Sustaining professional identity under structural constraint: a morphogenetic analysis of university-based teacher educators in Taiwan

University-based teacher educators (UBTEs) in Taiwan face competing demands arising from state regulation, accreditation, practicum responsibilities, and research-oriented university evaluation. Drawing on Archer’s morphogenetic approach, this study examines how senior UBTEs sustain professional identity and enact agency under structural constraint. Data were collected through structured written interviews with 23 purposively selected senior UBTEs from different types of universities and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings show that participants developed hybrid identities across research, teaching, administration, and practicum-related work. Their agency was expressed less through overt resistance than through institutional mediation and persistent professional commitment. Two forms of agency were identified: ‘obligatory professionalism’, in which administrative responsibilities became a means of maintaining programme continuity, and ‘endurance-based agency’, through which long-term professional engagement helped preserve and gradually reshape institutional practices. The study extends understandings of teacher educator agency by demonstrating its relational, institutionally embedded, and temporally extended nature.