Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies

Teacher identity is increasingly shaped by the interaction between educational policy expectations, administrative structures, professional beliefs, and everyday working conditions. In Odisha, recent policy reforms emphasise teacher autonomy, reflective practice, and professional responsibility; however, their implementation often occurs within hierarchical administrative systems, uneven institutional support, and expanding non-academic demands. Understanding how teachers negotiate these policy and structural pressures is therefore important for examining the evolving nature of their professional identity. This study examines how educational policy aspirations and the structure of school administration shape the professional identity of elementary school teachers in Odisha. It adopts a qualitative, exploratory, and interpretive design and draws on the narratives of 60 male and female teachers working in government and private schools. The analysis focuses on the relationship between policy expectations, institutional arrangements, professional beliefs, and everyday working conditions. The findings indicate a persistent gap between reform-oriented policy expectations and teachers lived professional realities. Although policy frameworks position teachers as reflective practitioners, autonomous professionals, and agents of educational change, participants described top-down decision-making, administrative workload, uneven infrastructure, limited resources, accountability pressures, and non-academic responsibilities. These conditions were experienced differently across government and private schools and were further shaped by geographical and gender-related constraints. At the same time, teachers demonstrated resilience, ethical commitment, and adaptive professional agency by negotiating institutional demands while attempting to sustain their responsibility towards students. The study therefore presents teacher identity as dynamic, relational, and continuously negotiated rather than fixed. It concludes that meaningful professional empowerment depends on context-sensitive implementation, adequate structural support, participatory governance, relevant professional development, equitable resource allocation, and recognition of teachers’ professional roles. These conditions may help align policy aspirations more closely with the realities of elementary schooling in Odisha.