Addressing Cultural Identity through Negotiation: Analysis of Student-teacher-authored Narratives

Abstract

Teachersí cultural identity is among the forepart issues within the realm of teacher education studies. The research about teachersí identity has been done using teacherauthored narratives. That said, the purpose of this study was to investigate the role of negotiation in the student-teachersí cultural identity formation. To that end, three studentteachers (two males and one female student-teachers), majoring in English language teaching participated in this study. During four months, the student-teachers participated in a negotiation program on cultural identity. They were sent some academic papers to study, then, they participated in discussions about cultural variations and the ways to address them in classrooms. The student-teachers where asked to write their narratives. Then the narratives where analyzed based on the semantic expressions. The qualitative analysis of the student-teachersí narratives showed that their cultural identity changed during the negotiation period. By analyzing the student teacher-authored narratives, it appeared that they addressed cultural variations in different ways includingusing cultural varieties in teaching, identifying the gaps between cultural contexts, reconceptualization of cultural concepts, cultural transformation, new modes of using culture, internalization of cultural issues, and cultural awareness, each of which is discussed in the current study. It can be concluded from the obtained information that cultural identity is a dynamic one and open to change. The research bears some implications for teacher education policy makers to introduce sustainable teacher education program in general, and sustainable second language teacher education program in particular.

The role of negotiation about cultural issues on the ESP teachers’ cultural identity development: A narrative inquiry

“…The narrative epistemology recognizes that narratives, by their very nature, are not meant to describe phenomena objectively, but rather to expose how people's understandings of phenomena are infused with interpretation" (Johnson, 2007: 178). Moreover, since narratives have the feature of being chronological, one can go through the stance of teachers' ideas about an issue by examining them during different points of time (Rashidi, Meihami, 2017). It is worth mentioning that to be more reflexive and to deserve the due sensitivity to the production of the narratives by the ESP teachers (Bilgen, Richards, 2015), we asked them to choose their preferred language, either English or Persian, to write down their narratives.…”

“…Teachers need to construct and reconstruct new identities to be in line with the current teaching mainstream (Xu, 2014). Hence, teacher identity has recently become a special arena of research (Zuengler, Miller, 2006) manifested in the theses, dissertations and published papers in different journals such as Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (Rashidi, Meihami, 2017;Norton, 2013). This is also true for the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers who teach English to the students of different disciplines.…”

Конфлікти У Педагогічному Колективі Закладу Вищої Освіти: Причини Виникнення Та Шляхи Запобігання.

“…На підставі аналізу наукових публікацій (А. Koriakina, Т. Tretyakova, V. Ignatiev, S. Ollesova [12], A. Pipere, M. Veisson, I. Salite [13], А. Suleimenova, О. Ivanova [14], N. Rashidi, H. Meihami [15]) вбачаємо, що запобіганню конфліктам у педагогічному колективі сприяють такі заходи: здійснення ефективної кадрової політики, орієнтованої на людину; забезпечення високого соціального захисту; своєчасне виявлення й розпізнавання сигналів назріваючого конфлікту; врахування особливостей поведінки конфліктних особистостей, які мають усталені комплекси й невдоволені власним професійним або соціальним статусом; отримання об'єктивної, усебічної й оперативної інформації про цілі, наміри, переваги, інтереси конфліктуючих сторін; здійснення конфліктної аналітики; раціоналізація режиму, інтенсивності, складності, чергування завдань професійної діяльності; реалізація організаційних методів запобігання конфліктам (усебічна підготовка співробітників, регулярна ротація кадрів, підтримка їх кар'єрних амбіцій); максимальне делегування функцій управління співробітникам; постійний розвиток мотивації працівників тощо.…”

Identity-oriented English Language Teachers’ Education Programs as the Arena of Becoming a Glocal English Language Teacher

“…The reason may be related to the point that understanding teacher's identity (Gergen, 1991) and preparing education programs for developing teacher's identity can develop overall teacher's professionalism (Irwin and Hramiak, 2010). Due to the complex nature of teacher's identity development (Pupala, Kascak and Tesar, 2016), the realm of teacher's identity research has witnessed a flourishing development in doing research by scholars (Meihami and Salīte, 2019;Rashidi and Meihami, 2017). Moreover, different movements in educational settings of different countries and the relationships existing between the local and global educational contexts (Skerritt, 2018) make the educational researchers exercise more emphasis on the teacher's identity development research.…”