Reconceptualising Teacher Professional Identity in Primary School Context: A Review of Personal, Organisational, and Technological Dimensions

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI), is entering schools at the same time as many education systems are asking teachers to enact competency oriented and learner-centred reform. These developments affect more than classroom technique. They touch teachers’ professional identity: how teachers understand their expertise, exercise judgement, sustain care, and remain accountable for children’s development in changing institutional and technological conditions. This literature review synthesises scholarship on primary teacher professional identity across personal, organisational, and technological dimensions. The review draws on empirical studies, systematic reviews, theoretical works, academic books, and authoritative policy documents. The results show that primary teacher identity is formed through the interaction of self efficacy, motivation, agency, emotion, care, leadership, collaborative professional culture, and critical engagement with AI. AI is analysed as a socio-technical condition that can support teachers when it reduces routine work, extends access to resources, and enables professional reflection, but can also weaken autonomy when it standardises judgement, intensifies surveillance, or obscures ethical responsibility. Sustainable AI integration in primary education requires more than technical training. It requires identity-sensitive teacher education, instructional leadership, communities of practice, and human-centred governance that protect the relational, developmental, and moral purposes of primary teaching.