Language Teacher Identity Outside the State-School Context

• Authors: Kirsten Hempkin

Abstracts

EN

The importance of understanding language teacher identity is well-established in the existent literature. It has been shown to impact upon many aspects of teachers’ lives both inside and outside the classroom, such as wellbeing (Day & Kington, 2008) and self-efficacy (Canrinus, Helms-Lorenz, Beijaard, Buitink, & Hofman, 2012). The nature of language teacher identity is broadly categorised from a socio-cultural perspective, as dynamic rather than static, as negotiated in social interaction and (potentially) a source of struggle (Barkhuizen, 2017) or friction (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). As this struggle with identity comes to the fore during periods of transition, when identity is seen to be challenged, the focus of research has largely been trained on pre-service or early-service teachers (Mercer & Kostoulas, 2018). The research in this paper addresses a teaching population who have thus far escaped the research gaze, but aspects of whose identity could be problematic and possible sites of struggle. Drawing upon a narrative approach, in case-study form, I examine how two established teachers (with four years or more service) who have been trained to work in the state-school context and who, for a variety of reasons are now working outside it, construct their language teacher identities. The findings point to the importance of the teachers’ own experiences as learners in their identity formation, and how emotion accompanies and acts as a driver of identity change as they seek stability and status on an uncertain professional path.

Keywords

EN

Language teacher identity; identity struggle; established teachers; state-school context; private context

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Śląski
• Journal: Theory and Practice of Second Language Acquisition
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 9
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 1-22

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Kirsten Hempkin

• University of Maribor

• https://orcid.org/0000000340350665

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Identifiers

DOI

10.31261/TAPSLA.13190

Biblioteka Nauki

22446741