Effects of Secondary Schools’ Teachers’ Professional Identity Development Metaphors and Dilemmas on Prestige and Values of Teaching Profession in Hawassa University Technology Transfer Villages: Beyond a Binary Pedagogical Solution

The present study examined effects of secondary schools teachers’ professional identity development metaphors and dilemmas on values and prestige of teaching profession beyond a binary peedagogical solution discoursing nuanced realities of classrooms. The study employed mixed method to research with concurrent triangulation mixed design. The researcher collected data from primary sources using self-constructed questionnaire, unstructured interview and document review. After maintaining face validity and reliability of data collection instruments, the researcher conducted the study in 15 secondary schools. The researcher further collected data from 365 (337 teachers and 28 key informants) selected using simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques respectively. The data were analyzed quantitatively using descriptive and inferential statistics such percentage, mean, person moment product correlation, independent sample t -test and stepwise multiple regression, and thematically analyzed the qualitative data. The major finding showed that novice and veteran teachers’ utilization of pedagogical practices for professional identity development were not encouraging. Equally, the combined effects of teachers’ personal, institutional, identity development pedagogies, sociocultural and intersecting factors accounted 40.64% for total variance; prestige and values of teaching profession. Teachers’ personal, school, professional identity development pedagogies, sociocultural and intersecting factors separately accounted 13.32%, 9.49%, 6.2%, 4.4%, and 7.23% to the total outcome variable, and teacher-related factors were the leading variables. The communities perceived teaching profession as less prestigious and devalued it when compared to horizontally equivalent profession in terms of teachers’ work–life balance ecosystem. The study needs to improve the ambivalent constructive nature of teachers’ professional identity formation using teacher professional development pedagogies and personal, institutional and sociocultural dimensions.