Paper concentrates on identity of teachers who have become academics or who are on the  way to become academics. Especially the role of CPD is studied.

 This has been and is growingly the problem in media that the quality of teachers and academics who are dealing with school development, state curricula, teacher preparation and CPD in universitises or other institutions has lowered in past decades, they have less school experiances, their values and konwledge base are not good enough. So it seems to be a circle – worse teachers-worce academicians- …. worse educational ledeship (academic and governmental)-worse teacher CPD and training-worse teachers – worse students … The evidence for this kind of  statements is poor, the longitud research is missing. It is an manysided problem/phenomena. One side of this are questions about career and identity: how the current teachers and academic people (in the field of education) sense and understand  their own development and identity and what is the role of CPD in their development.  The objective is to map the developmental reality and to give an input into current eduactional reform.

The theoretical framework involves communitarian and an authentic approaches to identity (Henkel 2005, Archer2008) and the Maslow’s view on self-actualisation and peak experiences (Maslow 1977).   The life-long view on pedagogical and academic career involves some historical aspects, as lives of older and younger groups of recipients have been lived in diferent political and economic order.   The Estonian cases are certanly related to wider context, as shifting relationships between the state, academic actors and institutions and economy/market pushing the academic life into various forms of ‘academic capitalism’ are increasingly understood as global phenomena (Slaughter and Leslie 1997. Henkel 2005). 

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