# A Comprehensive Analysis of Teacher’s Professional Identity in Physical Education Undergraduates Based on Artificial Intelligence

Authors: Jiahui Xu; Jiangbo Luo
Journal: Mobile Information Systems
 (2022)

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## Abstract

Physical education (PE) teachers are instrumental in advancing China’s curriculum reform and promoting the wellness of adolescents, and the professional identity of these instructors represents the jumping-off point and drive of the occupation. This paper employed the implicit association test (IAT) based on the neural network model and the questionnaire survey method to compare the implicit and explicit stereotypes of teachers’ occupational commitment from the perspectives of college students majoring in PE. Moreover, the deep-learning-based intelligent methods of BERT and BiLSTM were used to capture and analyze the comments on open-source social media platforms to present the explicit main concerns that PE majors have about their professional identity. The findings showed the following: (1) the overall explicit and implicit career identity of PE majors turned out to be positive; (2) the implicit professional identity trended upward as the grade grew, whereas the explicit one went down among senior students; (3) specialized social practices were conducive to the increase in teacher professional identity among PE undergraduates; (4) urban students recognized PE teachers as a committed occupation more than their rural counterparts do; (5) training time was correlated to positive teacher professional identity; (6) male students were more likely to see PE teachers as a capability-centered occupation, while female students had a stronger affective commitment; (7) state PE policies helped elevate teacher professional identity; (8) the low social status of PE teachers and insufficient on-campus professional training were of major concern to develop PE majors’ teacher professional identity; and (9) most PE students pursued their prospective professional career for material gain.


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## Body

## 1. Introduction

Teachers’ professional identity is defined as a process in which an individual shapes the beliefs, values, and commitments of being a teacher by putting acquired knowledge and skills into use, showing the extent to which a teacher recognizes his or her occupation [1]. Since the reform and opening up, China has stayed committed to training teachers, as evidenced by the roll-out of a swathe of state policies to support basic education. The Action Plan for Revitalizing Teacher Education (2018-2022), jointly released by the Ministry of Education and four other Chinese ministries in 2018, made clear the targets and tasks for teacher training in China, stating that “priority should be given to developing professional identity and a sense of social responsibility among student teachers” [2].PE majors tend to be marginalized, compared to Chinese student teachers for other disciplines. The reality results in a lack of drive to enhance teachers’ professional identity, complete a trainee-to-trainer shift, and upgrade expertise in teaching among PE undergraduates as they foster a positive attitude toward being an instructor. The implementation of strategies to build a Healthy China and a leading sporting nation and increasing sports-education integration mean that PE teachers have become instrumental in pushing the country’s curriculum reform and boosting the healthy growth of the young. The professional identity of education majors, the reserve personnel for PE teaching staff, will make a big difference to their decisions on professional development that concern the building of the state’s PE teacher workforce. Nonetheless, the occupational commitment of PE majors is subject to multiple factors, particularly the comments and public opinions on emerging social media platforms in the Internet era. Therefore, when the Internet and big data prevail, it is of immense significance to guide the career development of instructors through an investigation of the current teachers’ professional identity of PE majors from a data-driven perspective.On researching teachers’ professional identity, worldwide studies on teachers have changed their focus from external requirements for the profession to teachers themselves. That means the occupational commitment of teachers has become a buzzword among scholars, who have emphasized its importance in the career development of teachers [3]. Globally, much research on trainee teachers and preservice teachers explored how they think of teachers’ professional identity [4]. Domestically, studies tended to focus on in-service teachers, rather than their preservice counterparts. What merits our attention is that previous research endeavors considered the development of teachers’ professional identity as a linear process and fell short of comparing explicit and implicit attitudes toward career commitment. In addition, the overwhelming majority of data used in the global quantitative analyses of teachers’ professional identities were sourced from self-reported questionnaires. Thus, they failed to show individuals’ implicit stereotypes or cognition effectively and were weak in robustness and generalization performance given the data modeling built on subjective measurement was susceptible to correct self-reflection and social desirability. However, in the Web 2.0 era, the fast-growing Internet and the widespread adoption of mobile terminals allow users to post and share their comments anonymously. Reviews particularly targeting the teaching profession have made a considerable difference to the occupational identity and career plan of prospective instructors. What’s more, the career choice of a student teacher is now made based more on social media data than empirical evidence.In that connection, this paper attempted to measure and analyze the implicit attitude toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors through the IAT based on the neural network model from a data-driven perspective. Meantime, a questionnaire approach was taken to examine the overall explicit stereotypes of occupational commitment among these undergraduates. More significantly, to provide a fuller picture of major concerns about explicit attitudes, the paper gathered comments from open-source social media platforms and employed the deep-learning-based intelligent methods of BERT and BiLSTM to extract, analyze, and present explicit views on PE teacher’s professional identity, which revealed the difficulties faced by PE majors in embracing their occupational commitment.The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section2 focuses on the research design, Section 3 is concerned about results and analysis, and Section 4 throws light on discussions. Finally, the last section is concerned with the conclusions and prospects. At the end of the paper, the future work has also been discussed.


## 2. Research Design

### 2.1. Implicit Association Test

#### 2.1.1. Data

The test was conducted on 320 PE majors at a Beijing-based four-year college using quota sampling, with 80 respondents (equally comprising males and females) in each grade. The surveyed students with normal or corrected eyesight (as required by the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT)) have not participated in any recent similar experiment. Across all four grades, the unqualified were identified in the first-round selection and subsequently replenished to ensure valid data.


#### 2.1.2. Experimental Procedure

The SC-IAT was carried out to measure how PE majors implicitly view teachers’ professional identity. The four-stage test comprises the practice of compatible tasks, test of compatible tasks, practice of incompatible tasks, and test of incompatible tasks, with the first and third stages involving 24 pilot tests each and the other two phases consisting of 72 experiments for each. The stages for compatible tasks are to have concepts and positive evaluations condensed into Key E on the keyboard and those negative into Key I. To avoid response bias, the concepts, positive evaluations, and negative attributes are presented in a proportion of 7: 7: 10 rather than in an equally frequent fashion, meaning 58% of correct responses on Key E and the rest 42% on Key I. On the stages for incompatible tasks, positive evaluations are put into Key E and concepts, and negative attributes into Key I, and concepts, positive and negative attributes are showcased in a 7: 10: 7 ratio. That means 42% of correct responses are shown on Key E, and the remaining 58% on Key I (as shown in Table1). A single target word will stay on screen for 1,500 milliseconds at the most until a subject makes a response. Should no response be made during the timeframe, the target would fly out of the screen to indicate an incorrect response, and the following target word would surface. The short timeframe means reduced possibilities for a subject to play a role in controlled processing in a task.Table 1
SC-IAT procedure of implicit professional identity of PE teachers.
StagesDescriptionsResponseKey EKey IICompatible task practicePositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIICompatible task testPositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIIIIncompatible task practicePositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionIVIncompatible task testPositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionNote: Compatible and incompatible tasks show on a random basis.The experiment divided attributes into positive and negative emotional words. The former includes joy, happiness, fondness, fun, and sense of achievement, while the latter involves pain, tediousness, cumbersomeness, hardship, detestation, and bleak prospects [5]. The concepts refer to the vocabulary pertaining to the occupation of PE teachers, and an open-ended questionnaire among PE majors found six most frequently used words and expressions, namely, physical education, lesson preparation, action modeling, preparation of sports facilities, teaching plan development, and instruction of motor skills [6].The SC-IAT results were calculated by a scoring means proposed by Karpinski and Steinman [7]. Responses made over 1000 ms or within 350 ms were removed. An incorrect response was timely modified by replacing it with an addition of 400 ms to the average response time of correct responses made in the same group. The difference of average response time spent in compatible and incompatible tasks was subsequently calculated before being divided by the standard deviation of the time of all correct responses (excluding modified responses). The calculated figure was referred to as the D-score that implies the strength of implicit association. According to the interpretation by Greenwald, when the D-score is smaller than 0.15, it means there is little association; when the figure is between 0.15 and 0.35 (excluding 0.35), the association is slight, and between 0.35 and 0.65 (excluding 0.65), moderate; when the D-score is equal to or greater than 0.65, it means strong association.In the experiment, the practices of compatible and incompatible tasks had their corresponding tests. But to avoid test response deviation arising from the inertial response, compatible and incompatible tasks would come out on a random basis. The IAT experimental procedure is shown in Table1.


### 2.2. Explicit Attitude Survey

#### 2.2.1. Respondent Research

Out of 4,000 questionnaires distributed online and offline to students at Beijing Sport University, Beijing Normal University, Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, and Capital Normal University, 3,266 were collected, and 1,666 were considered valid upon the removal of those involving careless response and social desirability scores above the standard. Details on respondents are shown in Table2.Table 2
Details on questionnaire respondents (n=1,666).
VariablesCategoriesPopulationPercentages (%)NotesGenderMale125476.43Gender information is absent from 26 questionnaires.Female38623.57GradeFreshman43025.90Grade information is absent from six questionnaires.Sophomore38623.25Junior57434.59Senior27016.26


#### 2.2.2. Analysis of Measurement Methods

The Questionnaire on Teachers’ Professional Identity among Student Teachers [8], adopted in this study, involved such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. The 25-question sheet featured the five-point Likert scale: 1 to 5 representing strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree, respectively, and the higher the score, the stronger teachers’ professional identity. The values of fit indices, such as GFI, AGFI, IFI, and NFI, were greater than 0.9; the RMSEA neared 0.5; Cronbach’s Alpha from each dimension was above 0.75. All these made the questionnaire research valid and credible. The abridged table of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD) [9] was employed to remove the impact of social desirability on the measurement of credibility. The higher the 13-question scale has, the greater social expectations a respondent places, the less credible and reliable his or her response is. The questionnaire with social desirability greater than a score of 9 was deemed invalid and thus removed.


### 2.3. Extraction and Presentation of Explicit Viewpoints on BiLSTM-Based Internet Platforms

Although an analysis of explicit attitudes expressed on questionnaires can figure out structurally how PE majors view teachers’ professional identity, the results tend to be limited to the design of the question list and could still be swayed by correct self-reflection and social desirability. Moreover, as a variety of new Internet-based media platforms spring up in the Web 2.0 era, an increasing number of college students prefer to express views on social network platforms honestly. That being said, to justify the explicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors, this paper explored a deep-learning-based method on the basis of the general framework of intelligent semantic analysis and research on text sentiment and extracted occupational commitment views of PE majors for the validation of explicit attitudes through deep-learning models of BERT, BiLSTM, and CRF.


#### 2.3.1. Strategies for Annotating Digital Content

Upon extraction, professional identity views, collected from the social media platforms of Weibo and Zhihu in this study, went through content annotation. Based on the emotional tendency revealed by the aforementioned explicit attitudes (occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition) among PE majors, we categorized evaluation objects into governments, universities, and teachers. Specifically, the data about comments selected automatically or made by PE majors on Weibo and Zhihu was gathered under the Scrapy framework and formatively stored in the MySQL database. The preprocessing of comment or view data was to screen those running against regular expressions, expand the statistical dictionary, and enhance data quality through manual interpretation, ensuring maximal segmentation accuracy. Manual data annotation was then carried out based on a classical strategy involving evaluation objects, extent, viewpoints, and the thinning of evaluation objects.


#### 2.3.2. Modeling for Extracting Explicit Attitudes and Viewpoints

Building on dynamic word embeddings and the models of BiLSTM and CRF, we annotated a wide range of professional identity comments and viewpoints of student teachers on Weibo and Zhihu and had them analyzed. Such algorithms as the Word2Vec and GloVe generate static word embeddings [10, 11] that would overlook the relation of contexts. In contrast, BERT, an algorithm, can produce word embeddings with contextual semantic information, and a complete portfolio of semantic features of texts can be obtained through the attention mechanism at the core of a BERT model. Upon processing word embeddings under the BERT model, we mapped the words in comments into semantic spaces for follow-up model inputs and textual feature learning. Moreover, the BiLSTM-based [12] annotations of features of explicit attitudes were generated, showing regular extensive dependence on comments across Weibo and Zhihu and given BiLSTM model excels at untangling contextual dependency and extracting sentimental factors, it was employed to create a complete set of semantic embeddings. Nonetheless, the model tends to overlook the dependency between sequences of annotated outputs, resulting in incorrect order of annotation predictions. In this case, a CRF model that delivers improved prediction results would be a solution.Overall, the integration of the dynamic word embedding algorithm BERT with the models of BiLSTM and CRF in this study contributed to increased accuracy in predicting the comment annotations of PE majors’ Weibo and Zhihu accounts regarding teachers’ professional identity by fully leveraging the contextual input features and sentence-level annotations. Upon manual review and annotation, comment data were divided into training, validation, and testing sets for model training, parameter setting, and results testing, respectively, as a way of ensuring the model is accurate and feasible when applied. We subsequently ran all collected comment data on the trained model to determine whether a text is part of a respondent’s views or whether an annotation falls into the categories of evaluation objects, extent, and viewpoints.


#### 2.3.3. Validation Process

On data extraction and annotation, the paper captured 13,987 pieces of comments from Weibo and Zhihu account holders, student teachers, or PE majors, 9,360 of which were deemed valid. The triad annotation strategy and the thinning of evaluation objects were adopted to select 3,000 random segmented comments for manual annotation. Furthermore, the BERT toolkit was used to build a set of training word embeddings of comment texts, where the embedding dimension value was set at 500 and the context window value at 10. In terms of viewpoint extraction, we blended BiLSTM with CRF through PyTorch and divided 5,000 manually annotated comments into a training set of 3,000 and a validation set of 2,000 for five-round cross-validation. To deter model overfitting, a regularization approach with a dropout rate of 0.5 was adopted. The size of the dimensions of the forward and backward BiLSTM’s hidden states was 128. Also, the Adam optimizer was applied to minimize the model’s loss while increasing its accuracy. The precision (P), recall (R), and the F value were determined as the evaluation indicators, all of which were above 86%, suggesting the model’s sound prediction performance.


## 2.1. Implicit Association Test

### 2.1.1. Data

The test was conducted on 320 PE majors at a Beijing-based four-year college using quota sampling, with 80 respondents (equally comprising males and females) in each grade. The surveyed students with normal or corrected eyesight (as required by the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT)) have not participated in any recent similar experiment. Across all four grades, the unqualified were identified in the first-round selection and subsequently replenished to ensure valid data.


### 2.1.2. Experimental Procedure

The SC-IAT was carried out to measure how PE majors implicitly view teachers’ professional identity. The four-stage test comprises the practice of compatible tasks, test of compatible tasks, practice of incompatible tasks, and test of incompatible tasks, with the first and third stages involving 24 pilot tests each and the other two phases consisting of 72 experiments for each. The stages for compatible tasks are to have concepts and positive evaluations condensed into Key E on the keyboard and those negative into Key I. To avoid response bias, the concepts, positive evaluations, and negative attributes are presented in a proportion of 7: 7: 10 rather than in an equally frequent fashion, meaning 58% of correct responses on Key E and the rest 42% on Key I. On the stages for incompatible tasks, positive evaluations are put into Key E and concepts, and negative attributes into Key I, and concepts, positive and negative attributes are showcased in a 7: 10: 7 ratio. That means 42% of correct responses are shown on Key E, and the remaining 58% on Key I (as shown in Table1). A single target word will stay on screen for 1,500 milliseconds at the most until a subject makes a response. Should no response be made during the timeframe, the target would fly out of the screen to indicate an incorrect response, and the following target word would surface. The short timeframe means reduced possibilities for a subject to play a role in controlled processing in a task.Table 1
SC-IAT procedure of implicit professional identity of PE teachers.
StagesDescriptionsResponseKey EKey IICompatible task practicePositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIICompatible task testPositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIIIIncompatible task practicePositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionIVIncompatible task testPositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionNote: Compatible and incompatible tasks show on a random basis.The experiment divided attributes into positive and negative emotional words. The former includes joy, happiness, fondness, fun, and sense of achievement, while the latter involves pain, tediousness, cumbersomeness, hardship, detestation, and bleak prospects [5]. The concepts refer to the vocabulary pertaining to the occupation of PE teachers, and an open-ended questionnaire among PE majors found six most frequently used words and expressions, namely, physical education, lesson preparation, action modeling, preparation of sports facilities, teaching plan development, and instruction of motor skills [6].The SC-IAT results were calculated by a scoring means proposed by Karpinski and Steinman [7]. Responses made over 1000 ms or within 350 ms were removed. An incorrect response was timely modified by replacing it with an addition of 400 ms to the average response time of correct responses made in the same group. The difference of average response time spent in compatible and incompatible tasks was subsequently calculated before being divided by the standard deviation of the time of all correct responses (excluding modified responses). The calculated figure was referred to as the D-score that implies the strength of implicit association. According to the interpretation by Greenwald, when the D-score is smaller than 0.15, it means there is little association; when the figure is between 0.15 and 0.35 (excluding 0.35), the association is slight, and between 0.35 and 0.65 (excluding 0.65), moderate; when the D-score is equal to or greater than 0.65, it means strong association.In the experiment, the practices of compatible and incompatible tasks had their corresponding tests. But to avoid test response deviation arising from the inertial response, compatible and incompatible tasks would come out on a random basis. The IAT experimental procedure is shown in Table1.


## 2.1.1. Data

The test was conducted on 320 PE majors at a Beijing-based four-year college using quota sampling, with 80 respondents (equally comprising males and females) in each grade. The surveyed students with normal or corrected eyesight (as required by the Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT)) have not participated in any recent similar experiment. Across all four grades, the unqualified were identified in the first-round selection and subsequently replenished to ensure valid data.


## 2.1.2. Experimental Procedure

The SC-IAT was carried out to measure how PE majors implicitly view teachers’ professional identity. The four-stage test comprises the practice of compatible tasks, test of compatible tasks, practice of incompatible tasks, and test of incompatible tasks, with the first and third stages involving 24 pilot tests each and the other two phases consisting of 72 experiments for each. The stages for compatible tasks are to have concepts and positive evaluations condensed into Key E on the keyboard and those negative into Key I. To avoid response bias, the concepts, positive evaluations, and negative attributes are presented in a proportion of 7: 7: 10 rather than in an equally frequent fashion, meaning 58% of correct responses on Key E and the rest 42% on Key I. On the stages for incompatible tasks, positive evaluations are put into Key E and concepts, and negative attributes into Key I, and concepts, positive and negative attributes are showcased in a 7: 10: 7 ratio. That means 42% of correct responses are shown on Key E, and the remaining 58% on Key I (as shown in Table1). A single target word will stay on screen for 1,500 milliseconds at the most until a subject makes a response. Should no response be made during the timeframe, the target would fly out of the screen to indicate an incorrect response, and the following target word would surface. The short timeframe means reduced possibilities for a subject to play a role in controlled processing in a task.Table 1
SC-IAT procedure of implicit professional identity of PE teachers.
StagesDescriptionsResponseKey EKey IICompatible task practicePositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIICompatible task testPositive emotions + PE professionNegative emotionsIIIIncompatible task practicePositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionIVIncompatible task testPositive emotionsNegative emotions + PE professionNote: Compatible and incompatible tasks show on a random basis.The experiment divided attributes into positive and negative emotional words. The former includes joy, happiness, fondness, fun, and sense of achievement, while the latter involves pain, tediousness, cumbersomeness, hardship, detestation, and bleak prospects [5]. The concepts refer to the vocabulary pertaining to the occupation of PE teachers, and an open-ended questionnaire among PE majors found six most frequently used words and expressions, namely, physical education, lesson preparation, action modeling, preparation of sports facilities, teaching plan development, and instruction of motor skills [6].The SC-IAT results were calculated by a scoring means proposed by Karpinski and Steinman [7]. Responses made over 1000 ms or within 350 ms were removed. An incorrect response was timely modified by replacing it with an addition of 400 ms to the average response time of correct responses made in the same group. The difference of average response time spent in compatible and incompatible tasks was subsequently calculated before being divided by the standard deviation of the time of all correct responses (excluding modified responses). The calculated figure was referred to as the D-score that implies the strength of implicit association. According to the interpretation by Greenwald, when the D-score is smaller than 0.15, it means there is little association; when the figure is between 0.15 and 0.35 (excluding 0.35), the association is slight, and between 0.35 and 0.65 (excluding 0.65), moderate; when the D-score is equal to or greater than 0.65, it means strong association.In the experiment, the practices of compatible and incompatible tasks had their corresponding tests. But to avoid test response deviation arising from the inertial response, compatible and incompatible tasks would come out on a random basis. The IAT experimental procedure is shown in Table1.


## 2.2. Explicit Attitude Survey

### 2.2.1. Respondent Research

Out of 4,000 questionnaires distributed online and offline to students at Beijing Sport University, Beijing Normal University, Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, and Capital Normal University, 3,266 were collected, and 1,666 were considered valid upon the removal of those involving careless response and social desirability scores above the standard. Details on respondents are shown in Table2.Table 2
Details on questionnaire respondents (n=1,666).
VariablesCategoriesPopulationPercentages (%)NotesGenderMale125476.43Gender information is absent from 26 questionnaires.Female38623.57GradeFreshman43025.90Grade information is absent from six questionnaires.Sophomore38623.25Junior57434.59Senior27016.26


### 2.2.2. Analysis of Measurement Methods

The Questionnaire on Teachers’ Professional Identity among Student Teachers [8], adopted in this study, involved such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. The 25-question sheet featured the five-point Likert scale: 1 to 5 representing strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree, respectively, and the higher the score, the stronger teachers’ professional identity. The values of fit indices, such as GFI, AGFI, IFI, and NFI, were greater than 0.9; the RMSEA neared 0.5; Cronbach’s Alpha from each dimension was above 0.75. All these made the questionnaire research valid and credible. The abridged table of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD) [9] was employed to remove the impact of social desirability on the measurement of credibility. The higher the 13-question scale has, the greater social expectations a respondent places, the less credible and reliable his or her response is. The questionnaire with social desirability greater than a score of 9 was deemed invalid and thus removed.


## 2.2.1. Respondent Research

Out of 4,000 questionnaires distributed online and offline to students at Beijing Sport University, Beijing Normal University, Capital University of Physical Education and Sports, and Capital Normal University, 3,266 were collected, and 1,666 were considered valid upon the removal of those involving careless response and social desirability scores above the standard. Details on respondents are shown in Table2.Table 2
Details on questionnaire respondents (n=1,666).
VariablesCategoriesPopulationPercentages (%)NotesGenderMale125476.43Gender information is absent from 26 questionnaires.Female38623.57GradeFreshman43025.90Grade information is absent from six questionnaires.Sophomore38623.25Junior57434.59Senior27016.26


## 2.2.2. Analysis of Measurement Methods

The Questionnaire on Teachers’ Professional Identity among Student Teachers [8], adopted in this study, involved such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. The 25-question sheet featured the five-point Likert scale: 1 to 5 representing strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree, and strongly agree, respectively, and the higher the score, the stronger teachers’ professional identity. The values of fit indices, such as GFI, AGFI, IFI, and NFI, were greater than 0.9; the RMSEA neared 0.5; Cronbach’s Alpha from each dimension was above 0.75. All these made the questionnaire research valid and credible. The abridged table of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD) [9] was employed to remove the impact of social desirability on the measurement of credibility. The higher the 13-question scale has, the greater social expectations a respondent places, the less credible and reliable his or her response is. The questionnaire with social desirability greater than a score of 9 was deemed invalid and thus removed.


## 2.3. Extraction and Presentation of Explicit Viewpoints on BiLSTM-Based Internet Platforms

Although an analysis of explicit attitudes expressed on questionnaires can figure out structurally how PE majors view teachers’ professional identity, the results tend to be limited to the design of the question list and could still be swayed by correct self-reflection and social desirability. Moreover, as a variety of new Internet-based media platforms spring up in the Web 2.0 era, an increasing number of college students prefer to express views on social network platforms honestly. That being said, to justify the explicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors, this paper explored a deep-learning-based method on the basis of the general framework of intelligent semantic analysis and research on text sentiment and extracted occupational commitment views of PE majors for the validation of explicit attitudes through deep-learning models of BERT, BiLSTM, and CRF.


### 2.3.1. Strategies for Annotating Digital Content

Upon extraction, professional identity views, collected from the social media platforms of Weibo and Zhihu in this study, went through content annotation. Based on the emotional tendency revealed by the aforementioned explicit attitudes (occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition) among PE majors, we categorized evaluation objects into governments, universities, and teachers. Specifically, the data about comments selected automatically or made by PE majors on Weibo and Zhihu was gathered under the Scrapy framework and formatively stored in the MySQL database. The preprocessing of comment or view data was to screen those running against regular expressions, expand the statistical dictionary, and enhance data quality through manual interpretation, ensuring maximal segmentation accuracy. Manual data annotation was then carried out based on a classical strategy involving evaluation objects, extent, viewpoints, and the thinning of evaluation objects.


### 2.3.2. Modeling for Extracting Explicit Attitudes and Viewpoints

Building on dynamic word embeddings and the models of BiLSTM and CRF, we annotated a wide range of professional identity comments and viewpoints of student teachers on Weibo and Zhihu and had them analyzed. Such algorithms as the Word2Vec and GloVe generate static word embeddings [10, 11] that would overlook the relation of contexts. In contrast, BERT, an algorithm, can produce word embeddings with contextual semantic information, and a complete portfolio of semantic features of texts can be obtained through the attention mechanism at the core of a BERT model. Upon processing word embeddings under the BERT model, we mapped the words in comments into semantic spaces for follow-up model inputs and textual feature learning. Moreover, the BiLSTM-based [12] annotations of features of explicit attitudes were generated, showing regular extensive dependence on comments across Weibo and Zhihu and given BiLSTM model excels at untangling contextual dependency and extracting sentimental factors, it was employed to create a complete set of semantic embeddings. Nonetheless, the model tends to overlook the dependency between sequences of annotated outputs, resulting in incorrect order of annotation predictions. In this case, a CRF model that delivers improved prediction results would be a solution.Overall, the integration of the dynamic word embedding algorithm BERT with the models of BiLSTM and CRF in this study contributed to increased accuracy in predicting the comment annotations of PE majors’ Weibo and Zhihu accounts regarding teachers’ professional identity by fully leveraging the contextual input features and sentence-level annotations. Upon manual review and annotation, comment data were divided into training, validation, and testing sets for model training, parameter setting, and results testing, respectively, as a way of ensuring the model is accurate and feasible when applied. We subsequently ran all collected comment data on the trained model to determine whether a text is part of a respondent’s views or whether an annotation falls into the categories of evaluation objects, extent, and viewpoints.


### 2.3.3. Validation Process

On data extraction and annotation, the paper captured 13,987 pieces of comments from Weibo and Zhihu account holders, student teachers, or PE majors, 9,360 of which were deemed valid. The triad annotation strategy and the thinning of evaluation objects were adopted to select 3,000 random segmented comments for manual annotation. Furthermore, the BERT toolkit was used to build a set of training word embeddings of comment texts, where the embedding dimension value was set at 500 and the context window value at 10. In terms of viewpoint extraction, we blended BiLSTM with CRF through PyTorch and divided 5,000 manually annotated comments into a training set of 3,000 and a validation set of 2,000 for five-round cross-validation. To deter model overfitting, a regularization approach with a dropout rate of 0.5 was adopted. The size of the dimensions of the forward and backward BiLSTM’s hidden states was 128. Also, the Adam optimizer was applied to minimize the model’s loss while increasing its accuracy. The precision (P), recall (R), and the F value were determined as the evaluation indicators, all of which were above 86%, suggesting the model’s sound prediction performance.


## 2.3.1. Strategies for Annotating Digital Content

Upon extraction, professional identity views, collected from the social media platforms of Weibo and Zhihu in this study, went through content annotation. Based on the emotional tendency revealed by the aforementioned explicit attitudes (occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition) among PE majors, we categorized evaluation objects into governments, universities, and teachers. Specifically, the data about comments selected automatically or made by PE majors on Weibo and Zhihu was gathered under the Scrapy framework and formatively stored in the MySQL database. The preprocessing of comment or view data was to screen those running against regular expressions, expand the statistical dictionary, and enhance data quality through manual interpretation, ensuring maximal segmentation accuracy. Manual data annotation was then carried out based on a classical strategy involving evaluation objects, extent, viewpoints, and the thinning of evaluation objects.


## 2.3.2. Modeling for Extracting Explicit Attitudes and Viewpoints

Building on dynamic word embeddings and the models of BiLSTM and CRF, we annotated a wide range of professional identity comments and viewpoints of student teachers on Weibo and Zhihu and had them analyzed. Such algorithms as the Word2Vec and GloVe generate static word embeddings [10, 11] that would overlook the relation of contexts. In contrast, BERT, an algorithm, can produce word embeddings with contextual semantic information, and a complete portfolio of semantic features of texts can be obtained through the attention mechanism at the core of a BERT model. Upon processing word embeddings under the BERT model, we mapped the words in comments into semantic spaces for follow-up model inputs and textual feature learning. Moreover, the BiLSTM-based [12] annotations of features of explicit attitudes were generated, showing regular extensive dependence on comments across Weibo and Zhihu and given BiLSTM model excels at untangling contextual dependency and extracting sentimental factors, it was employed to create a complete set of semantic embeddings. Nonetheless, the model tends to overlook the dependency between sequences of annotated outputs, resulting in incorrect order of annotation predictions. In this case, a CRF model that delivers improved prediction results would be a solution.Overall, the integration of the dynamic word embedding algorithm BERT with the models of BiLSTM and CRF in this study contributed to increased accuracy in predicting the comment annotations of PE majors’ Weibo and Zhihu accounts regarding teachers’ professional identity by fully leveraging the contextual input features and sentence-level annotations. Upon manual review and annotation, comment data were divided into training, validation, and testing sets for model training, parameter setting, and results testing, respectively, as a way of ensuring the model is accurate and feasible when applied. We subsequently ran all collected comment data on the trained model to determine whether a text is part of a respondent’s views or whether an annotation falls into the categories of evaluation objects, extent, and viewpoints.


## 2.3.3. Validation Process

On data extraction and annotation, the paper captured 13,987 pieces of comments from Weibo and Zhihu account holders, student teachers, or PE majors, 9,360 of which were deemed valid. The triad annotation strategy and the thinning of evaluation objects were adopted to select 3,000 random segmented comments for manual annotation. Furthermore, the BERT toolkit was used to build a set of training word embeddings of comment texts, where the embedding dimension value was set at 500 and the context window value at 10. In terms of viewpoint extraction, we blended BiLSTM with CRF through PyTorch and divided 5,000 manually annotated comments into a training set of 3,000 and a validation set of 2,000 for five-round cross-validation. To deter model overfitting, a regularization approach with a dropout rate of 0.5 was adopted. The size of the dimensions of the forward and backward BiLSTM’s hidden states was 128. Also, the Adam optimizer was applied to minimize the model’s loss while increasing its accuracy. The precision (P), recall (R), and the F value were determined as the evaluation indicators, all of which were above 86%, suggesting the model’s sound prediction performance.


## 3. Results and Analysis

### 3.1. Analysis of Implicit Attitudes of PE Majors

#### 3.1.1. Overall Features of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

After the paired samplet-test was conducted on the response time of compatible and incompatible tasks, the results, as is shown in Table 3, suggested the strength of implicit association in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors and that the response time of incompatible tasks was significantly higher than that of compatible ones implied significant strength of implicit association, meaning the implicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trended positive.Table 3
Overall features of implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors (n=320).
Response time for compatible tasksResponse time for incompatible taskstdfPMSDMSDMean scores627.85883.569702.13895.02810.121119.000∗∗∗


#### 3.1.2. Grade and Gender Characteristics of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The SC-IAT scoring method was adopted to calculate each respondent’s D-score in a way that shows the strength of implicit association. The higher the D-score, the more hardened the implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors. The multifactor analysis of variance was carried out, with gender and grade as the independent variables and the D-score as the dependent variable. Table4 shows insignificance in the single-factor effect of gender and grade and the interplay between the two. That means PE majors’ implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity are not subject to gender and grade differences.Table 4
The D-score involved two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis of PE majors.
Sources of variationSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender.2691.2691.002.319.009Grade.2843.095.352.788.009Gender∗ Grade1.9403.6472.409.071.061Error30.059112.268


### 3.2. Explicit Attitudes of PE Majors

#### 3.2.1. Overall Features of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The teachers’ professional identity from the perspectives of PE majors involves such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. To be specific, occupational understanding refers to how PE majors know about and understand PE teachers as an occupation; effective commitment means PE majors’ trust in and acceptance of PE instructors; behavior disposition suggests the reaction and response made by PE students as they are receiving instruction and training; sustained motivation shows how PE majors continue to express positive views and emotions to PE teaching; occupational expectation denotes the longing and desire of PE majors for a prospective professional career; capability recognition implies PE majors’ self-approval of being a competent and qualified PE instructor [8, 13].As shown in Table5, the total points of the teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions are greater than 3, a theoretical mean. That means the explicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trend positive. The scoring (occupational expectation>capability recognition>affective commitment>behavior disposition>sustained motivation>occupational understanding) illustrates that despite high self-approval and optimism and expectations in the profession of teachers, PE majors gain a lower score in occupational understanding. This probably can be attributed to a distorted school curriculum that encourages students to focus more on special capability building rather than on the understanding and internalization of teachers as an occupation.Table 5
The means and standard deviations of teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Professional identityOccupational understandingAffective commitmentBehavior dispositionSustainedMotivationOccupational expectationCapability recognitionM3.8723.6123.9363.8613.6274.1384.069SD.523.662.675.671.888.720.695


#### 3.2.2. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors from Different Grades

Teachers’ professional identity among PE majors differs from grade to grade. Specifically, juniors (M=4.110, SD=.683) have the most positive attitudes toward occupational commitment, successively followed by seniors (M=4.054, SD=.672), sophomores (M=3.926, SD=.692), and freshmen (M=3.883, SD=.680) as is shown in Table 6. The difference is largely attributed to the contrast between lower-grade students (freshmen and sophomores) and higher-grade ones (juniors and seniors), with higher-grade students demonstrating greater commitment to PE teaching, as is shown in Table 7.Table 6
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors from different grades.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding35.841.001∗∗.021Affective commitment35.364.001∗∗.019Behavior disposition34.588.003∗∗.016Sustained motivation36.577.000∗∗∗.023Occupational expectation36.655.000∗∗∗.024Capability recognition34.342.005∗∗.016Professional identity37.067.000∗∗∗.025Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗means P<.001.Table 7
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors from different grades.
Dependent variablesGradesGradesMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingFreshmanSenior-.2468∗.07194.001∗∗-.3880-.1056SophomoreJunior-.1386∗.06098.023∗-.2583-.0189Senior-.2696∗.07350.000∗∗∗-.4139-.1254Affective commitmentFreshmanSophomore.1796∗.06639.007∗∗.0492.3099SophomoreJunior-.2237∗.06233.000∗∗∗-.3461-.1014Senior-.2478∗.07512.001∗∗-.3952-.1003Behavior dispositionFreshmanSophomore.1710∗.06598.010∗.0414.3005SophomoreJunior-.1585∗.06194.011∗-.2801-.0370Senior-.2620∗.07466.000∗∗∗-.4086-.1155Sustained motivationFreshmanJunior-.1980∗.07920.013∗-.3535-.0426Senior-.3641∗.09642.000∗∗∗-.5533-.1748SophomoreJunior-.1897∗.08174.021∗-.3501-.0292Senior-.3557∗.09852.000∗∗∗-.5491-.1623Occupational expectationFreshmanSophomore.3075∗.06997.000∗∗∗.1702.4449Junior.1265∗.06364.047∗.0016.2515Senior.1856∗.07748.017∗.0335.3377SophomoreJunior-.1810∗.06568.006∗∗-.3099-.0521Capability recognitionFreshmanSophomore.2293∗.06770.001∗∗.0964.3622SophomoreJunior-.1846∗.06355.004∗∗-.3093-.0599Professional identityFreshmanSophomore.1515∗.05111.003∗∗.0512.2519SophomoreJunior-.1832∗.04798.000∗∗∗-.2774-.0890Senior-.2377∗.05783.000∗∗∗-.3512-.1242Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


#### 3.2.3. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Genders

Table8 shows that the difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders was insignificant. Yet, male students represented a much higher scorer than their female counterparts from the perspective of capability recognition.Table 8
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredMalesFemalesMalesFemalesOccupational understanding3.6193.570.680.6071.814.367.001Affective commitment3.9024.032.669.68915.497.019∗.007Behavior disposition3.8503.871.674.6611.173.678.000Sustained motivation3.6473.541.886.87812.139.144.003Occupational expectation4.1394.120.702.7801.103.748.000Capability recognition4.1183.883.676.731117.147.000∗∗∗.021Professional identity3.8703.859.522.5231.055.814.000Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


#### 3.2.4. Interplay of Gender and Grade Factors of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

A two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis was conducted, with gender and grade as independent variables and professional teacher identity and its six dimensions as dependent variables. As shown in Table9, there is no interplay between the two independent variables regarding the effect on career commitment of PE majors.Table 9
Test results of the interplay between gender and grade in professional teacher identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Sources of variationDependent variablesSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender∗gradeProfessional identity1.3443.4481.686.168.006Occupational1.6573.5521.284.279.005Understanding1.7833.5941.328.264.005Affective commitment1.3433.4481.010.388.004Behavior disposition1.7233.574.748.524.003Sustained motivation3.64831.2162.457.062.009Occupational expectationCapability recognition.8803.293.639.590.002Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


#### 3.2.5. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors with Varied Training Time (Prior to University Admission)

The training time before university attendance makes a difference to the occupational understanding and behavior disposition of PE majors, as is shown in Table10. And the longer training they received, the more positive their occupational understanding and behavior disposition trend, as is shown in Table 11.Table 10
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with varied training time.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding52.325.014∗.014Affective commitment5.846.517.005Behavior disposition52.313.042∗.014Sustained motivation51.013.409.006Occupational expectation5.582.714.004Capability recognition51.140.338.007Professional identity51.835.104.011Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 11
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors with varied training time.
Dependent variablesTraining timeTraining timeMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understanding<1 year4 year-.2392∗.09694.014∗-.4295-.04891 year4 year-.2986∗.09922.003∗∗-.4934-.1038>4 year-.1707∗.07770.028∗-.3232-.0182Behavior disposition1 year3 year-.2003∗.07959.012∗-.3565-.0440>4 year-.2293∗.07903.004∗∗-.3845-.0742Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


#### 3.2.6. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Origins

The difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of varied origins is significant, particularly from the dimensions of occupational understanding and capability recognition, as is shown in Table12. Table 13 further shows that the variation in occupational understanding is illustrated between PE majors from direct-administered municipalities (M=3.878, SD=.625) and those from rural (M=3.543, SD=.673) and urban (M=3.615, SD=.657) areas and county-level cities (M=3.775, SD=.591). At the same time, the difference in capability recognition is shown between PE undergraduates from direct-administered municipalities (M=4.370, SD=.578) and those from rural (M=4.048, SD=.693) and urban (M=4.022, SD=.735) areas and capital cities (M=3.939, SD=.699). Overall, urban students hold more positive attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity than their rural counterparts and have a deeper occupational understanding of PE teacher as a profession.Table 12
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors of different origins.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding53.437.004∗∗.021Affective commitment51.544.174.009Behavior disposition5.970.435.006Sustained motivation51.436.209.009Occupational expectation51.713.129.010Capability recognition52.367.038∗.014Professional identity52.456.032∗.015Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 13
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different origins.
Dependent variablesOriginsOriginsMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingRural areasCounty-level cities-.2313∗.07972.004∗∗-.3878-.0749Direct-administered municipalities-.3344∗.10306.001∗∗-.5367-.1321Urban areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2629∗.10922.016∗-.4773-.0485Capability recognitionRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3229∗.10855.003∗∗-.5359-.1098Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3487∗.11504.003∗∗-.5746-.1229Capital citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.4310∗.15862.007∗∗-.7423-.1196Professional identityRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2674∗.08162.001∗∗-.4276-.1072Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2411∗.08650.005∗∗-.4109-.0713Prefecture-level citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.2470∗.10418.018∗-.4515-.0425Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


#### 3.2.7. Impact of Specialized Social Practices on Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

Table14 shows that specialized social practices significantly impact teachers’ professional identity among PE majors, particularly in terms of occupational understanding, effective commitment, sustained motivation, and behavior disposition. The impact on the dimension of behavior disposition is the most significant. Moreover, standard deviations in Table 14 justify that PE majors who participated in specialized social practices represent a higher scorer in each aspect of professional identity than those who did not, meaning these activities help cultivate career commitment among PE students from normal universities.Table 14
Variation in teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with/without specialized social practices.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredSocial practicesNo social practicesSocial practicesNo social practicesOccupational understanding3.6643.557.660.66415.277.022∗.006Affective commitment3.9843.881.661.69514.661.031∗.006Behavior disposition3.9113.786.681.65816.973.008∗∗.008Sustained motivation3.6943.543.901.85815.864.016∗.007Occupational expectation4.1514.120.704.7421.361.548.000Capability recognition4.0864.043.676.7141.776.379.001Professional identity3.9163.818.531.51417.032.008∗∗.009Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


### 3.3. Focal Points of PE Majors’ Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity Presented by BiLSTM-Based Internet Platforms

This study captured comments and views according to evaluation objects, set the initial cluster numberK at 3, and took K-means, an approach to clustering evaluation objects. Subsequently, the statistical measure of TF-IDF was implemented to extract the top 10 buzzwords of different targets and clusters. Building on the comments containing those headings and the manual identification of clustering results, we summarized public opinions of major concern on different targets (Table 15).Table 15
Display of public opinions of major concerns for different evaluation objects.
Evaluation objectsViewsBuzzwords in public opinionsPublic opinions of major concernPublic opinions of major concern (%)Nation(governments)3880Physical Education, Finally, Feature Prominently, Development, Healthy China, Leading Nation, Sports-Education Integration, Reforms, StrategiesPhysical education has finally featured prominently in state policies.29.8Nowadays, Society, Competition, Jobs, Employment, Salary, Prospective, Unpromising, Too LowNowadays, PE teachers are under much stress and face unpromising career prospects.31.6The Public, Society, Other, Treat, Salary, Belittle, Teacher, Still, Frown Upon, Not UnderstandThe general public still belittles PE teachers.38.6Universities3120School, Professionalism, Educational Background, Not in the 211 Program nor the 985 Initiative, Without, Choices, Majors, Curriculum, Set-up, Teachers, National Postgraduate Entrance ExaminationSchools lack professionalism.87.6Teachers, Professionalism, Curriculum, Majors, Projects, Dislike, ChoicesThe teaching staff and curriculum design are not satisfactory.12.4Teachers2360Curriculum, Diligence, Lackadaisical, Hope, Assist, Students, DevelopmentIt is hoped that teachers can offer assistance to students.63.4Teachers, Some, Low-quality Teaching, Discriminate, Care, Not Serious, Disappointed, Should, ResponsibleTeachers should be responsible for their teaching.36.6


## 3.1. Analysis of Implicit Attitudes of PE Majors

### 3.1.1. Overall Features of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

After the paired samplet-test was conducted on the response time of compatible and incompatible tasks, the results, as is shown in Table 3, suggested the strength of implicit association in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors and that the response time of incompatible tasks was significantly higher than that of compatible ones implied significant strength of implicit association, meaning the implicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trended positive.Table 3
Overall features of implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors (n=320).
Response time for compatible tasksResponse time for incompatible taskstdfPMSDMSDMean scores627.85883.569702.13895.02810.121119.000∗∗∗


### 3.1.2. Grade and Gender Characteristics of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The SC-IAT scoring method was adopted to calculate each respondent’s D-score in a way that shows the strength of implicit association. The higher the D-score, the more hardened the implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors. The multifactor analysis of variance was carried out, with gender and grade as the independent variables and the D-score as the dependent variable. Table4 shows insignificance in the single-factor effect of gender and grade and the interplay between the two. That means PE majors’ implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity are not subject to gender and grade differences.Table 4
The D-score involved two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis of PE majors.
Sources of variationSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender.2691.2691.002.319.009Grade.2843.095.352.788.009Gender∗ Grade1.9403.6472.409.071.061Error30.059112.268


## 3.1.1. Overall Features of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

After the paired samplet-test was conducted on the response time of compatible and incompatible tasks, the results, as is shown in Table 3, suggested the strength of implicit association in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors and that the response time of incompatible tasks was significantly higher than that of compatible ones implied significant strength of implicit association, meaning the implicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trended positive.Table 3
Overall features of implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors (n=320).
Response time for compatible tasksResponse time for incompatible taskstdfPMSDMSDMean scores627.85883.569702.13895.02810.121119.000∗∗∗


## 3.1.2. Grade and Gender Characteristics of Implicit Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The SC-IAT scoring method was adopted to calculate each respondent’s D-score in a way that shows the strength of implicit association. The higher the D-score, the more hardened the implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors. The multifactor analysis of variance was carried out, with gender and grade as the independent variables and the D-score as the dependent variable. Table4 shows insignificance in the single-factor effect of gender and grade and the interplay between the two. That means PE majors’ implicit attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity are not subject to gender and grade differences.Table 4
The D-score involved two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis of PE majors.
Sources of variationSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender.2691.2691.002.319.009Grade.2843.095.352.788.009Gender∗ Grade1.9403.6472.409.071.061Error30.059112.268


## 3.2. Explicit Attitudes of PE Majors

### 3.2.1. Overall Features of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The teachers’ professional identity from the perspectives of PE majors involves such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. To be specific, occupational understanding refers to how PE majors know about and understand PE teachers as an occupation; effective commitment means PE majors’ trust in and acceptance of PE instructors; behavior disposition suggests the reaction and response made by PE students as they are receiving instruction and training; sustained motivation shows how PE majors continue to express positive views and emotions to PE teaching; occupational expectation denotes the longing and desire of PE majors for a prospective professional career; capability recognition implies PE majors’ self-approval of being a competent and qualified PE instructor [8, 13].As shown in Table5, the total points of the teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions are greater than 3, a theoretical mean. That means the explicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trend positive. The scoring (occupational expectation>capability recognition>affective commitment>behavior disposition>sustained motivation>occupational understanding) illustrates that despite high self-approval and optimism and expectations in the profession of teachers, PE majors gain a lower score in occupational understanding. This probably can be attributed to a distorted school curriculum that encourages students to focus more on special capability building rather than on the understanding and internalization of teachers as an occupation.Table 5
The means and standard deviations of teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Professional identityOccupational understandingAffective commitmentBehavior dispositionSustainedMotivationOccupational expectationCapability recognitionM3.8723.6123.9363.8613.6274.1384.069SD.523.662.675.671.888.720.695


### 3.2.2. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors from Different Grades

Teachers’ professional identity among PE majors differs from grade to grade. Specifically, juniors (M=4.110, SD=.683) have the most positive attitudes toward occupational commitment, successively followed by seniors (M=4.054, SD=.672), sophomores (M=3.926, SD=.692), and freshmen (M=3.883, SD=.680) as is shown in Table 6. The difference is largely attributed to the contrast between lower-grade students (freshmen and sophomores) and higher-grade ones (juniors and seniors), with higher-grade students demonstrating greater commitment to PE teaching, as is shown in Table 7.Table 6
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors from different grades.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding35.841.001∗∗.021Affective commitment35.364.001∗∗.019Behavior disposition34.588.003∗∗.016Sustained motivation36.577.000∗∗∗.023Occupational expectation36.655.000∗∗∗.024Capability recognition34.342.005∗∗.016Professional identity37.067.000∗∗∗.025Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗means P<.001.Table 7
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors from different grades.
Dependent variablesGradesGradesMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingFreshmanSenior-.2468∗.07194.001∗∗-.3880-.1056SophomoreJunior-.1386∗.06098.023∗-.2583-.0189Senior-.2696∗.07350.000∗∗∗-.4139-.1254Affective commitmentFreshmanSophomore.1796∗.06639.007∗∗.0492.3099SophomoreJunior-.2237∗.06233.000∗∗∗-.3461-.1014Senior-.2478∗.07512.001∗∗-.3952-.1003Behavior dispositionFreshmanSophomore.1710∗.06598.010∗.0414.3005SophomoreJunior-.1585∗.06194.011∗-.2801-.0370Senior-.2620∗.07466.000∗∗∗-.4086-.1155Sustained motivationFreshmanJunior-.1980∗.07920.013∗-.3535-.0426Senior-.3641∗.09642.000∗∗∗-.5533-.1748SophomoreJunior-.1897∗.08174.021∗-.3501-.0292Senior-.3557∗.09852.000∗∗∗-.5491-.1623Occupational expectationFreshmanSophomore.3075∗.06997.000∗∗∗.1702.4449Junior.1265∗.06364.047∗.0016.2515Senior.1856∗.07748.017∗.0335.3377SophomoreJunior-.1810∗.06568.006∗∗-.3099-.0521Capability recognitionFreshmanSophomore.2293∗.06770.001∗∗.0964.3622SophomoreJunior-.1846∗.06355.004∗∗-.3093-.0599Professional identityFreshmanSophomore.1515∗.05111.003∗∗.0512.2519SophomoreJunior-.1832∗.04798.000∗∗∗-.2774-.0890Senior-.2377∗.05783.000∗∗∗-.3512-.1242Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


### 3.2.3. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Genders

Table8 shows that the difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders was insignificant. Yet, male students represented a much higher scorer than their female counterparts from the perspective of capability recognition.Table 8
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredMalesFemalesMalesFemalesOccupational understanding3.6193.570.680.6071.814.367.001Affective commitment3.9024.032.669.68915.497.019∗.007Behavior disposition3.8503.871.674.6611.173.678.000Sustained motivation3.6473.541.886.87812.139.144.003Occupational expectation4.1394.120.702.7801.103.748.000Capability recognition4.1183.883.676.731117.147.000∗∗∗.021Professional identity3.8703.859.522.5231.055.814.000Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


### 3.2.4. Interplay of Gender and Grade Factors of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

A two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis was conducted, with gender and grade as independent variables and professional teacher identity and its six dimensions as dependent variables. As shown in Table9, there is no interplay between the two independent variables regarding the effect on career commitment of PE majors.Table 9
Test results of the interplay between gender and grade in professional teacher identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Sources of variationDependent variablesSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender∗gradeProfessional identity1.3443.4481.686.168.006Occupational1.6573.5521.284.279.005Understanding1.7833.5941.328.264.005Affective commitment1.3433.4481.010.388.004Behavior disposition1.7233.574.748.524.003Sustained motivation3.64831.2162.457.062.009Occupational expectationCapability recognition.8803.293.639.590.002Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


### 3.2.5. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors with Varied Training Time (Prior to University Admission)

The training time before university attendance makes a difference to the occupational understanding and behavior disposition of PE majors, as is shown in Table10. And the longer training they received, the more positive their occupational understanding and behavior disposition trend, as is shown in Table 11.Table 10
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with varied training time.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding52.325.014∗.014Affective commitment5.846.517.005Behavior disposition52.313.042∗.014Sustained motivation51.013.409.006Occupational expectation5.582.714.004Capability recognition51.140.338.007Professional identity51.835.104.011Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 11
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors with varied training time.
Dependent variablesTraining timeTraining timeMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understanding<1 year4 year-.2392∗.09694.014∗-.4295-.04891 year4 year-.2986∗.09922.003∗∗-.4934-.1038>4 year-.1707∗.07770.028∗-.3232-.0182Behavior disposition1 year3 year-.2003∗.07959.012∗-.3565-.0440>4 year-.2293∗.07903.004∗∗-.3845-.0742Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


### 3.2.6. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Origins

The difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of varied origins is significant, particularly from the dimensions of occupational understanding and capability recognition, as is shown in Table12. Table 13 further shows that the variation in occupational understanding is illustrated between PE majors from direct-administered municipalities (M=3.878, SD=.625) and those from rural (M=3.543, SD=.673) and urban (M=3.615, SD=.657) areas and county-level cities (M=3.775, SD=.591). At the same time, the difference in capability recognition is shown between PE undergraduates from direct-administered municipalities (M=4.370, SD=.578) and those from rural (M=4.048, SD=.693) and urban (M=4.022, SD=.735) areas and capital cities (M=3.939, SD=.699). Overall, urban students hold more positive attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity than their rural counterparts and have a deeper occupational understanding of PE teacher as a profession.Table 12
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors of different origins.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding53.437.004∗∗.021Affective commitment51.544.174.009Behavior disposition5.970.435.006Sustained motivation51.436.209.009Occupational expectation51.713.129.010Capability recognition52.367.038∗.014Professional identity52.456.032∗.015Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 13
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different origins.
Dependent variablesOriginsOriginsMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingRural areasCounty-level cities-.2313∗.07972.004∗∗-.3878-.0749Direct-administered municipalities-.3344∗.10306.001∗∗-.5367-.1321Urban areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2629∗.10922.016∗-.4773-.0485Capability recognitionRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3229∗.10855.003∗∗-.5359-.1098Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3487∗.11504.003∗∗-.5746-.1229Capital citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.4310∗.15862.007∗∗-.7423-.1196Professional identityRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2674∗.08162.001∗∗-.4276-.1072Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2411∗.08650.005∗∗-.4109-.0713Prefecture-level citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.2470∗.10418.018∗-.4515-.0425Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


### 3.2.7. Impact of Specialized Social Practices on Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

Table14 shows that specialized social practices significantly impact teachers’ professional identity among PE majors, particularly in terms of occupational understanding, effective commitment, sustained motivation, and behavior disposition. The impact on the dimension of behavior disposition is the most significant. Moreover, standard deviations in Table 14 justify that PE majors who participated in specialized social practices represent a higher scorer in each aspect of professional identity than those who did not, meaning these activities help cultivate career commitment among PE students from normal universities.Table 14
Variation in teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with/without specialized social practices.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredSocial practicesNo social practicesSocial practicesNo social practicesOccupational understanding3.6643.557.660.66415.277.022∗.006Affective commitment3.9843.881.661.69514.661.031∗.006Behavior disposition3.9113.786.681.65816.973.008∗∗.008Sustained motivation3.6943.543.901.85815.864.016∗.007Occupational expectation4.1514.120.704.7421.361.548.000Capability recognition4.0864.043.676.7141.776.379.001Professional identity3.9163.818.531.51417.032.008∗∗.009Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


## 3.2.1. Overall Features of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

The teachers’ professional identity from the perspectives of PE majors involves such dimensions as occupational understanding, affective commitment, behavior disposition, sustained motivation, occupational expectation, and capability recognition. To be specific, occupational understanding refers to how PE majors know about and understand PE teachers as an occupation; effective commitment means PE majors’ trust in and acceptance of PE instructors; behavior disposition suggests the reaction and response made by PE students as they are receiving instruction and training; sustained motivation shows how PE majors continue to express positive views and emotions to PE teaching; occupational expectation denotes the longing and desire of PE majors for a prospective professional career; capability recognition implies PE majors’ self-approval of being a competent and qualified PE instructor [8, 13].As shown in Table5, the total points of the teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions are greater than 3, a theoretical mean. That means the explicit attitudes toward occupational commitment among PE majors trend positive. The scoring (occupational expectation>capability recognition>affective commitment>behavior disposition>sustained motivation>occupational understanding) illustrates that despite high self-approval and optimism and expectations in the profession of teachers, PE majors gain a lower score in occupational understanding. This probably can be attributed to a distorted school curriculum that encourages students to focus more on special capability building rather than on the understanding and internalization of teachers as an occupation.Table 5
The means and standard deviations of teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Professional identityOccupational understandingAffective commitmentBehavior dispositionSustainedMotivationOccupational expectationCapability recognitionM3.8723.6123.9363.8613.6274.1384.069SD.523.662.675.671.888.720.695


## 3.2.2. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors from Different Grades

Teachers’ professional identity among PE majors differs from grade to grade. Specifically, juniors (M=4.110, SD=.683) have the most positive attitudes toward occupational commitment, successively followed by seniors (M=4.054, SD=.672), sophomores (M=3.926, SD=.692), and freshmen (M=3.883, SD=.680) as is shown in Table 6. The difference is largely attributed to the contrast between lower-grade students (freshmen and sophomores) and higher-grade ones (juniors and seniors), with higher-grade students demonstrating greater commitment to PE teaching, as is shown in Table 7.Table 6
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors from different grades.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding35.841.001∗∗.021Affective commitment35.364.001∗∗.019Behavior disposition34.588.003∗∗.016Sustained motivation36.577.000∗∗∗.023Occupational expectation36.655.000∗∗∗.024Capability recognition34.342.005∗∗.016Professional identity37.067.000∗∗∗.025Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗means P<.001.Table 7
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors from different grades.
Dependent variablesGradesGradesMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingFreshmanSenior-.2468∗.07194.001∗∗-.3880-.1056SophomoreJunior-.1386∗.06098.023∗-.2583-.0189Senior-.2696∗.07350.000∗∗∗-.4139-.1254Affective commitmentFreshmanSophomore.1796∗.06639.007∗∗.0492.3099SophomoreJunior-.2237∗.06233.000∗∗∗-.3461-.1014Senior-.2478∗.07512.001∗∗-.3952-.1003Behavior dispositionFreshmanSophomore.1710∗.06598.010∗.0414.3005SophomoreJunior-.1585∗.06194.011∗-.2801-.0370Senior-.2620∗.07466.000∗∗∗-.4086-.1155Sustained motivationFreshmanJunior-.1980∗.07920.013∗-.3535-.0426Senior-.3641∗.09642.000∗∗∗-.5533-.1748SophomoreJunior-.1897∗.08174.021∗-.3501-.0292Senior-.3557∗.09852.000∗∗∗-.5491-.1623Occupational expectationFreshmanSophomore.3075∗.06997.000∗∗∗.1702.4449Junior.1265∗.06364.047∗.0016.2515Senior.1856∗.07748.017∗.0335.3377SophomoreJunior-.1810∗.06568.006∗∗-.3099-.0521Capability recognitionFreshmanSophomore.2293∗.06770.001∗∗.0964.3622SophomoreJunior-.1846∗.06355.004∗∗-.3093-.0599Professional identityFreshmanSophomore.1515∗.05111.003∗∗.0512.2519SophomoreJunior-.1832∗.04798.000∗∗∗-.2774-.0890Senior-.2377∗.05783.000∗∗∗-.3512-.1242Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


## 3.2.3. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Genders

Table8 shows that the difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders was insignificant. Yet, male students represented a much higher scorer than their female counterparts from the perspective of capability recognition.Table 8
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different genders.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredMalesFemalesMalesFemalesOccupational understanding3.6193.570.680.6071.814.367.001Affective commitment3.9024.032.669.68915.497.019∗.007Behavior disposition3.8503.871.674.6611.173.678.000Sustained motivation3.6473.541.886.87812.139.144.003Occupational expectation4.1394.120.702.7801.103.748.000Capability recognition4.1183.883.676.731117.147.000∗∗∗.021Professional identity3.8703.859.522.5231.055.814.000Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


## 3.2.4. Interplay of Gender and Grade Factors of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

A two-way (gender and grade) variance analysis was conducted, with gender and grade as independent variables and professional teacher identity and its six dimensions as dependent variables. As shown in Table9, there is no interplay between the two independent variables regarding the effect on career commitment of PE majors.Table 9
Test results of the interplay between gender and grade in professional teacher identity and its six dimensions among PE majors.
Sources of variationDependent variablesSSdfMSFPPartial eta-squaredGender∗gradeProfessional identity1.3443.4481.686.168.006Occupational1.6573.5521.284.279.005Understanding1.7833.5941.328.264.005Affective commitment1.3433.4481.010.388.004Behavior disposition1.7233.574.748.524.003Sustained motivation3.64831.2162.457.062.009Occupational expectationCapability recognition.8803.293.639.590.002Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


## 3.2.5. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors with Varied Training Time (Prior to University Admission)

The training time before university attendance makes a difference to the occupational understanding and behavior disposition of PE majors, as is shown in Table10. And the longer training they received, the more positive their occupational understanding and behavior disposition trend, as is shown in Table 11.Table 10
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with varied training time.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding52.325.014∗.014Affective commitment5.846.517.005Behavior disposition52.313.042∗.014Sustained motivation51.013.409.006Occupational expectation5.582.714.004Capability recognition51.140.338.007Professional identity51.835.104.011Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 11
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors with varied training time.
Dependent variablesTraining timeTraining timeMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understanding<1 year4 year-.2392∗.09694.014∗-.4295-.04891 year4 year-.2986∗.09922.003∗∗-.4934-.1038>4 year-.1707∗.07770.028∗-.3232-.0182Behavior disposition1 year3 year-.2003∗.07959.012∗-.3565-.0440>4 year-.2293∗.07903.004∗∗-.3845-.0742Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


## 3.2.6. Characteristics of Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors of Different Origins

The difference in attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of varied origins is significant, particularly from the dimensions of occupational understanding and capability recognition, as is shown in Table12. Table 13 further shows that the variation in occupational understanding is illustrated between PE majors from direct-administered municipalities (M=3.878, SD=.625) and those from rural (M=3.543, SD=.673) and urban (M=3.615, SD=.657) areas and county-level cities (M=3.775, SD=.591). At the same time, the difference in capability recognition is shown between PE undergraduates from direct-administered municipalities (M=4.370, SD=.578) and those from rural (M=4.048, SD=.693) and urban (M=4.022, SD=.735) areas and capital cities (M=3.939, SD=.699). Overall, urban students hold more positive attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity than their rural counterparts and have a deeper occupational understanding of PE teacher as a profession.Table 12
Test of effects on professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors of different origins.
dfFPPartial eta-squaredOccupational understanding53.437.004∗∗.021Affective commitment51.544.174.009Behavior disposition5.970.435.006Sustained motivation51.436.209.009Occupational expectation51.713.129.010Capability recognition52.367.038∗.014Professional identity52.456.032∗.015Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.Table 13
Variation in teachers’ professional identity among PE majors of different origins.
Dependent variablesOriginsOriginsMean differencesStandard errorsP95% confidence intervalUpperLowerOccupational understandingRural areasCounty-level cities-.2313∗.07972.004∗∗-.3878-.0749Direct-administered municipalities-.3344∗.10306.001∗∗-.5367-.1321Urban areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2629∗.10922.016∗-.4773-.0485Capability recognitionRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3229∗.10855.003∗∗-.5359-.1098Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.3487∗.11504.003∗∗-.5746-.1229Capital citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.4310∗.15862.007∗∗-.7423-.1196Professional identityRural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2674∗.08162.001∗∗-.4276-.1072Rural areasDirect-administered municipalities-.2411∗.08650.005∗∗-.4109-.0713Prefecture-level citiesDirect-administered municipalities-.2470∗.10418.018∗-.4515-.0425Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001. Data denoting P>.05 were removed.


## 3.2.7. Impact of Specialized Social Practices on Teachers’ Professional Identity among PE Majors

Table14 shows that specialized social practices significantly impact teachers’ professional identity among PE majors, particularly in terms of occupational understanding, effective commitment, sustained motivation, and behavior disposition. The impact on the dimension of behavior disposition is the most significant. Moreover, standard deviations in Table 14 justify that PE majors who participated in specialized social practices represent a higher scorer in each aspect of professional identity than those who did not, meaning these activities help cultivate career commitment among PE students from normal universities.Table 14
Variation in teachers’ professional identity and its six dimensions among PE majors with/without specialized social practices.
MSDdfFPPartial eta-squaredSocial practicesNo social practicesSocial practicesNo social practicesOccupational understanding3.6643.557.660.66415.277.022∗.006Affective commitment3.9843.881.661.69514.661.031∗.006Behavior disposition3.9113.786.681.65816.973.008∗∗.008Sustained motivation3.6943.543.901.85815.864.016∗.007Occupational expectation4.1514.120.704.7421.361.548.000Capability recognition4.0864.043.676.7141.776.379.001Professional identity3.9163.818.531.51417.032.008∗∗.009Note:∗ indicates P<.05; ∗∗ suggests P<.01; ∗∗∗ means P<.001.


## 3.3. Focal Points of PE Majors’ Attitudes toward Teachers’ Professional Identity Presented by BiLSTM-Based Internet Platforms

This study captured comments and views according to evaluation objects, set the initial cluster numberK at 3, and took K-means, an approach to clustering evaluation objects. Subsequently, the statistical measure of TF-IDF was implemented to extract the top 10 buzzwords of different targets and clusters. Building on the comments containing those headings and the manual identification of clustering results, we summarized public opinions of major concern on different targets (Table 15).Table 15
Display of public opinions of major concerns for different evaluation objects.
Evaluation objectsViewsBuzzwords in public opinionsPublic opinions of major concernPublic opinions of major concern (%)Nation(governments)3880Physical Education, Finally, Feature Prominently, Development, Healthy China, Leading Nation, Sports-Education Integration, Reforms, StrategiesPhysical education has finally featured prominently in state policies.29.8Nowadays, Society, Competition, Jobs, Employment, Salary, Prospective, Unpromising, Too LowNowadays, PE teachers are under much stress and face unpromising career prospects.31.6The Public, Society, Other, Treat, Salary, Belittle, Teacher, Still, Frown Upon, Not UnderstandThe general public still belittles PE teachers.38.6Universities3120School, Professionalism, Educational Background, Not in the 211 Program nor the 985 Initiative, Without, Choices, Majors, Curriculum, Set-up, Teachers, National Postgraduate Entrance ExaminationSchools lack professionalism.87.6Teachers, Professionalism, Curriculum, Majors, Projects, Dislike, ChoicesThe teaching staff and curriculum design are not satisfactory.12.4Teachers2360Curriculum, Diligence, Lackadaisical, Hope, Assist, Students, DevelopmentIt is hoped that teachers can offer assistance to students.63.4Teachers, Some, Low-quality Teaching, Discriminate, Care, Not Serious, Disappointed, Should, ResponsibleTeachers should be responsible for their teaching.36.6


## 4. Discussions

Results from the SC-IAT showed that the implicit attitudes of PE majors toward teachers’ professional identity trend positive, consistent with the conclusions drawn by previous research efforts involved. However, gender is not a factor that makes a marked difference in implicit and explicit attitudes toward career commitment, which runs against many earlier relevant findings. Past studies concluded that when it came to a survey concerning teachers’ professional identity, there was a significant difference between male teachers and their female counterparts, preservice or in-service. And it was found that female teachers (students) develop a stronger professional identity than their male equals [13–15]. More often than not, teachers are deemed “a profession designated for females” [16]. The reason could be that the research participants were PE majors and that there has always been a stereotype about sports being for males. Nonetheless, teachers in subjects other than PE require meticulousness, patience, and stamina, qualities females tend to possess, while PE teachers are more about robustness, energy, power, and other features typical of males [17]. This, to a certain extent, justified how the explicit association test in this paper illustrated that males prefer to value capability as the quality of PE teachers, while females tend to treat PE teachers as a profession of commitment and dedication.The IAT and the questionnaire analysis showed that PE majors’ attitudes toward teachers’ professional identity feature dynamic changes accompanied by conflicts and deviations. The implicit stereotypes about teachers’ professional identity among PE undergraduates become more hardened with a growing grade, while their explicit attitudes for seniors change reversely and markedly. Considering such a divergence phenomenon, foreign scholars proposed “a dual-attitude model,” [18] suggesting that people hold different attitudes toward the same attitude object: implicit attitude and explicit attitude. The former is automatic or self-activated, while the latter can be aware and is recognizable. They argued that when a new attitude overrides but does not replace the old one, the latter remains in an individual’s memories or experiences that continue to make a latent difference to his or her cognition and behavior, resulting in dual attitudes. In our case, the relatively hardened implicit stereotype of freshmen about teachers’ professional identity is rooted in the understanding and valuation of PE teachers, which have been cultivated through years of education and growth [19]. That echoed the paper’s findings that teachers’ career commitment grows moderately stronger with an increasing grade. However, the explicit attitudes of PE majors toward professional identity are associated with the strength of major embeddedness [20]. The recognition of the area of specialization before university attendance determines how student teachers commit to their prospective professional career in their first year, which stays at lower levels that are nonetheless above a theoretical mean. That means the explicit attitudes of PE majors toward teachers’ professional identity are basically positive. Fluctuating with continuous training, though, their implicit and explicit attitudes trend positive, and some studies showed a critical connection between changes in career commitment among student teachers and their relationships with their instructors and classmates [21]. Furthermore, the implicit bias and explicit attitudes of seniors showed a marked difference. On the one hand, seniors held more positive implicit attitudes as they internalized occupational commitment and weighed in on the benefits of teachers in the job market. On the other hand, the questionnaire survey found that the explicit attitudes of seniors softened, and the scores in the dimensions of teachers’ professional identity were low. Yet, their occupational understanding and behavior disposition turned positive with increased training time. Meanwhile, the questionnaire revealed that a certain number of seniors failed to participate in an internship program. This may be because most students believe expertise and sporting techniques, rather than the in-person experience and internalization of being a teacher, hold the key to occupational commitment. Nonetheless, the internship is instrumental in cultivating teachers’ occupational commitment among student teachers, according to multiple studies [22], consistent with what we found. An internship allows trainee teachers to deal with an actual teaching scenario that requires interaction with students, instructors, and the inner self [23], and positive communication helps shape a professional identity [24]. Professional identity is a dynamic process to establish teachers as a profession by continuously renewing and blending professionalism, beliefs, values, and behaviors [25]. The occupational commitment of student teachers is shaped by a positive interplay of specialized training, professional instruction, social practices, and internalization.Moreover, as the public opinions of major concern on teachers’ professional identity among PE majors were identified by the BiLSTM-based Internet platforms, we found that these students’ trust in and approval of PE instructors as an occupation have been given a boost by state policies, and the strategy on building China into a leading sporting nation has motivated these student teachers to think highly of their prospective career. That being said, the general public has a partial understanding and valuation of the profession (for instance, some extracted comments say, “PE is an area of specialization? Or a Master’s degree program?”). The society-wide bias deprives PE instructors of public recognition and higher social status, resulting in the stark contrast between importance attached by the government and depreciation of unappreciated sentiments from the public. Such is holding back students’ sustained recognition of teacher identity. Additionally, it was found that the occupational commitment and expectation of PE majors are confined to the career prospects and remuneration levels. On the one hand, PE teachers, as part of the workforce, receive lower benefits; on the other hand, their career choices are oriented to material gain. Despite the higher scores in capability recognition among PE majors displayed in the explicit attitude questionnaire survey, the focal points of schools and teachers showed that PE majors are anxious about their academic studies and educational background when they receive specialized training and are longing for support from the school and teaching staff. The reality demonstrates how China’s PE majors are experiencing a dilemma to enhance their capabilities in the “involutional” era.


## 5. Conclusions and Prospects

Here, both the implicit stereotypes and explicit attitudes of PE majors toward teachers’ professional identity trend positive, but there are imbalances among the six dimensions of occupational commitment and significant differences from grade to grade. To be specific, implicit bias grows with an increasing grade, while explicit attitudes of seniors change negatively. The difference in career commitment among trainee teachers of varied origins is significant, with urban students being more committed to the profession than their rural counterparts. Male students prefer to value capability as the quality of PE teachers, while females regard PE teachers as a profession of commitment and dedication. Moreover, specialized social practices are conducive to improving teachers’ occupational commitment, and the longer period of training students receive, the more positive their attitudes toward occupational understanding and behavior disposition. The comments captured by BiLSTM-based Internet platforms further showcase that such factors as favorable state policies on sports, high social status of PE teachers, and more specialized on-campus training are essential to enhance PE majors’ commitment to their prospective professional career, which can be driven by correct guidance on sportsmanship and education value.The study was innovative as it researched PE majors, a group of preservice teachers being neglected for a long time. But it could only be deemed a preliminary effort given the IAT regular response, the imbalanced distribution of samples for the explicit attitude survey, and the insufficiency of views extracted by BiLSTM-based platforms.


### 5.1. Future Work

The follow-up research efforts should be propped up by more empirical studies and put data to better use. Meanwhile, substantial qualitative studies also need to be carried out to explore how trainee teachers grow and sustain their commitment to being an instructor. This is how we can further enhance teachers’ professional identity from student teachers’ perspectives, inspire them to internalize and appreciate the occupation, and provide a theoretical reference point for training outstanding PE teachers.


## 5.1. Future Work

The follow-up research efforts should be propped up by more empirical studies and put data to better use. Meanwhile, substantial qualitative studies also need to be carried out to explore how trainee teachers grow and sustain their commitment to being an instructor. This is how we can further enhance teachers’ professional identity from student teachers’ perspectives, inspire them to internalize and appreciate the occupation, and provide a theoretical reference point for training outstanding PE teachers.



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*Source: 4914792-2022-04-26.xml*