This study is a qualitative investigation of the professional identity structure of teachers in
Barbados, a small post-colonial Caribbean territory. The aim was to determine whether
Barbadian teachers regard themselves as professionals and to what extent their
occupational/professional identity structure could be described by a pre-conceptualized set
of categories. Data was collected from a focus group made up of teachers of both genders
from primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions in the country. Teachers in
the study claim to be professionals despite acknowledging that teaching in Barbados is not
recognized as a profession. This seemingly paradoxical claim is explained by the fact that
teachers regard being a professional as an individual determination characterized by a
different set of criteria from those that define a profession. By making this claim,
Barbadian teachers appear to have mitigated the potential threat to the coherence of their
professional self-concept brought about by the perceived discrepancy between the
importance of their role as teachers and the non-recognition of teaching as a profession.
The empirical data supports the four pre-conceptualized identity categories but four
additional categories were uncovered. Overall, the findings support the contention that
professional identity is an aspect of the self-concept; consequently, it is subject to the
principle of self-concept maintenance
