“Teaching, my passion; publishing, my pain”: unpacking academics’ professional identity tensions through the lens of emotional resilience

Abstract

In the global competition of higher education, an increasing emphasis has been placed on university research excellence. Accordingly, academics have to engage in both research and teaching activities. The multiple and fragmented identities of academics can sometimes be contested, leading to identity tensions, and impeding their professional development. This raises the issue of how, and whether at all, academics integrate their professional identities in a culture of performativity. Against this backdrop, this qualitative study explored how a specific group of Chinese academics negotiate identity tensions as teachers and researchers through an emotional resilience lens. The narrative frames and interviews with 10 college English teachers yielded four types of identity negotiation in the continuum from identity conflicts to identity integration mediated by emotional resilience, including the disheartened performer, the miserable follower, the strenuous accommodator, and the fulfilled integrator. Emotional resilience as a mediator in professional identity tensions is discussed. Our findings offer a nuanced understanding of the complexity of academics developing an integrated professional identity. Policymakers should recognize the potential of emotional resilience in integrating academic professional identities and jointly support academics to cope with their identity tensions. However, if identity tensions are too complex for academics to solve, the policymakers should consider tensions as signals that the existing institutional policies may be counterproductive and need to be revised, rather than merely calling on academics’ resilience.

“I Have Grown Accustomed to Being Rejected”: EFL Academics’ Responses Toward Power Relations in Research Practice

“…Consistent with teacher identity, EFL teachers’ researcher identity also displays features of being dynamic, complex, and multifaceted ( Teng, 2018 ). It has been noted that EFL academics’ researcher identity construction is subject to not only personal factors such as research knowledge and skills ( Dai, 2009 ; Xu, 2020 ), research self-efficacy ( Boran, 2018 ; Nakata et al, 2021 ), research motivations ( Yuan et al, 2016 ; Peng and Gao, 2019 ), but also a number of institutional ( Yang et al, 2021a ), and socio-cultural factors ( Norton and Early, 2011 ; Xu, 2014 ). Extensive research has shown that many socio-institutional factors exert tremendous influence upon EFL teachers’ researcher identity construction, such as global and national academic culture (e.g., Zhang, 2014 ; Tian et al, 2016 ; Tran et al, 2017 ; Teng, 2019 ; Gao and Zheng, 2020 ), institutional research culture (e.g., Bai, 2018 ; Farsani and Babaii, 2019 ; Alhassan and Ali, 2020 ; Bao and Feng, 2022 ), and institutional research policies (e.g., Xu, 2014 ; Long and Huang, 2017 ; Yuan et al, 2020 ; Yang et al, 2021a ; Yuan, 2021 ).…”

“…Subject to various factors, the construction of researcher identity is a long and arduous process ( Yuan, 2017 ), particularly for university EFL teachers in current academic contexts. Influenced by the trends of marketization ( Mok, 2009 ), new managerialism ( Deem et al, 2008 ), the performative culture ( Perryman, 2009 ; Yang et al, 2021a ), and the intention of enhancing their global competitiveness, many higher education institutions have adopted a research-oriented culture and put explicit requirements for research output in institutional policies such as recruitment, promotion, and key performance evaluation ( Wang and Han, 2011 ; Bai et al, 2012 ; Long and Huang, 2017 ). University EFL teachers are thus socio-institutionally driven to be research productive in order to meet these requirements.…”

“…As a result, becoming a researcher has proven to be a difficult and demanding journey for EFL teachers, during which they frequently grapple with various tensions and challenges in their situated socio-institutional contexts ( Barkhuizen, 2009 ; Liu and Borg, 2014 ). In a study done by Yang et al (2021a) , they reported that both negative and positive emotions contributed to the professional identity tensions, which led the EFL teachers to be the disheartened performer, the miserable follower, the strenuous accommodator, and the fulfilled integrator.…”

“…Additionally, research has been given a top priority in many higher education institutions across the world that wish to improve their global ranking ( Quimbo and Sulabo, 2014 ; Dai et al, 2021 ), particularly in the publish-or-perish academic culture ( Lee, 2014 ; Bai, 2018 ). Therefore, university EFL teachers, like teachers in other disciplines, face mounting pressure to be research-active and research-productive ( Borg and Liu, 2013 ; Yang et al, 2021a ).…”

The Role of EFL Teachers' Self-Efficacy and Emotional Resilience in Appraisal of Learners' Success

“…Furthermore, resilience can play an integral role in the cycle of emotional experiences. Concerning these intricately woven concepts, the ability to be emotionally resilient is crucial for scholars since it is with the help of this ability that they sustain a unified expert individuality (Yang et al, 2021 ). Educator resilience alludes to the cycle of, competence in, and result of constructive adjustment and continuous expert dedication and development when encountering difficult situations.…”