Contextual Factors Shaping the Professional Identity of Chinese Teachers in English as a Foreign Language Instructional Context: Exploring the Role of School Climate and Administrator Leadership Behavior

ABSTRACT Due to the immense impact of teachers’ professional identity on their teaching effectiveness, multitudes of studies have now examined this multifaceted construct and its determinants. However, due to excessive focus on the personal determinants of teacher identity, whether or not this construct can be affected by contextual factors has remained elusive. To narrow this lacuna and unravel the contextual determinants of teacher professional identity, the current study strived to divulge the role of two contextual factors, namely, school climate and administrator leadership behavior, in shaping the professional identity of Chinese English as foreign language teachers. To this end, with the aid of the convenient sampling technique, 375 English as foreign language teachers were invited to partake in the present research. The needed data were gleaned via three online self‐scoring questionnaires and were analyzed via SPSS (v. 26) and AMOS (v. 29). Results obtained from correlation tests indicated a strong, linear relationship between school climate and teacher professional identity, as well as a moderate, linear association between leadership behavior and teacher professional identity. Furthermore, the findings of regression analyses identified that school climate and administrator leadership behavior are two important determinants of professional identity among Chinese English as foreign language teachers. In fact, as the regression outcomes revealed, these two contextual variables serve a key role in constructing or reconstructing the professional identity of Chinese English as foreign language teachers. The findings of this inquiry can deepen our comprehension of the influence of contextual factors on the formation of teachers’ professional identity.