Developing Measurements of Teacher Identity Grafting Processes and Their Associations with Diverse Teaching Practices

This paper presents measurements of identity grafting (IG) theory to support the study of the associations between identity formation processes and teaching practices (TPs). Drawing on Hong Kong survey data, this study operationalizes four IG processes (blending, balancing, repressing, and reversing) and five pedagogical TPs (learning, assessment, motivation, discipline, and diversity). The instrumentation adapts acculturation and OECD instruments, using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the constructs. Factor analyses show that IG comprises four distinct but correlated dimensions. While the OECD assumed unidimensional TPs, the results indicate that a bifactor model better represents TPs in this Hong Kong sample. The SEM further reveals that blending and balancing are positively associated with diverse TPs, whereas reversing is negatively associated with diverse TPs. Notably, diverse TPs are positively associated with repressing. Rigorous instrumentation should accommodate the complexity of topics regarding negotiating identity, diversity, and educational change by (1) balancing theoretical and empirical criteria of reliability and validity, (2) maintaining value-neutrality when explaining how theoretical constructs might operationalize as variables, while recognizing that their manifestations as specific outcomes may have positive/negative associations, and (3) examining the forward and reversed path associations.