1 Identity in Language Teaching
The field of teacher identity is a complex area that has been a subject of study in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) since the 1980s. Language teacher identity research originated in a variety of areas in applied linguistics and general educational research, such as teacher knowledge/teacher cognition, teacher beliefs, professional development and reflective practice. It is a concept that has been addressed predominantly from the perspective of English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL) (e.g. Taylor et al. 2013; Park 2017; Werbińska 2017); the language learner’s perspective (e.g. Murray et al. 2011; Taylor 2013) and secondary teacher education (e.g. Grenfell et al. 2003; Pachler et al. 2014).
Within the area of second language teacher education (SLTE) teacher identity has attracted increasing interest in the last two decades (e.g. Varghese 2005; Richards 2006; Beauchamp and Thomas 2009; Kanno and Stuart 2011; Kramsch 2014; Block 2014; Barkhuizen 2017; Pavlenko and Norton 2018) with researchers paying particular attention to teachers as object of study—their beliefs and attitudes about teaching, as well as on how they construct their professional identity in relation to the subject knowledge and their teacher training experience. Research on language teacher identity also focuses on teachers reflecting on their experience of teaching with the aim of improving practice (e.g. Farrell 2007). Other studies have emphasized the role of the teacher in developing learners’ intercultural competence (e.g. Byram and Kramsch 2008) and the importance of knowledge in constructing teachers’ professional identity because it is informed by practice and developed in the classroom (e.g. Jiménez Raya and Lamb 2008; Murray et al. 2011). This line of research stresses the importance of teacher professional identity development for good language teaching while recognizing that it “[…] promotes social equality” (De Costa and Norton 2017, p. 4).
The idea of good language teaching has also been explored from the perspective of teacher emotions. The notion of the good language teacher as an “emotional, passionate being” (Hargreaves 1998, p. 835) has been advanced by researchers (e.g. Sutton and Wheatley 2003; Zembylas 2005; Dewaele 2010; King 2015) for whom good teaching, “[…] an inherently emotional endeavour” (King 2015, p. 98), is not solely considered in terms of achieving good subject knowledge and being familiar with pedagogical techniques. Language teachers’ emotions such as the belief of caring for their learners and the feelings of responsibility for learners’ motivation and progress have also guided teachers’ pedagogical choices and professional development (Isenbarger and Zembylas 2006; O’Connor 2008) with the aim of enhancing their practice and meeting the expectations of learners, educational institutions and society. The latter aspect resonates within research on teacher professionalism that places language teacher professional identity within the materiality of the broader educational and institutional context where it is constructed. This includes the inherent inconsistencies between educational policies and practices which may require language teachers to demonstrate autonomy and accountability at the same time (Sachs 2001, p. 150); the complexities of more diverse than ever classrooms; and the demands of changing scenarios in a globalized world.
Research on language teacher identity has developed from a sociocultural perception of a collective identity which is negotiated and developed through communities of practice (professional teachers’ identity, national-based groups of individuals with a common culture and language) to include teachers’ complex and flexible individual identities (Canrinus et al. 2011) which integrate “[…] the individual and the social, making individuality a social and socially regulated affair” (Van Leeuwen 2009, p. 21), as well as their multidimensional identities (e.g. Duff and Uchida 1997; Tsui 2011; Kanno and Stuart 2011; Morgan and Clarke 2011; Cheung et al. 2015; Varghese et al. 2005, 2016; Barkhuizen 2017). As an example, Block (2015) referred to language teacher identity as how individuals self-position and are positioned by others as teachers, how they affiliate to different aspects of their work and how they build attachments to communities of practice. On the other hand, social psychologists have advocated the role of personal agency in shaping teachers’ lives (Vähäsantanen 2015) and in making decisions about their own professional learning. The role of agency is also present in recent research which focuses on the importance of teachers’ motivation as an aspect of their professional identity construction (Mercer and Kostoulas 2018). Theoretical frameworks from the perspective of self-efficacy (Bandura 2015), self-determination or achievement goal theory (Deci and Ryan 2012) have shed light on the reasons why individuals become teachers and the part that motivation plays in their professional development and classroom practices.
In this book we follow the epistemological exploration of teacher knowledge, beliefs and attitudes, as well as post-structuralist approaches to sociocultural aspects including gender, diaspora, educational and social affiliations and status, all of which are significant in the development of language teacher identity (Wilkins et al. 2012; Tabouret-Keller 1997). We adopt the socio-constructivist position of viewing language teacher identity as socially constructed, as a learning trajectory which is defined by the relation between the local and the global (Wenger 1998; Block 2017); as a continuous process of negotiation, potential change and constant dialogue (Akkermann et al. 2011), where the personal and the professional selves converge into oneself that results in the becoming of a language teacher, represented by teachers’ personal stories (Beijaard et al. 2004). In so doing, we endorse the notion of language teachers as agents in the formation of their own identity within the social and educational contexts which they inhabit and to which they make a contribution.
2 Aims of This Book
This book is about modern foreign language (MFL) teachers researching their own and other teachers’ experiences of identity construction and negotiation in the context of teaching and living in the UK. The idea of the book originates from the Language Acts and Worldmaking project,1 led by King’s College London and, more specifically, from a collaboration with the Diasporic Identities and the Politics of Language strand of that project led by the Open University, which investigates the role of MFL teachers in the UK with a view to challenging perceived attitudes and preconceptions about modern language education.
In broad terms, this volume aims to shed light on MFL teachers as agents in the construction of their own professional identities. Particularly, it intends to explore how the...