How Shifting from Teaching Arabic or Persian to English Prompts the professional Identity: A Thematic Study (original) (raw)
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Professional Identity Conflict and (Re)Construction among English Teachers in Iran
Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 2019
This paper examines how English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Iran manage the identity conflicts that arise within their language teaching contexts. The position of English in Iran is manifestly, ideologically, and politically shaped, yet little is known about the process of EFL teacher identity construction and management in this context. To address this gap, two EFL teachers' narrative reflections on identity were elicited via online social media groups. Data were analyzed using a three-level positioning approach. Findings illustrate how EFL teachers' self-images are derived from dynamic interactions within both the immediate and broader contexts of language education policies in Iran, and how these identities are subject to change. Analysis indicates that EFL teachers confront conflicts across their personal beliefs and external expectations. Implications for practice and research are discussed in light of the need for ongoing professional development in politically charged contexts.
Teachers’ professional identity: contributions of a critical EFL teacher education course in Iran
Teaching and Teacher Education, 2012
This paper is a report on contributions of a critical EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher education course to Iranian teachers' professional identity reconstruction. 2 Pre-course and post-course interviews with seven teachers, their reflective journals, class discussions, and the teacher educator's reflective journals were analyzed as guided by grounded theory. Three major shifts were observed in their professional identities: from conformity to and romanticization of dominant ideologies to critical autonomy, from no orientation or an instrumentalist orientation to a critical/transformative orientation of teaching, and from a linguistic and technical view to an educational view of second language education.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2016
In the past few decades, professional identity has emerged as a separate research area in the field of teaching and learning language. Research has shown that many contextual factors are involved in teachers' perception about their personal identities and the formation of this personality trait. It has been found that professional identity is one of the factors that impacts the curriculum, teachers' beliefs and behavior, and students' learning. Accordingly, the present study attempted to investigate the professional identity of the language teachers in Iranshahr city, Iran. The relationship between gender and work experience of teachers and their professional identity was also explored to determine any significant relationship. 79 language teachers of private language institutes in Iranshahr city participated in this study. To collect the data, a questionnaire developed by Beijaard, Verloop and Vermunt (2000) was used. The questionnaire was piloted and its reliability and internal consistency was verified. Beijaard et al. (2000) identified three aspects of professional identity: teachers as subject matter experts, teachers as didactical experts, and teachers as pedagogical experts. The results showed that teachers identify themselves mostly as didactical experts, then as pedagogical experts, and least as subject matter experts. There was no significant relationship between the gender and experience of the participants and the three sub-scales of professional identity, except for a significant relationship between subject matter expert and experience of the teachers.
Saudi EFL Teachers' Identity Formation in Saudi Schools: A case Study
Arab World English Journal, 2020
This study aims to explore the influence of contextual factors on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' professional identity formation in the context of Saudi Arabia. More specifically, it aims to examine how the participants' educational background, life experiences and professional setting influence their professional identities as EFL teachers in Saudi secondary schools. This study involved three EFL teachers who are based in Riyadh. Employing a case study method, the data collection techniques of this qualitative study included in-depth interviews and observations. Drawing upon Wenger's (1998) concept of communities of practice, the data analysis reveals several factors affecting the EFL Saudi teachers' professional identity. This study found that the Saudi teachers' educational background and life experiences act as formative elements which influence their EFL professional identity formation. Moreover, the participating teachers agree that practical...
2020
This research aims to investigate the contributions of KARDS (knowing, analyzing, recognizing, doing, and seeing) to Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) institute teachers’ professional identity reconstruction. The researchers employed purposive sampling to choose twenty teachers. A KARDS questionnaire (Hassani, Khatib, & Yazdani Moghaddam, 2019a, 2019b) was used to classify the teachers into a more KARDS-oriented group (n=10) and a less-KARDS oriented group (N=10) on the basis of their scores on the questionnaire through quartile-based visual binning technique. Pre-course interview, post-course interview, teacher educator and teachers’ reflective journals, and class discussions were employed to gather data. After the pre-course interview, there was an implementation phase during which all twenty teachers became familiar with KARDS. Then, Grounded Theory was applied to analyze the data. Findings showed that there were four big shifts from “uncertainty of practice to certaint...
Journal Article, 2018
The main purpose of this study was to probe whether or not there is a statistically significant difference between the prospective teachers’ perceptions of professional identity and current teachers’ self-perceptions. To meet the end, the researchers applied the Teachers’ Professional Identity Questionnaire, by Hasegawa and Kudomi, which contains 48 items on a four-point Likert system. This questionnaire was distributed among 440 Iranian professionals who had majored in one of the majors related to English language. After collecting the data, the researchers tapped them into SPSS software and analyzed them statistically. A Mann-Whitney test on the scores of the two groups of participants highlighted a statistically significant difference. Hence, data analysis indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between the prospective teachers’ perceptions of professional identity and the current teacher’s self-perceptions.
The Dynamism of Teachers’ Identity: The Case of Iranian EFL Teachers
Sino-US English Teaching, 2016
Recent conceptualizations of professional identity as an ongoing process of interpretation and re-interpretation of experiences demonstrate that it is dynamic and subject to an ongoing learning process. In effect, identity is essentially viewed as fluid, dynamic, recursive, and discursive process in which statements about actions are translated into statements about states, and vice versa. Having these standpoints in mind, the present paper aims at depicting the profile of English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' professional identity. The second purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among the components of teachers' professional identity as measured by Kao and Lin's (2015) model comprising six latent factors of teachers' professional identity: self-expectation (SE), teachers' duties (TD), external influential factors (EF), pedagogy (PE), instructional skills and knowledge (SK), and teachers' citizenship behavior (CB). This study also sought to scrutinize the dynamics of teachers' identity in accordance with their teaching experience, gender, and educational level. For these purposes, 110 EFL teachers were chosen from different language institutes in Mashhad, a city in northeastern Iran. The results indicated that SE received the highest value and EF obtained the lowest mean score in our sample. The highest correlation was observed between SK and PE, followed by the relationship between TD and PE. The results indicated that there were significant correlations between teachers' teaching experience and all the teachers' identity components. It was also found that there were statistically significant differences between male and females in four components of identity as follows: TD, PE, SK, and CB. The results showed that there were variations in teacher identity with regards to their educational level.
Journal of language teaching, linguistics and literature, 2020
Teachers, like other professionals, are sometimes bound to change places of living, particularly when such a change takes the teachers to an entirely different country with a distinctive culture. This paper aims to trace three Saudi EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers who moved from Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to pursue their professional careers further. The main objective of the paper is to examine how the sociocultural context influences the professional identity formation of EFL teachers. The data of the study were collected through classroom observations and in-depth interviews that were then analyzed thematically. Findings of the study led to the emergence of four distinctive themes that include language-related identity, context-related identity, practiced and responsive teaching skills, and membership in Communities of Practice. Findings underscore the dynamic nature of language teacher identities as participants find themselves in different English language teaching contexts. Additionally, the findings highlight the important role of professional settings in supporting teachers' professional identity development.
An English Teacher's Professional Identity Development: The Effect of Educational Policies
Journal of Modern Research in English Language Studies, 2018
A fundamental aspect of teacher socialization and development is the construction and maintenance of vivid and strong professional identity. As a multi-layered and dynamic phenomenon, teacher identity is affected by diverse range of social and institutional factors. Aiming to add to the growing literature on teacher identity, the current study examined the effects of language teaching policies on an English teacher"s identity development. Following narrative approach which is the dominant paradigm in identity research, the stories of an English teacher obtained through semi-structured interview were examined. The teacher"s narratives and accounts of his teaching experiences were analyzed through constant comparative approach which produced five main themes including lack of teacher autonomy, the effect of macro political concerns on language teaching, movement towards communicative language teaching, lack of resources, and inappropriate student placement strategies. The results indicated that every single language teaching policy shaped and reshaped the teacher"s understanding of himself.
Early Career vs. Long Career Iranian EFL Teacher’s Identity Perception
2022
Language Teachers' awareness of their identity can affect their professional development and efficiency. Research proves that such awareness is subject to change over time due to the institutional and dynamic educational contexts. This study aimed at investigating the perception of identity by the early career vs. long career Iranian EFL teachers. A Likert-scale questionnaire consisting of 30 items was developed and administered to 120 novice and experienced teachers to inquire about teacher identity. Factor analysis was employed to obtain six factors of interpretable structure including career identity, interactional identity, institutional identity, professional identity, situated identity, and personal identity. The most significant factor perceived by both novice teachers and experienced teachers was situated identity and the least significant was recognized to be the institutional identity. The results showed that there is a medium relationship between years of teaching experience and identity. A small relationship was also found between teachers' gender and identity.