Evolving Professional Identity of a Teacher Educator: A Longitudinal Case Study

Professional identities of teacher educators are dynamic and play a vital role in shaping future teachers and educational reform; however, there is a shortage of longitudinal studies in non‑Western contexts. This study fills this gap by presenting an intrinsic longitudinal case study of one Iranian language teacher educator (LTE), probing the development of multiple professional identities over a period of 14-year career. Qualitative data from three in-depth interviews (conducted each year from 2023 to 2025), personal diaries, and professional narratives were analyzed using thematic and narrative approaches. The findings show pronounced fluidity among the LTE’s multiple identities, driven by external motivating factors (e.g., career progression, student behavior) and internal motivating factors (e.g., conscious adaptation, emotional responses). Frequent identity clashes – including practitioner vs. academic figure and professional vs. personal identities – account for this fluidity and necessitate deliberate negotiation. The paper concludes that professional identity construction is a complex, evolving process with fluidity and clashes as enduring characteristics. These findings have direct implications for professional development programs aimed at helping teacher educators who want to manage role multiplicity and conflicts in specific socio‑cultural and institutional contexts. This single‑case design provides in‑depth, context‑specific insights into the nature of identity clashes rather than inclined to statistical generalizability.