**3. Theoretical framework**

### See **Figure 1**.

Symbolic Interactionism is a theoretical hypothesis for exploring human conduct and life [23]. The framework uses an individual's experience as the foundation for researching and interpreting a social group or system. A good fit for examining teacher behaviour faced with excessive workload to inform analysis of participants experiences, Symbolic Interactionism was utilised throughout this paper. The researcher focused on the creation of identity through interacting with others and investigated how people respond to one another from a symbolic interactionist approach and used this approach to inform the analysis of the participants' experiences throughout the study.
