Who are teachers? A study of identity hierarchy

Abstract This study aims to create a hierarchy of identities for teachers’ perceptions of the self. The research carried out as a survey study was conducted in Diyarbakır, a province in Turkey, with a study group of 261 teachers. This study employs a tool of data collection making it possible to present the six types of identities—namely, professional identity, moral identity, gender identity, political identity, ethnic identity and religious identity—to participants in the form of pairwise comparisons. Fifth case equation of scaling through pairwise comparisons was used in the analysis of the data collected. According to results obtained, teachers adopt moral identity mostly—which is followed by professional identity, political identity, ethnic identity, religious identity and gender identity respectively.


Introduction
Teachers are one of the fundamental elements of the system of education. Therefore, a great number of studies are available in relation to teachers in the literature. While a part of these studies focus on how teachers perceive themselves in terms of certain aspects, the remaining part is concerned with others' perspectives of teachers. On the other hand, studies on who teachers are or who they should be according to their self-perception are not available in the literature. In fact, it is possible to describe who teachers are based on the description presented in the Basic Law of National Education (Milli Eğitim Temel Kanunu, 1973). Accordingly, a teacher is a person who takes on the educational and teaching tasks of the state and the related administrative tasks. However, this ABOUT THE AUTHORS Ferat Yilmaz has a PhD in primary school teaching from Gazi University and a research assistant in the Ziya Gökalp Faculty of Education at Dicle University. He received his MA in the Institute of Education Sciences at Anadolu University and his BA at Dicle University in Primary School Teaching. His research interests include character education, social studies teaching and values education.
Mustafa Ilhan is currently an assistant professor in the Ziya Gökalp Faculty of Education at Dicle University. His research interests include scale development and adaption, many facet Rasch model, performance assessment and rater errors in open-ended questions.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
Every human can have various identities such as professional, moral, religious, ethnic, political and gender identities. However, some types of these identities can be more important for individuals' sense of self. This study made an attempt to determine what identity properties of teachers are more important for their perception. For this purpose, 261 teachers working in Diyarbakır, a province in the South-eastern region of Turkey were asked to compare the paired identity types, and to state which of the two types had priority over the other for them. Accordingly, it was found that teachers adopt moral identity mostly-which is followed by professional identity, political identity, ethnic identity, religious identity and gender identity, respectively. description of "who" a teacher is a definition of external origin, and it lays emphasis on teachers' occupational responsibilities only. Yet, a teacher is not only a teacher. There are also self-perceptions for a teacher determining who a teacher is apart from being a teacher. So as to bring those self-perceptions to light, a description of internal origin should be made. The answers teachers give to the question "who am I?" should be taken into consideration for this. The answer to the question is hidden in the concept of "identity" as is also pointed out by some researchers (Akdemir, 2004;Atak, 2011;Erkan, 2013).
Identity means targets, values and beliefs to which individuals devote themselves unquestionably and which guide, make their life meaningful and goal-oriented (Waterman, 2004). Ersoy (2009) defines identity as the wholeness of values representing individuals' stance and position in front of life. According to Aşkın (2007), identity represents the consistent and structured indicators distinguishing an individual from other individuals in terms of his/her differences. Asiliskender (2006), who stresses that identity can stem not only from differences but also from similarities, sees the concept of identity as a problem of belonging experienced when there are different and similar individuals. This study, however, defines identity as the dynamic, interactional and multi-structured conception of self which individuals configure consciously in order to express themselves, or which shapes the behaviours that society attributes to the individuals.
Differing classifications have been made in relation to identity. In the scope of this study, identity is considered as social identities, role identities and individual identities. Social identities are formed by individuals' describing themselves with their place in a social category (Turner, 1975). Individuals with social identity display positive attitudes towards the social group in which they are included, they are loyal to the group, and they consider it important to have shared characteristics with the others in the group (Phinney & Ong, 2007). They participate in activities influencing social identity, believe in the past, experiences and the position of the group in the society, and regulate their daily life relations according to their social identity (Ashmore, Deaux, & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2004).
Role identities are a part of the self-composed of multi-tasks that individuals take on in contemporary societies (Stryker & Burke, 2000). Having a certain role identity means meeting the requirements of the role, interacting with other role mates, cooperating with them and controlling the sources of responsibility (Stets & Burke, 2000). Individuals feel happier when they meet the expectations in relation to their roles or when they obey the necessary rules; and only then can they be themselves (Ashforth & Humphrey, 1993).
Both our social identity and role identity are related with our concept of self-which mediates between social structures and individual behaviours (Hogg, Terry, & White, 1995). On the other hand, we also have our individual identity which can develop independently of social structures (Yılmaz & Yılmaz, 2015). Individual identity means how individuals see themselves (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992), it is consciously structured by every individual, and it contains a series of properties distinguishing an individual from others (Polletta & Jasper, 2001).
Every human can have various social identities, role identities or some individual identities. There are some sub-identities under these categories of identities. Of these sub-identities, professional, moral, religious, ethnic, political and gender identities are considered within the scope of this study.
The type of identity which is encountered most frequently is professional identity when the word "teacher" is uttered or when the literature concerning the identity of teachers is reviewed. Professional identity is a social identity in terms of the professional group of which one is a member, and it is a role identity in terms of the responsibilities one takes on. As Cohen-Scali point out, professional identity-which begins with childhood and goes through long and complicated processes in family and school life and is configured (2003)-stems from the institutions where individuals work or from the working groups in which they belong (Hogg & Terry, 2000). On considering from the perspective of teachers, this type of identity means a series of qualities attributed to teaching profession by people within and outside the occupation (Sachs, 2001). A teacher's professional identity begins to form as he/she develops a personal framework of meaning about his/her considering himself/herself as a teacher (Dam & Blom, 2006). In this framework of meaning are the values about teaching profession, perception of efficacy, beliefs, emotions, attitudes, micro-political elements about the order of school and knowledge that one should have (Canrinus, Helms-Lorenz, Beijaard, & Buitink, 2008;Hong, 2010;Puurula & Lofstrom, 2003;Urzúa & Vásquez, 2008). These components forming teachers' professional identity in the personal framework of meaning in which they are included are influenced by various biographical factors, personal properties, motives for being a teacher, learning experiences offered during pre-service training and by experiences in teaching practices (Lamote & Engels, 2010;Schepens, Aelterman, & Vlerick, 2009). These elements are also influential in teachers' motivation in their job, performance, professional development and their ability to manage educational changes and to reflect them into teaching practice (Beijaard, Verloop, & Vermunt, 2000;Van Knippenberg, 2000).
Another type of identity a teacher can have is moral identity. This type of identity is independent of all social categories and roles. Therefore, moral identity can be considered as a type of individual identity. From the perspective of various definitions (Aquino & Reed, 2002;Hardy, 2006;Hardy & Carlo, 2011) moral identity is a perception of self-showing what moral values, goals and virtues are important and how important they are for an individual's identity. Individuals having this type of identity-which is shaped by means of such individual properties as sympathy, dependability and productivity and such social factors as family structure and cultural elements (Hart, Atkins, & Ford, 1998)-are quite sensitive to moral problems and issues, and have tendency to display moral behaviours in front of such problems and issues (Aquino, Freeman, Reed, Lim, & Felps, 2009;Damon, 1999;Reynolds & Ceranic, 2007). Moral identity has two basic dimensions. One of them is the dimension of internalisation on which various mental designs such as moral values, principles, goals and ideals are based and preserved. The other is the dimension of symbolisation through which these mental designs are reflected to others in public domains with the help of a number of activities (McFerran, Aquino, & Duffy, 2010;Weaver, 2006;Winterich, Aquino, Mittal, & Swartz, 2013;. Professional and moral identities are the identities which do not change from teacher to teacher and which cannot be further divided into categories. However, some of the social identities can differ from person to person or from group to group even with teachers, and can divide further into categories. One of such identities is religious identity. According to Keyes and Reitzes (2007), religious identity represents how one perceives himself in terms of having religious values and beliefs. The importance of religious identity comes from the fact that answers concerning the meaning, purpose and sacredness of life lie in the centre of religion (Dollinger, 2001). Apart from that, religious identities make certain beliefs and practices meaningful (Anthony & Ziebertz, 2012) for individuals labelling themselves with a religious identity, and thus make life more meaningful (Erkan, 2013). Religious identity begins with the process of discovering a religion to which one is to devote himself/herself (Coşgel & Minkler, 2004;Griffith & Griggs, 2001). Many individuals display very low level of "self-participation" in this discovery, and obtain their religious identity which is ready from external sources (Yorulmaz, 2012). Yet, this does not mean that acquisition of religious identity is static or that religious identity is an unchanging structure. Religious identities can be refused with changes in political and social contexts (Mitchell, 2006) and individuals' perspective of life, or can be re-defined (Bertram-Troost, de Roos, & Miedema, 2006;Peek, 2005).
Ethnic identity is another type of identity teachers can have. This type of identity represents individuals' perception of the self as a member of an ethnic group and their attitudes and behaviours related with their perception of the self (Phinney, 1990). Ethnic identity involves the labels we choose to describe us, our feelings about our ethnic past, and our conscious perceptions of our ethnic awareness (Cuéllar, Nyberg, & Maldonado, 1997). According to some researchers (Eriksen, 2001;Fearon & Laitin, 2000), ethnic identity-which does not exist in reality but which is socially configured-emphasises the values, beliefs and practices shared by an ethic group and not the physical similarities as different from race identity (Chávez & Guido-DiBrito, 1999;Cokley, 2007;Smith, Walker, Fields, Brookins, & Seay, 1999). Individuals are not usually aware that they have an ethnic identity in the earlier periods of their life. The process of discovering ethic identity begins especially after adolescence (French, Seidman, Allen, & Aber, 2006). At the end of the process, the ethnic identity can be confirmed or denied. In this context, some of the individuals confirm their ethnic identity and develop such senses as belonging, historical continuation, self-respect, self-confidence and psychological well-being. Some individuals, however, experience such feelings as restrictedness and discomfort due to stereotypical ideas and cliches available in the society, and thus they refuse their ethnic identity (Driedger, 1976;Martinez & Dukes, 1997;Roberts et al., 1999;Smith, 1991).
Political identity-which is a type of social identity like religious and ethnic identities-is a set of schemata of the self-informing of an individual's political stance, status and social relations and politicising his/her domains of collective life such as religion, language, nation and race (Nisbet & Myers, 2010). Political identity, the type of identity with the lowest level of naturalness of all types of identities that one can have, originates from the fact that individuals think that there is a government or a political party for which they can sacrifice themselves (Berezin, 2001). Political identity becomes a characteristic of individuals with high levels of involvement in politics and political activities to distinguish them from others (Bynner, Romney, & Emler, 2003). Therefore, social identities becoming apparent and politicising at extremes can escalate biases, discrimination, racism, genocide and ethnic violence (Monroe, Hankin, & Vechten, 2000).
As different from the types of identities listed here, there is a type of identity every individual inevitably has and society attributes to individuals even if they refuse to have it (Joseph, 2004). It is gender identity-which is a social identity. According to Howard (2000), gender identity is a perception of the self an individual forms within the framework of perceiving the self as masculine or feminine. Sherif (1982) uses gender identity in the sense of feeling, thinking or behaving like a male or female. According to another definition (Carver, Yunger, & Perry, 2003), gender identity represents individuals' category of gender and the sum of their feelings and thoughts about membership to that category of gender. Gender identity, which becomes evident especially in adolescence (Renk & Creasey, 2003), is made up of individuals' knowledge of the category of gender, their feelings of fit for the gender, loyalty, and feeling obliged to behave suitably to the category of gender (Egan & Perry, 2001). Yet, the category of gender which one finds himself/herself suitable for, feels loyalty to, feels obliged to behave accordingly, and which shapes his/her attitudes, values and expectations cannot always be determined by biological gender identity. This is rather associated with how individuals perceive themselves as male or female (Burke, 1989;Diamond, 2002). For this reason, individuals can describe themselves in the category of a different gender, and they can even display behaviours belonging to both categories of gender identity (Fischer & Arnold, 1994;Palan, 2001).
Nobody has only one of the above-mentioned properties of identity. Individuals' perception of the self is composed of many types of identity (Adams, Hean, Sturgis, & Clark, 2006;Gee, 2000;Yorulmaz, 2012). However, it is not possible for individuals to adopt all of the several identities equally. Some types of identities can be more important for individuals' sense of self (Stryker & Burke, 2000). Which identities an individual gives priority to, or which identities an individual adopts less can be represented in the form of hierarchy of identities (Ashmore et al., 2004;Hogg et al., 1995). Here, the concept of hierarchy does not mean that adopting a type of identity is a prerequisite for being able to adopt other types of identity, it only represents ordering of different types of identities in terms of their importance and prominence for the perception of the self. The ordering should be highlighted because individuals' thoughts and behaviours are influenced by the properties of identity which are more important in terms of self-perception and which are more prominent (Burke, Stets, & Pirog-Good, 1988;Ersoy, 2009;Hong, 2010;Yip & Fuligni, 2002). Considered from the aspect of a teacher, what is desired is that rather the professional and moral identities are more prominent in them and that these two types of identity lead teachers' thoughts and behaviours. While these two types of identities-regardless of the context in which they are available-can enable one to make decisions at professional and humanistic levels and to act within the framework of these decisions, other types of identities can become discriminating and problematic, especially when there are differences. Since schools are also institutions containing several differences in their body, it is believed that teachers' identities apart from moral and occupation identities gaining prominence and importance may cause problems in schools. Therefore, it is considered necessary to determine what identity properties of teachers are more important for their perception of the self and to discuss their reflections into educational environments. Thus, this study aims to create a hierarchy of identities for teachers' perceptions of the self.

Research model
This study aiming to exhibit which of the types of identities teachers adopt more or less is a survey study trying to make assessment.

Participants
This research was conducted in Diyarbakır, a province in the South-eastern region of Turkey, with a study group of 261 teachers 103 (39.46%) of whom were female and 158 (60.54%) of whom were male. The age of the teachers in the study group ranged between 22 and 55, with an average of 33.10. A considerable part (70.10%) of the participants (183 in total) said that they had spent a considerable part of their life in the South-eastern region. The region is different from the other regions of Turkey in terms of especially ethnic (Karimova & Deverell, 2001) and political (KONDA, 2006) identities.

Data collection tool and collecting the data
This study employs a tool of data collection making it possible to present the six types of identitiesnamely, professional identity, moral identity, gender identity, political identity, ethnic identity and religious identity-to participants in the form of pairwise comparisons. Fifteen items of paired combinations of the above-mentioned identity types were included in the tool of data collection. Demographic information on the participants was obtained through such variables as gender, age and the geographical region where the most of life was spent added to the beginning of the data collection tool. The research data were collected in the Spring Semester of 2015-2016 academic year. The teachers participating in the research were asked to compare the paired identity types, and to state which of the two types had priority over the other for them. During the application, the participants were continuously reminded to choose the type of identity they considered more important for their perception of the self in the paired comparisons. Despite this, there were four measurement tools containing unanswered paired comparisons-which were not included in the data.

Data analysis
Fifth case equation of scaling through pairwise comparisons was used in the analysis of the data collected. The method of scaling through pairwise comparisons was developed by Thurstone (1927), and it can be used in any case where stimuli (types of identities in this case) can be presented in pairs to participants (Turgut & Baykul, 1992). In this method, scaling values are obtained in several steps. The above-mentioned steps were taken in the analysis of the research data, and firstly frequency matrix was created for the pairwise comparisons the teachers made. Then the values in each cell of the matrix were divided by the total number of participants, and thus the proportion matrix was derived. After that, standard values corresponding to the cell values in the proportion matrix were determined, and thus unit normal deviations matrix was created (Erkuş, 2012). After that, a line was added at the bottom of the unit normal deviations matrix corresponding to the average of values for each column, and scaling values were found. In the final step, sliding was done to make the smallest element in the scaling values zero (Tekindal, 2009), and it was interpreted that the types of identities closer to zero were adopted more by teachers. Microsoft Office Excel Programme was used in all of the data analysis operations in this study.
In order to examine the reliability of the scale values obtained in the study the agreement between observed and expected proportions was checked. In this direction, expected proportions matrix was derived from the values in the unit normal deviations matrix. After that, the absolute value of the differences between observed and expected proportions were calculated and thus error matrix has been reached. When examining the error matrix, the total error value was observed as 0.4492. The total error value is divided by the number of paired comparisons in the study with the aim of reaching the mean error value. In this manner, it was determined that the mean error value corresponds to 0.015. Considering the fact that the calculated mean error value is smaller than the acceptable error rate of 0.05 (Nartgün, 2006), it could be argued that the scale values regarding the identity types are reliable.

Findings
This part presents the findings obtained in the study. After the six types of identities were compared in pairwise method by teachers, the frequencies for each type of identity were calculated. The frequency matrix containing the frequencies is shown in Table 1. The cell element (f ij ) corresponding to the line i and column j of the frequency matrix shows the number of teachers considering the type of identity in the line more important than the type of identity in the column. For instance, the value of 46 in the intersection of the line of professional identity and the column of moral identity indicates the number of teachers adopting professional identity more than moral identity. As is clear from Table 1, the sum of cell elements symmetrical to diagonal line is equal to the number of participants. Having calculated the frequency matrix, the cell values in the matrix were divided by the number of participants in the study group, and thus the proportion matrix was derived. That is to say, the proportion matrix was obtained by dividing the cell values in the frequency matrix by the total number of teachers (N = 261) making pairwise comparisons. The proportion matrix is shown in Table 1. The sum of cell elements symmetrical to diagonal line is always equal to 1 in the proportion matrix.
After the proportion matrix, the unit normal deviations matrix was formed. In doing this, the z values corresponding to the cell values in the proportion matrix were determined. The unit normal deviations matrix is shown in Table 1 along with the frequency matrix and the proportion matrix. Unit normal deviations matrix is composed of elements opposite in signs according to the diagonal line and equal in absolute values. The line of ΣZ j in Table 1 is equal to the total of elements in each column. With the division of the values in the line of ΣZ j by the number of identities compared, the values in the line of Z jort were calculated. According to Table 1, the smallest Z jort value is in moral identity with −0.8468. By adding 0.8468 to all Z jort values, the starting point of the axis was slid to zero, and thus scaling values were reached. Having small scaling values for any identity indicates that teachers consider that type of identity more important for their perception of the self. Table 2 shows the types of identities teachers adopt.
According to Table 2, teachers adopt moral identity mostly-which is followed by professional identity, political identity, ethnic identity, religious identity and gender identity, respectively. Accordingly, the greatest difference in scaling values is between moral identity and professional identity. It is clear from the table that the difference in scaling values falls after professional identity. On considering the scaling values shown in Table 2 concerning the types of identities, the hierarchy of teachers' identities can be represented visually as in Figure 1.  Figure 1. The hierarchy of teachers' identities.
As was pointed out in the introduction part of the study, this hierarchy shows the order of different types of identities for teachers' self. However, there is no such requirement as the need to adopt the identities at the bottom for the adoption of the identities at the top.

Discussion and conclusion
This study was conducted so as to determine the hierarchy of teachers' identities. Accordingly, it was found that the type of identity having the most priority was moral identity and that there were considerable differences between teachers' moral identity and other types of identities numerically. Moral identity has determining roles in moral behaviours (Reynolds & Ceranic, 2007). Therefore, the finding can be interpreted as that the teachers participating in the research were individuals considering it important to display moral behaviours. Considering the internalisation and symbolisation dimensions of moral identity (Shao, Aquino, & Freeman, 2008), it may be thought that those teachers have internalised the basic moral values such as respect, affection, tolerance, sensitivity, solidarity and benevolence; and that they perform activities symbolising these moral values. It is commonly known that one of the most important factors in the acquisition of moral identity is the models reflecting moral identity (Bucher, 1997). Thus, it may be said that moral identities teachers reflect through various actions will be a model to students. Apart from all these, moral identity can have integrating functions in the availability of differences in educational environments. In other words, teachers can take on roles as problem solvers in cases of conflict stemming from differences in educational environments. Accordingly, teachers' adoption of moral identity more than the other types of identities is positive in that it prevents them to reflect their political, religious, ethnic and gender identities in negative ways in educational environments.
Moral identity is followed by professional identity, political identity, ethnic identity, religious identity and gender identity, respectively, in the hierarchy of teachers' identities in this study. This ordering points to some important findings in terms' of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At the top of Maslow's (1943) Hierarchy of Needs is the need to actualise the self, of which one basic indicator is morality. In the hierarchy of identities obtained in consequence of this study also, moral identity representing individuals' describing themselves as moral individuals is at the top of the hierarchy. At the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is physiological needs such as sexuality. In parallel to this, at the bottom of the hierarchy of teachers' identities is gender identity described on the basis of roles belonging to sexual identity even though they do not represent directly sexual identity. Although Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and hierarchy of teachers' identities are consistent at the top and at the bottom, they differ at the stages in the middle. Maslow presents individuals' need for belonging satisfied by political, ethnic and religious identities above the need for safety which is satisfied by having a job. Yet, the findings obtained in this study exhibit that teachers consider their professional identity which is shaped by having a job more important than their political, ethnic and religious identities which are shaped by sense of belonging. Having professional identity above the other types of social identities which are shaped by sense of belonging is parallel to the findings in the relevant literature despite being inconsistent with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. For example, Hogg and Terry's (2000) explanation that professional identity is more important for many people than their gender, age, ethnicity, race or nationality is in parallel to the findings obtained in this study. In the same vein, theoretical knowledge that individuals can belong to several groups but that the most meaningful group in individuals' life is their professional group (Adams et al., 2006) is also parallel to the findings of this study.
Placing teachers' professional identity in the centre in terms of their perception of the self shows that the problem of professional identity development-which is considered to be one of the most fundamental problems of teacher training in Dam and Blom (2006)-has been resolved to a certain extent. This result demonstrates that positive contributions can be made to the development of the system of teacher training (Roberts, 2000). Despite the low status of teaching profession, policies of low salary and exclusion of teachers from decision-making processes; professional identity is the second most preferred type of identity for teachers-which may be associated with the fact that "sacredness" attributed to teaching profession has been internalised by teachers (Esen, 2005).
Identities usually become meaningful in front of their opposites (Burke et al., 1988). Considering that this is also true for political identity, having political identity behind teachers' moral and professional identities in teachers' ordering of identities is a desired situation. The reason for this is that the reverse would mean teachers' stating their political identity in school or in the classroom orally, through actions and symbolically, and their strengthening their political identity through their colleagues' and students' political identities. Yet, such attempts to be made by teachers are likely to escalate violence based on biases, discrimination, racism and ethnicity, as is also pointed out by Monroe et al. (2000). It seemed that there were no such dangers in educational environments at the time and place this study was conducted. Nevertheless, it should be highlighted that the types of identities teachers give priority to for their perception of the self can change over time and that certain types of identities can be more prominent at certain times (Peek, 2005). This probability is found thought-provoking in that political identity follows professional identity in the hierarchy of teachers' identities and that there are no big numerical differences between the two. This situation causes the probability of political identity to get ahead of professional identity during periods of political break.
According to Chávez and Guido-DiBrito , teachers should develop awareness in relation to their ethnical perceptions of education. The relevant study is believed to be capable of contributing to such awareness. According to the results obtained, teachers consider their moral and professional identity perceptions more important than ethnic identity perceptions. This finding means that the participating teachers' perceptions of education are shaped by their professional identity rather than their ethnic identity. Besides, considering the fact that ethnic identity ties individuals to a certain group (Cuéllar et al., 1997) and that it can cause social, political and cultural chaos for different groups (Yanık, 2013), the interpretation for this finding may be that teachers can manage the chaos ethnic differences can cause in educational environments with their moral and professional identity. Additionally, considering that being exposed to ethnic discrimination by individuals of differing ethnic identities functions as a stimulus for the development of that individual's ethnic identity (Quintana, 2007), it may be said that most of the teachers participating in this research would not make such discrimination against their students of differing ethnic identities, and thus they would not cause those student's ethnic identities to develop in negative ways. Due to the positive relations of ethnic identity with self-respect (Romero & Roberts, 2003), it may be claimed that students' selfrespect will not be damaged. This study has reached conclusions different from the ones in the relevant literature in terms of religious identity. Anthony and Ziebertz (2012) state that religious identity is different from the other types of identities in terms of its value, priority, centrality, consistency and resistance to change. Verkuyten and Yildiz (2007) point out that religious identity is more important than ethnic identity. This study, however, found that religious identity is at the lower stages of the hierarchy of teachers' identities, and that it was perceived as a type of identity which is less important than ethnic identity. According to Mitchell (2006), political and social contexts play important roles in shaping religious identity. The fact that religious identity was at the lower stages of the hierarchy of teachers' identities in this study can be attributed to the fact that individuals might have been under the influence of political and social conditions in Turkey. Hence, political identity was placed at upper stages compared to religious identity in the hierarchy of teachers' identities.
At the bottom of the hierarchy of identities formed in this study was gender identity. Based on this finding, it may be said that patterns of behaviour society attributes to biological sexes (Diamond, 2002) and perceptions of being male or female (Howard, 2000) are not very important for teachers' identity. Considering the whole hierarchy of identities, it may be said that teachers behave as teachers rather than male or female individuals in the school setting. In this case, a male teacher can approach his students with such moral values as love and affection when necessary, or a female teacher can take part in repairing a village school when circumstances make it necessary.
One of the interesting points in this study was that gender identity-a type of identity inevitable for individuals to have (Joseph, 2004)-was placed at the bottom of the hierarchy of identities despite the other identities which were also probable to be refused to have. It is thought that individual efforts/structuring in the development of identities were influential in such a result. Accordingly, the more individuals make efforts to structure a certain type of identity, the higher is the probability of adopting that type of identity for those individuals. On examining the hierarchy of identities closely, it is observed that just above gender identity-which one gets with no efforts-is religious identitywhich again one accepts as it is taught to him/her by making no efforts (Yorulmaz, 2012). Religious identity is followed by ethnic identity. Although ethnic identity is related with some inborn characteristics (Eriksen, 2001), individuals go through an active process of discovery (Phinney & Ong, 2007) while acquiring ethnic identity. This shows that there are more individual efforts in the development of ethnic identity than in the acquisition of gender identity and religious identity. Political identity following ethnic identity differs from gender, religious and ethnic identities in that it is a type of identity which is completely acquired later (Berezin, 2001). Individuals can be under the influence of many factors such as families, schools, religious institutions, history and media while acquiring their political identity. Therefore, individuals need to analyse all these factors effectively while structuring their political identity. Intensive individual efforts required in this process of analysis might have turned political identity in the hierarchy of teachers' identities into the type of identity having more priority than gender, ethnic and religious identities. Professional identity, on the other hand, which the second at the top of the hierarchy, requires that individuals go through a long and challenging system of elimination and a process of active decision-making and training. Besides, professional identity differs from gender, religious, political and ethnic identities in that it requires that individuals develop certain criteria for efficacy. In addition to that, the developmental processes in relation to the acquisition of professional identity start during childhood (in the ages between 5 and 12), as different from religious, political and ethnic identities which start to be acquired during adolescence (Cohen-Scali, 2003). For this reason, it is thought that the factors putting professional identity on to the upper order of the hierarchy of identities are the personal efforts made to develop certain efficacies and the development process of this type of identity. At the top of the hierarchy was moral identity. Moral identity is not granted to individuals by a social category of which individuals are a member, but it is developed by individuals using the sources from which individuals are fed in terms of view of life, life experiences, morally and intellectually. This identity can exist by resisting against discriminating identities such as gender identity, ethnic identity, political identity and religious identity. This characteristic of moral identity assures that it is acquired through personal efforts and that it has universal qualities. It is thought that what carries moral identity up to the top of the hierarchy of teachers' identities is this universal characteristic of it.
In brief, moral and professional identities are at the top of the hierarchy of teachers' identities according to the results obtained in this research. This result exhibited-as it should do-that integrative identities were adopted more than discriminating identities by teachers. On the other hand, it should also be noted that there are a number of problems in the hierarchy of teachers' identities. The fact that political identity-which was a problematic type of identity-followed professional identity with a small numerical difference may pose a problem. This problem is probable to be tolerated by moral identity. Yet, on considering the problems probable to arise in this respect, it is important that educational environments be cleansed of political materials and that educational environments not be a subject of political arguments to prevent political identity from getting ahead of professional identity.

Limitations and recommendations
This study has a number of limitations. The limitations are listed as in the following, and recommendations are made to conduct further research studies in accordance with the limitations. Firstly, this study determined the hierarchy of teachers' identities within the framework of moral identity, professional identity, political identity, religious identity, and gender identity. National identity was not included in this study because national identity is the same as ethnic identity for the majority of people in Turkey even though ethnic identities differ from ethnic identities for various ethnic groups.
However, the hierarchy of teachers' identities can also be analysed in terms of national identity in other countries where national identity does not overlap with ethnic identity as in Turkey.
The second limitation of the study was related with the characteristics of the study group. This research study was performed in Diyarbakır, a province of Turkey in the South-eastern Anatolia Region, differing from many places in Turkey politically and ethnically; and most of the participants in the research spent most of their life in the region. Since research is thought to be probable to yield differing results in different regions of Turkey, it may be suggested that similar research be done in regions of Turkey apart from South-eastern Anatolia.
Another limitation of this study was that the hierarchy of teachers' identities was analysed within the framework of identities teachers considered important. That an identity is acquired cannot be explained only by how important the identity is considered by individuals. Acquisition of an identity is also related with the accessibility-effectiveness of the identity from cognitive aspects (Shao et al., 2008). Therefore, efforts should also be made to determine the hierarchy of teachers' identities through interviews involving sample cases or through observations to be made in various contexts, and to find in what identity teachers respond to the situations. Apart from those, efforts should also be made to determine the extent to which teachers' gender, religious, political and moral identities predict their professional identity.