Professional Roles as the Structural Component of Professional Identity of Higher Education Teachers in Samples of Riga and Smolensk

The strengthening of professional identity (PI) of teachers of higher education institutions (HEI) is one of the ways to improve the quality of educational process. Performance of professional role(s) can be identified as the key component of PI. The contemporary university teacher performs many professional roles: she/he is a lecturer, researcher, supervisor of students’ research works, expert, and so on. Multi-role activity of a teacher is considered as a characteristic feature of the profession by the colleagues in Latvia, Russia and other countries. This research is based on the data obtained during the implementation of the Project ‘Professional Identity of Contemporary Pedagogue’ in 2014–2016 by the researchers from Riga (Latvia) and Smolensk (Russia). In the realization of the project, the six-component structural model of the content of HEI teacher’s PI was created and the survey was carried out using the questionnaire ‘HEI Teachers’ Professional Identity’ developed by the project participants. Overall, a total of 198 teachers were surveyed in Riga and Smolensk. The aim of this article was to analyze and compare the data obtained for the PI component ‘Professional Roles’ in the samples of HEI teachers of both the countries. The data were analysed using statistical methods. The results showed that teachers of both the countries perform their professional roles at a high level. Overall, the answers of teachers of the two countries were well agreed. However, some peculiarities in the data of Riga and Smolensk were observed, and some problems of PI of HEI teachers were identified, which require attention of executives of the education reform and teachers.