Exploring professional identities of nonnative‐English‐speaking teachers in the United States: A narrative case study

Abstract

This article explores the experiences of a Chinese language teacher in the United States and how she constructed and negotiated her professional identities during and after her teacher preparation in a U.S.-based English as a second language (ESL) teacher preparation program. Using narrative inquiry to understand the participant's experience and perspectives of her professional identities as both an ESL teacher candidate and a Chinese language teacher in the United States, the study identified two key transitional periods: moving from China to the United States and transitioning from a student into a professional career. Findings underscore the dynamic nature of language teacher identities as individuals find themselves in different English language teaching contexts. The study also shows how professional identities are constructed in discourse and shaped by native speaker ideologies in the English language teaching field.In addition, the study reveals the dearth of critical reflection of Asian ethnic English language teachers on raciolinguistic ideologies obscuring their raciolinguistic identities and the crucial role that school climate plays in shaping teacher identities. The study calls for teacher candidates to have opportunities for critical reflection on their language teacher identities and critical analysis of curriculum and experiences in language teacher preparation programs.

Research on “native” and “non-native” English-speaking teachers: Past developments, current status, and future directions

“…For example, Galloway (2014) analyzed teachers’ interviews, diaries, and focus groups without following a specific methodological genre of qualitative research to examine a multilingual NNEST's experience with her “fake American” accent in Japan. The studies that follow a specific methodological genre of qualitative research usually choose case study (e.g., Faez & Karas, 2019), ethnography (e.g., Appleby, 2016), or narrative inquiry (e.g., Fan & de Jong, 2020; Rudolph et al, 2019) and sometimes combine the affordances of different genres eclectically (Burri, 2018; Menard-Warwick et al, 2019; Yan, 2021; Zheng, 2017). For example, Menard-Warwick et al (2019) utilized an ethnographic case study to examine how English language teachers “appropriate historically-available discourses about English and ELT for their own identity development” in urban Guatemala, rural Nicaragua, and a Tibetan refugee community in India (p. 367).…”

Narratives and Identities: A Critical Review of Empirical Studies From 2004 to 2022

“…Narrative researchers are found to have used multiple strategies for collecting data. Some of the researchers (Barkhuizen, 2016;Fan & de Jong, 2019;Leigh, 2019;Liu & Xu, 2013;Nguyen & Dao, 2019;Xie & Dong, 2020) have made the actual process and strategies of data collection and the co-construction of identity explicit, while many others (Charles, 2019;Li, 2020;Macías Villegas et al, 2020) have not mentioned the actual process of data collection, storying and restorying in the methodology section. Nguyen and Dao (2019), in the methodology section, note that "before storytelling participants were purposefully advised to be mindful of interactive, continuous and situated aspect of their experience so that stories could be elicited without interruption in-between" (p. 3).…”

“…Regarding data analysis approaches, thematic/paradigmatic analysis (Fan & de Jong, 2019;Liu & Xu, 2013;Prabjandee, 2020;Xie & Dong, 2020) is found to be heavily employed, while the short story approach (Barkhuizen, 2016), positioning analysis (Leigh, 2019), and a mixture of narrative thematic analysis along with chi-square statistical analysis (Aghaei et al, 2020) are also evident. Employing a thematic analysis approach, Fan and de Jong (2019) analysed the stories of a Chinese candidate of an ESL teacher enrolling in a TESOL program at a US-based university.…”

Defying “those who cannot, teach” and other stereotypes about teachers: Analyzing the Just Because poems written by ELL teacher candidates

“…(Steele, 2010, p. 5) Teachers face stereotype threat due to the contingencies of their social identities on a daily basis. Such contingencies are shaped by the shifting sociopolitical and sociocultural assumptions of education in U.S. history (De Costa & Norton, 2017;Spring, 2018), the contextual complexities and realities of the teaching profession and teacher identities (Fan & de Jong, 2019;Morgan, 2016;Olsen, 2016;Peercy, Sharkey, Baecher, Motha, & Varghese, 2019), as well as teachers' personal experiences (Lindahl & Yazan, 2019;Song, 2016). Stereotype threats have direct impact on intellectual identities and performance (Ihme & Möller, 2015;Steele, 1997).…”