From Tropical Roots to Nordic Branches: Indonesian-born Early Childhood Teachers’ Professional Identity Negotiation in Finland

Muchammad Tholchah(1), Sari Hernawati(2), Devi Prasad Bhattarai(3),

DOI: https://doi.org/10.46843/jiecr.v7i4.3160


(1) Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Teacher Training and Educational Sciences, Universitas Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia, Indonesia
(2) Teacher Education and Training Program (PPG), Faculty of Islamic Studies, Universitas Wahid Hasyim, Indonesia
(3) Faculty of Education, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Abstract

Transnational teacher mobility has reshaped how teachers construct professional identities across borders, yet little is known about overseasborn teachers in Nordic systems. This qualitative case study explores how four Indonesian-born teachers working in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions negotiate their professional identities within a high-autonomy, high-trust context like Finland. Drawing on professional identity development theory, we conducted semistructured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis. Four interrelated themes were identified: learning new routines and institutional expectations, working within multidisciplinary teams and distributed expertise, negotiating child autonomy and professional boundaries, and navigating language, qualifications and professional recognition. The findings show that identity negotiation is not a linear transition from one national model to another, but an ongoing, situated process in which prior professional selves are expanded, challenged and partially reconstituted. Teachers learn to align themselves with documentation?rich, child?centred and multi?professional practices while at the same time managing reductions in unilateral authority, strict norms around privacy and the gatekeeping effects of Finnish language proficiency and nationally recognized credentials. The study contributes to international scholarship by theorizing transnational teacher identity negotiation as a relational and structurally mediated process, and by offering a fine?grained account of how host?country policies and institutional arrangements in Finnish ECEC shape the conditions under which overseas-born teachers can exercise agency and be recognized as full members of the professional community.

Keywords

case study; finland; indonesian-born teachers; professional identity development theory; professional adjustment

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