation was linked to teacher identity exclusively indirectly (total indirect effect = .09, p < .001) through sense of belonging (β = .13) and professional competence (β = .14), suggesting that emotion regulation contributes to identity formation via teachers’ social integration within the school and their perceived professional competence. Teacher–student relationships were related to teacher identity both indirectly (total indirect effect = .06, p < .001) via sense of professional competence (β = .29) and directly (β = .13); interestingly, this dimension was not associated with the sense of belonging. This pattern suggests that teachers may attribute different meanings to relational experiences occurring in the classroom and those embedded in the broader school community, with classroom-based relationships contributing to professional identity primarily through a sense of professional competence rather than through a sense of belonging. Social awareness was not a significant predictor in the final model, which may reflect shared variance with the other constructs included rather than the absence of a substantive association. Overall, the findings highlight distinct yet parallel pathways through which different dimensions of socio-emotional competence are linked to teacher identity, with relational and intrapersonal dimensions playing complementary roles.

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