NEGOSIASI IDENTITAS PROFESIONAL GURU BERPERAN GANDA DI PENDIDIKAN TINGGI PESANTREN

Abstract

Active teachers who simultaneously pursue higher education within Islamic boarding school (pesantren) institutions experience overlapping responsibilities as educators, university students, family members, and participants in religious communities. Despite the prevalence of this phenomenon, such complex role configurations remain underexplored in the literature on teacher professional identity, which has largely been developed within Western educational contexts and based on single-role professionals. This study investigates how married Muslim teachers negotiate their professional identities while managing these intersecting responsibilities and examines the ways in which gender and pesantren culture shape this negotiation process. Employing a qualitative phenomenological approach, the research involved eight participants (four male and four female) enrolled in the Islamic Education Program at IAI Al-Urwatul Wutsqo Jombang, all of whom were actively teaching in pesantren-based educational institutions. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and participant observation and analyzed using thematic analysis. Four major themes emerged from the findings. First, all participants experienced fragmented daily routines; however, female teachers simultaneously carried additional domestic responsibilities, whereas male teachers tended to compartmentalize their roles sequentially. Second, teaching motivation was categorized into three orientations: religious-structural, personal-emotional, and transformative. Third, the principal challenge was not diminished motivation but fragmented attention resulting from multiple role demands, while resilience was sustained through multilayered support networks. Fourth, nearly all participants perceived themselves as not yet fully professional, reflecting a productive tension between ideal professional standards and lived realities. The study contributes to the literature by extending Beijaard's framework of teacher professional identity through the inclusion of a spiritual ethical dimension and by demonstrating gender-based variations in role conflict patterns that have received limited attention in conventional role conflict scholarship.