Yuanyibo Zhang and Vicki Ross, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

The Complex Process of Teacher Identity Development (TID)

ESL teachers’ professional identity development is a complex process. When it comes to non-native English-speaking (NNES) ESL teachers, their unique linguistic, educational (especially language learning), cultural, and teaching experiences add another layer of complexity to the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of their professional identities. Reporting on the stories of an NNES ESL teacher (Ling), we invite TESOL practitioners to revisit teacher identity development (TID) from the lens of the interrelationship between experience and identity. Such a lens makes provision for understanding how teachers bring their experiences into the classroom through enactment of their professional identities and how practices in and outside classroom settings, in turn, shape the ways they see themselves as ESL teachers.

Viewing TID through Temporality, Sociality, and Rationality

Based on previous discussions about interplay between experience and identity, we argue TID involves the construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of relational positions to others through negotiations of experiences across social contexts. Clandinin (2006) suggested such negotiations occur in temporality and sociality. Temporality refers to 1) how teachers carry forward their experiences from the past to present and future moments, and 2) how their imagined experiences shape the images of who they are expected and desire to be at the moment and in the future (Darvin & Norton, 2015). Therefore, teacher identities are constantly transforming. Sociality involves interactions between teachers’ inner self and external conditions, as well as negotiations of the roles assigned (Kayi-Aydar, 2015) and played in and across multiple social contexts. In other words, teachers’ professional identities are fragmented (Darvin & Norton, 2015) as they might develop and enact multiple relational positions in the interactions with different power relationships.

Building on this conceptual framework, we aim to answer the research question of how an NNES ESL teacher’s unique experiences across temporality and sociality shaped her teacher identity. Since TID involves the process of how teachers define their relational positions across social settings, we attached a third aspect, rationality, to emphasize teacher agency in their internalizations of external conditions, such as cultural beliefs, common teaching practices, and stakeholders’ expectations on ESL teachers’ roles across educational contexts.

Narrative Case Study: Unpacking Ling’s TID

Through purposeful sampling, a teacher (Ling) was chosen to participate in this narrative case study, through which she shared both her unique pathways toward becoming a teacher and her career trajectory. Originally from China, Ling completed her teacher training and taught EFL for nine years in a secondary-postsecondary combined vocational school in an eastern province in China. Her primary responsibility was to prepare early-childhood preservice-teachers with English language skills for their future careers. At the time of the study, Ling had relocated to the United States and was completing a teaching practicum at an elementary ESL classroom as part of her master’s program at a southwestern U.S. public university. The cultural, language-learning, teaching, and educational experiences made Ling an ideal participant for the study.

Data were collected from a personal and teaching timeline Ling created and a semi-structured interview, which included predetermined and follow-up questions. Due to Ling’s unique experiences, the use of follow-up questions allowed for investigation of potentially relevant, crucial issues to TID not fully covered by the predetermined questions. We coded data using a general deductive approach with a priori codes (e.g., language learning experience and teaching trajectory) and a second round of open coding to capture emergent, relevant themes (e.g., significant time phases of TID).

Ling’s Stories

Ling’s stories primarily focused on the impact of her pathways, especially her teacher training program and EFL learning/teaching experiences in China, on her TID as an ESL teacher in the United States. In addition, Ling shared how she managed to navigate the competing experiences across contexts and sought opportunities for professional growth within the challenges she faced.

Navigating Competing Teaching Contexts

As a teacher educated in a different cultural setting than the U.S. system, Ling was fully aware of the divergent contexts and educational practices. She mentioned, “in China, where English is taught as a foreign language, the EFL curriculum is considered a subject area that heavily focuses on language skills.” On the contrary, the training she received in her master’s program, especially content-based language teaching, enabled her to “consider language skills more as a vehicle to prepare the ELLs for content learning and vice versa.” In addition, Ling shared perceptions of different roles teachers typically played in Chinese and American EFL/ESL classrooms.

In China, as a teacher, you just stay where you are in front of the classroom as a pastor in a church because people share the value that the teacher is the authoritarian of knowledge... I have to adapt myself to the American classroom, and I have to remember that my students here are very different when they are sometimes active and talkative… Here, I must tell myself to disregard my stereotype as being a teacher… This is a psychological process that I have to tell myself this is different from China.

With the differences between school contexts in the United States and China, Ling’s account of experiences highlighted her adaptability in meeting the needs of her students and the challenges of transferring her multi-layered experiences into teaching practices and identity.

Seeking Opportunities within Challenges

Despite Ling’s knowledge of contexts and language teaching strategies, she noted the biggest challenge was to develop and implement activities to contextualize linguistic knowledge and language skills for meaningful, communicative purposes. Ling attributed these challenges to her NNES status and insufficient teaching experience in an English-speaking country. However, these challenges created opportunities for Ling’s TID as she believed she was “on the right track” toward becoming the teacher she aspired to be. She considered herself a teacher who was learning. Her present teacher identity was developing in order to align with her ideal teacher image.

Although Ling’s language and educational background created challenges, she valued her EFL/ESL learning experience and NNES status. She noted that being an L2 learner and teacher simultaneously enabled her to understand the rationales behind teaching strategies and predict the language learners’ academic needs. In addition, based on her experience, she understood the significance of students’ backgrounds and needs and aimed to “meet the expectations” so as to better “interact with the students.” Consequently, students’ validation of her teaching encouraged confidence and shaped her perception of a good ESL teacher.

From Ling’s Stories to Your Professional Development Journey

Our findings of Ling’s account of experiences echoed previous research indicating that teacher identity evolves over time (Darvin & Norton, 2018) and involves teachers’ internalizations of the externally assigned role of self (Kanno & Stuart, 2011) across social settings. These findings resonated in the themes of temporality, sociality, and rationality, which exemplified another possible way to interpret and reflect on the interplays between experience and ESL TID.

Temporality

Throughout her development as a professional, Ling’s teacher identity evolved in relation with the meanings of self she carried forward from past experiences. In addition, Ling’s future and imagined selves were crucial to the construction of her present teacher identity. Ling’s earlier experiences created motivation to critically reflect on beliefs and teaching practice. Ling’s TID suggests that further development of ESL teachers’ professional identities can be found through reflection on their unique pathways and imagined experiences. Therefore, ESL teachers and teacher educators are encouraged to deeply examine their past, present, and future to understand the temporality of TID.

Sociality

The external conditions within and across social contexts impacted Ling’s teacher identity. One aspect of the external voices influencing her sense of self was her account of her students’ views. Students’ understandings and expectations of the ideal ESL teacher image shifted across teaching contexts. The relational positions among students in disparate teaching contexts can contribute to TID. Hence, the lens of sociality provides another possible way to interpret teachers’ professional identities – by exploring their interactions between the inner self and the external world.

Rationality

On the surface level, Ling’s experiences in the educational systems of China and the United States might seem different or even contradictory, but the hard work of her teacher identity construction is holding these two identities in tension with each other. Students’ divergent visions of the ideal ESL teacher, interacting with Ling’s established teacher identity, set up clashes. Encountering these clashes, Ling actively sought a balance between these competing voices and developed a meaning system that worked for her own situation. Such a process suggests the idea of agency should be considered as more than simply responding to external conditions. Rather, teachers can actively define who they are and their relational positions with others through their reflections on experiences.

Conclusion

Ling’s stories represented her unique ways, as an NNES ESL teacher, of making meaning of her experiences in TID across temporality, sociality, and rationality. Broadly speaking, her case underscores the significance of understanding related factors in an ESL teacher’s professional identity development, including the impact of experiences, interactions with external voices, and teacher agency in defining relational positions with others.

References

Clandinin, D. J. (2006). Narrative inquiry: A methodology for studying lived experience. Research Studies in Music Education, 27(1), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103X060270010301

Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2015). Identity and a model of investment in applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 35(2015), 36–56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190514000191

Darvin, R., & Norton, B. (2018). Identity, investment, and TESOL. The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0802

Kanno, Y., & Stuart, C. (2011). Learning to become a second language teacher: Identities-in-practice. Modern Language Journal, 95(2), 236–252. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01178.x

Kayi-Aydar, H. (2015). Teacher agency, positioning, and English language learners: Voices of pre-service classroom teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 45, 94–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2014.09.009