Philosophy of the Profession and Professional Knowledge in the Structure of Professional Identity of Hei Teachers in Riga and Smolensk

Teacher is a key figure in the implementation of reforms in higher education. Pedagogical research of the professional identity (PI) of teacher, her/his priority values, self-evaluation of performances and professional knowledge and the way how she/he conceptualises the profession at an individual level can lead to the most appropriate strategies to manage the educational reforms successfully. This article presents some results of the Latvian-Russian project ‘Professional Identity of Contemporary Pedagogue’ implemented in 2014-2016 by researchers of Riga (Latvia) and Smolensk (Russia). In the realisation of project, a hypothetical model of the content of Higher Education Institution (HEI) teacher’s PI was created, and HEI teachers’ survey was carried out. In total, 198 teachers were surveyed in Riga and Smolensk. The aim of this article is to examine the relevance of the proposed model and analyse the indicators of the first two components of the model: Philosophy of the Profession and Professional Knowledge. The results show that, on the whole, the answers of the Russian and Latvian teachers in the questionnaire are fairly well agreed; however, some differences and peculiarities in the data of Riga and Smolensk were observed. The relevance of the proposed model has been confirmed, and some problems of PI of HEI teachers have been identified. To improve the educational process, executives of the reform and teachers should pay due attention to these problems.