The domain of professional identity and values comprises the competences that enable a language educator to reflect on their disciplinary and professional identities. Our research points to the diversity of roles and responsibilities of language educators in HE: our survey captured at least 14 different job titles for language educators as reported by the respondents. It is, therefore, of particular importance that a language educator develops their own identity within the institutional and disciplinary context. In addition, a significant part of the language educator’s identity is bound with their role as a plurilingual individual operating within a multilingual context. As representatives of this identity to their students, a language educator must reflect on this and also promote these social values within their institution and beyond. The language educator is themself a representative of a target language user as well as of a plurilingual individual. As such language educators play an important role in the development of these values and identities in their students and in education and society in general.
Key competences in this domain include critical reflection, evaluation of their own and others’ teaching practices, the scholarship of teaching & learning, and the promotion of disciplinary values.