EFL teachers discursive construction of professional identity

This study aims at exploring how eight foreign language teachers (all females) discursivelyconstruct their professional identity during their everyday interactions with colleagues, masterteachers, supervisors and principals or other staff at their schools and even with the students andtheir parents. The participants took part in semi-structured interviews and were in contact withthe researcher through email and other messaging systems over a 6-month period. Based onBamberg, De Fina, and Schiffrin’s three dilemmatic domains of identity, namely, agency/control,sameness/difference, and constancy/change, this study showed how these language teachersmake perceptions of the concept of professional identity through interactions that they havewithin the social context where they live and work. The results indicated that for this group ofteachers, the obstacles to gain a professional identity of one s career were constructed andreconstructed through constant interaction with other participants in different social contexts inwhich they participate. In particular, these teachers mostly believed that their identity as anEnglish language teacher was controlled by the world and not by themselves (control rather thanagency). Moreover, age and experience were two important factors determining the degree towhich their identities were constructed as either similar to other colleagues and even their ownteachers (sameness) or different in terms of trying innovative methodologies (difference) as wellas following a fixed routine as the best approach in forming their daily career (constancy) incontrast to changing their practices according to the particular features of the context (change).

Keywords:

Professional Identity , EFL Teachers Professional Identity , Discursive Construction , Discourse