Abstract
Professional identity, professionalism, and professional development are concepts that attract research interest over time. The concepts are complex, multi-faceted, and evolving over time, also varying depending on the teachers’ context. The conceptualization by teachers themselves is of particular interest, especially in primary education. This paper explores the use of artificial intelligence techniques and specifically dimensionality reduction methods, i.e., visualization in two or three dimensions, in analyzing the teachers’ perceptions of the three concepts as captured in closed-type questions with Likert-scale responses. The applied methods succeeded in disclosing new correlations between the concepts and their components, not previously reported in published literature, where classical statistical analysis is employed. Our findings are twofold. First, they confirm the applicability and usefulness of the dimensionality reduction method for the analysis of responses. Second, they contribute two new research questions that should be further studied in the future.
