Conference Program

Across Europe, teacher shortages, intensifying accountability regimes, and rapid socio-digital transformation are reshaping the conditions of teaching. These developments have raised growing concerns about teachers’ professional well-being and the sustainability of teaching careers (OECD, 2025; UNESCO, 2024). Recent research suggests that teachers’ well-being is strongly influenced by organisational conditions, professional autonomy, and opportunities for collegial support rather than by individual factors alone (Lähteenmäki et al., 2025). In this context, professional teacher education institutions play a crucial role in supporting the development of resilient professional identities and collaborative professional cultures.

This paper discusses the Finnish contribution to the Erasmus+ project Connecting Teachers – A Community of Practice to Promote Teachers' Well-being (2025–2028), focusing particularly on vocational and professional teacher education in universities of applied sciences. The Finnish teacher education system provides a distinctive context for examining the relationship between professional identity, institutional structures, and well-being. Vocational teachers typically enter the profession with strong occupational backgrounds and subsequently complete pedagogical teacher education (60 ECTS), which aims to develop pedagogical competence, guidance skills, and reflective professional practice (Jyrhämä, 2021).

However, contemporary transformations in vocational education, including competence-based curricula, personalised learning pathways, and stronger integration with workplaces, have expanded and diversified teachers’ roles. VET teachers increasingly act as facilitators of learning, mentors, network collaborators, and developers of learning environments. These expanding expectations can create tensions in teachers’ professional identity formation and affect their well-being. Studies on vocational teachers highlight that professional identity is often negotiated between prior occupational expertise and emerging pedagogical expertise (Tapani & Salonen, 2019; Antera & Teräs, 2024). At the same time, organisational support and collaborative professional environments have been shown to play a significant role in sustaining teachers’ job satisfaction and well-being (Chen, 2026).

Drawing on these perspectives, the paper analyses how Finnish professional teacher education programmes seek to support sustainable professional identity development and teacher well-being through collaborative learning and communities of practice. Participation in professional communities can provide spaces for collective reflection, mutual recognition, and the integration of professional knowledge into shared practices (Wenger, 1998). Research in vocational education also indicates that collaborative practices and peer learning can strengthen teachers’ capacity to adapt to educational change and enhance professional agency (Sirk, 2024).

From a sociological perspective, well-being is therefore understood not as an individual psychological attribute but as a relational and institutional phenomenon that emerges within organisational cultures and professional communities. Finnish professional teacher education programmes increasingly emphasise reflective practice, peer learning, and collaborative development work with VET educational institutes. These pedagogical approaches aim to strengthen professional teachers’ sense of belonging, professional agency, and capacity to engage sustainably with the complex demands of contemporary education.

The paper contributes to the panel’s comparative discussion by examining how teacher education institutions can foster communities of practice that support both professional identity formation and teacher well-being. The Finnish case suggests that embedding collaborative professional learning within teacher education can help renew the social and cultural foundations of teaching in rapidly transforming educational fields.