Precarious times for the teaching profession: how do temporary language teachers negotiate their professional identities?

Under neoliberal educational systems, graduates of teacher education programmes may face precarious work conditions and struggle to develop secure, stable and strong teacher identities. Despite the significance of this issue, research on how language teachers experience the precarisation of the profession remains limited. Therefore, in this exploratory qualitative inquiry, the authors drew on a multi-layered conceptualisation of (language) teacher identity (re)construction to examine how temporary language teachers negotiated their teacher identities. Specifically, the authors focused on a group of temporary English language teachers in Türkiye, analysing how they perceived their professional identities. The analysis revealed that their ‘temporary’ status negatively influenced both their teaching practices and their attitudes towards their professional identities. Nevertheless, they often adopted an entrepreneurial mindset, viewing their teaching experiences as an investment towards securing permanent employment. Building on these points, the authors discussed the implications of temporary employment for the (language) teaching profession and offered recommendations for key stakeholders.