Contributions of a Professional Development Course to Language Teacher Identity Development: Critical Incidents in Focus

2021 ◽  
pp. 002248712110591
Author(s):  
Mostafa Nazari ◽  
Peter I. De Costa
Keyword(s):  
Professional Development ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Critical Incidents ◽  
Professional Socialization ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Language Teacher Identity ◽  
Development Course

Despite the widely recognized significance of critical incidents (CIs) in teachers’ professional learning, little research has investigated the role of CIs in language teacher identity development. This study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the contributions of a Telegram-based professional development course—framed around CI storying—to the language teacher identity development process of a group of teachers. Data were collected from 10 teachers before, during, and after the course. Data analyses indicated that, before the course, CIs negatively influenced the teachers’ agency and emotions. Participation in the course contributed, however, to the teachers’ enhanced agency and greater emotion regulation. In addition, the course afforded the teachers an opportunity to experience further professional socialization and collegial engagement. Our findings revealed that during the course, the teachers developed greater expertise in storying their CIs and discussed higher order issues relevant to the multiplicity of identity as connected to sociocultural-educational dimensions. These findings suggest that emotions and agency are two significant identity aspects that are profoundly influenced by and influence CIs. Our article closes with a discussion of the implications of embedding CIs in professional development courses to help teachers (re)construct their identities.

scholarly journals Becoming an English language teacher: Continuities and Discontinuities

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorota Werbińska
Keyword(s):  
Identity Development ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
First Year ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
School Placement ◽  
Phenomenographic Study ◽  
Language Teacher Identity

Abstract The aim of the paper is to report a three-year phenomenographic study conducted on seven EFL Polish teachers with the focus on presenting how they experience different aspects of language teaching at three crucial stages: 1) the time of ELT theory studying, 2) the time of school placement, 3) the time of first-year working as professional teachers. Each stage of the study is presented from the perspective of affordances standing for the respondents’ expectations (continuities) as well as constraints (discontinuities). The article concludes that discontinuities, rather than continuities, can prove invaluable in language teacher identity development.

Neither Fish nor Fowl: the Contested Identity of Teachers of English in an EFL Context

RELC Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-363
Author(s):  
Malba Barahona ◽  
Ximena Ibaceta-Quijanes
Keyword(s):  
Professional Learning ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Teacher Satisfaction ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Significant Implication ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Language Teacher Identity

The literature on language teacher identity describes teacher identity as dynamic, shaped through professional and personal experiences and mediated by peer interaction, the effects of pedagogical strategies and professional discourses (Barkhuizen, 2017). This article reports on key findings from a study that investigated the perceptions of Chilean teachers of English about their work and their identity as language teachers. Data were collected through an online questionnaire with 716 respondents from teachers of English across Chile. The questionnaire included specific questions on teachers’ motivation, the nature of effective teaching practices, types of professional development and factors that contribute to their professional learning. The analysis of two critical open-ended questions related to levels of teacher satisfaction and valorization revealed that although teachers feel generally satisfied with their jobs, at the same time they feel essentially undervalued and somewhat illegitimate. Factors such as standards frameworks which compel teachers to validate their knowledge of the language, constraints in relation to working conditions and modest salary levels directly contributed to the perceptions of satisfaction and valorization. A significant implication of this study is the need for a more complex understanding of the motivations that drive the development of English language teacher identity.

Research of Language Teacher Identity: Status Quo and Future Directions

RELC Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 003368822096156
Author(s):  
Yuan Sang
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Identity Development ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Identity Status ◽  
Socialization Process ◽  
Language Teacher Education ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Language Teacher Identity

After 20 years of study since researchers of second language teacher education have increasingly emphasized the importance of investigating L2 teachers’ mental lives, the research of language teacher identity has been flowering and providing intriguing insights to deepen the field’s understanding of how L2 teachers develop and learn to become teachers. While a sociocultural perspective of language teacher education speaks to the situated nature of teacher learning and language teacher identity development, this perspective has generated a growing body of literature that highlights the role of socialization in language teacher identity formation. Reviewing the important ideas and findings in the existing research, this article begins with a summary of theoretical conceptualizations of language teacher identity, and then examines the status quo of contemporaneous language teacher identity research. Next, it discusses the socialization process in language teacher identity development, and ends with further research directions for future studies.

The African Storybook and Language Teacher Identity in Digital Times

2017 ◽  
Vol 101 (S1) ◽  
pp. 45-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Espen Stranger-Johannessen ◽  
Bonny Norton
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Identity ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Language Teacher Identity
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