Examining English Teacher Professionalism through Dialogic Narrative Inquiry: A Case from Sabah, Malaysia

Abstract

This study reports the examination of the professionalism of a local English teacher in Sabah, Malaysia, through dialogic narrative inquiry. The purpose of this examination is to understand ways in which professionalism of a local English teacher in a setting where English is minimally spoken is enacted in light of different social entities and objects, as well as prescriptive expectations. Narratives from the teacher, Misha, concerning her teaching were collected over seven months. Subsequently, the narratives were restoried by the researcher and Misha over four months, resulting in narrative constellations which described variables that affected Misha professionally. The constellations are Misha's self, her students, her colleagues and the English Teaching Assistant, as well as the prescribed materials and pedagogy. The findings support the notion that teacher professionalism is a dynamic and multi-faceted construct. Furthermore, the study provides an avenue for the legitimization of an English language teacher through thoughts and actions reflected through narratives.

Stories of Teachers’ Identity: Between Personal and Professional Experience

“…In terms of curriculum and subject matter, teachers of science (Lutovac & Kaasila, 2019;Murphy et al, 2017;Novelli & Ross, 2017), physical education (Fadale & Powell, 2017;Landi, 2018), arts (Kraehe, 2015) and most of all second languages (EFL) have been researched (Ahn, 2019;Aneja, 2016;Avalos-Rivera, 2019;Lieva, 2010;Liu & Xu, 2013;Loo, 2018;Pennington, 2016;Raman & Yiğitoğlu, 2018;Torres-Rocha, 2017;Trent, 2017;Wolf & de Costa, 2017). Although we studied many papers in this category, in terms of our STORIES OF TEACHERS' IDENTITY research project based on the field of humanities and an extensive body of literature in this field, we illustrate only the example of languages in this article.…”

From EFL to ESL Context: The Impact of Sociocultural Environment on Teachers’ Professional Identity Development

“…Previous studies (Loo, 2018;Mora, Trejo, and Roux 2016;Trent 2012;Xu, 2013) examined how inexperienced teachers in various educational environments responded to new school contexts and negotiated their professional identities. Their results showed the essential effects of previous learning and working experiences of language teachers in influencing their practise and self-perceptions of language teaching.…”

(Re)constructing Teacher Identity through the Contesting Narratives of ELT Associations

“…Discussions on language teacher identity have emerged in the context of broader themes such as the influences on and experiences of pre-service teachers (Macalister, 2017). In a study about English teacher professionalism in Malaysia, Loo (2018) examined the narratives of an English language teacher to illustrate how the teacher's experiences with students, colleagues and classroom practices collectively constructed a multi-faceted image of teacher professionalism. Similarly, in another study by Ahmad and Abd Samad (2018), the narratives of a teacher of young learners were examined to identify the various metaphors which were used to construct the image of an English teacher of young learners.…”