Thesis Titles as Sites of Professional and Academic Identity Formation in Teacher Education

This study contributes to research on teacher education and professional identity formation. Drawing on a longitudinal corpus of 2311 thesis titles produced between 1989 and 2024 within a single teacher education context, the analysis conceptualises titles as institutionally regulated academic practices through which students position themselves in relation to teaching, research, and professional knowledge. Methodologically, the study employs a thesis title analysis combining document analysis with discourse analytic sensitivity. Titles were coded along four analytical dimensions: thematic orientation, professional versus academic orientation, level of discursive abstraction, and implied student positioning. Rather than assuming a linear progression from practice-oriented to academic work, the analysis foregrounds parallel, hybrid, and non-linear patterns over time. The findings show that thesis titles consistently maintain strong connections to professional practice while increasingly incorporating analytical and abstract framings. Hybrid titles, which combine concrete teaching contexts with academic problematisation, emerge as a stable and recurring pattern. These titles reflect a liminal identity position in which student teachers negotiate professional relevance and academic legitimacy. These findings have implications for supervision practices and research-based learning design in teacher education programmes.