Teacher personal professional identity and the challenge of digital citizenship: A process-oriented case study in Italian and Irish secondary schools

This paper examines the relationship between teacher personal professional identity (TpPI) and digital citizenship through an exploratory case study. It aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the impact of digital technologies on the teaching profession by analysing the experiences of 43 secondary school principals and teachers in Ireland and Italy. The empirical research, grounded in the idiographic paradigm, adopts a process-oriented vertical case study approach. Within this framework, a comparative axis is developed to analyse and contrast interview-derived data. The main findings reveal two distinct trajectories of identity development and offer insights into participants’ conceptions of both digital citizenship and the broader digital transformation of education