Exploring early career physical education teachers’ professional identity construction in rural China: insights from socio-ecological perspective and practice architectures theory

This qualitative study explored 15 early career physical education (PE) teachers’ professional identity construction from rural China. Identity was shown as a multifaceted, context-specific, and dynamic social-cultural phenomenon. From a socio-ecological standpoint, this research demonstrated that early career rural Chinese PE teachers’ professional identity construction was shaped by the interplay between family backgrounds, Chinese Confucian cultural tradition, physicality, schooling experiences, workplace contexts, and the PE core competency curriculum policy. From the perspective of practice architecture, the professional identity construction encompassed their cultural-discursive arrangements (sayings), material-economic arrangements (doings), and social-political arrangements (relating). PE teachers’ professional identity may be facilitated by school administrators and education policymakers’ support.