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Identity has been conceptualized as an analytical tool for understanding the relationship between school and society (Gee, 2000). Central to educational research on identity is teachers’ identity which has emerged as a separate area (Beijaard et al., 2004).As one of the sub-categories of teachers’ identity research, language teachers’ identity(hereafter as LTI), has attracted increasing attention from researchers and theorists in the field of language teaching and language teacher education, and the number of research has grown exponentially in the past decade (Martel & Wang, 2014).
As can be seen from the research literature, great ef orts have been made to explore the definitions, constituents, characteristics and influencing factors about LTI. In terms of definition, many studies (Barkhuizen, 2017a; Varghese et al., 2005; Xu, 2017) have defined LTI as an “interaction of how we see ourselves as language teachers (English language, bilingual, or foreign/ world language teachers) and how others see us”(Varghese et al., p.21). In addition, Xu (2017) posits that LTI contains three layers of meaning: firstly, it is a combination of a language teacher’s self-positioning of who he/she is and others’ collective conceptions of who he/she is; secondly, LTI is a continuous process of becoming, which is constantly negotiated with various resources available within certain social, cultural, historical and political context; thirdly, LTI is the pursuit of membership in a community (p.122).
Pennington and Richards (2016) argue that LTI is comprised of two types of competences: Foundational Competences and Advanced Competences . The Foundational Competences contain five sub-identities: language-related identity, disciplinary identity,context-related identity, self-knowledge and awareness, and student-related identity;while the Advanced Competences of language teachers’ identity comprise two diferent teaching skills (Practiced and Responsive Teaching Skills and Skills of Theorizing from Practice) and teachers’ membership in communities of practice and profession.Pennington and Richards’s (2016) identification of elements of LTI provides the literature with a solid foundation in understanding the intricate notion.
A thorough review of existing studies indicates that researchers have investigated LTI from multiple perspectives and yielded fruitful findings. According to the literature,researchers find that personal factors, generally including teachers’ biographies and prior experience, significant others, linguistic positions and cultural status, play a considerable part in shaping their professional identity (Bukor, 2015; Duf & Uchida, 1997; Izadinia,2013; Trent & Gao, 2009; Tsui, 2007). Moreover, the literature suggests that teachers’education programs, teachers’ reflexive practices in applying new pedagogies and experience to teachers’ community of practices af ect language teachers in building up professional identity (Block, 2015; Martel, 2015; Park, 2012; Yazan, 2017; Yuan & Lee,2015). Another strain of literature focuses on the contextual influence on the formation of LTI (Han, 2016; Nguyen, 2017; Salinas, 2017). This strain of studies argues that curriculum reforms, workplace environment, local community cultures, relationship with colleagues all have been evidenced by the literature as important factors that exert an impact on the development of LTI.
Although there is a copious list of studies in literature, gaps still exist:
Firstly, in terms of participants, great concern was paid reporting how student teachers’ professional identity has been shaped or reshaped during practicum, and in-service teachers’ professional identity change seemed to be ignored; secondly, a large majority of studies chose urban cities as research sites, very few of them were conducted in rural areas, and even fewer works examined secondary school EFL teachers’professional life in remote, rural, multiethnic and multilingual regions; and thirdly,previous research has discovered that teachers’ education programs and courses play important roles in shaping language teachers’ professional identity. However, this line of studies has its limits. For one thing, most of the studies concentrated on student teachers’or teacher candidates’ professional identity construction in teachers’ education programs or practicums, and relatively little attention was paid to in-service teachers’ professional identity transformation happened in these programs; for the other, many of these studies usually observed how education programs af ected the teachers’ identity construction, but failed to examine how their experiences and reflections were internalized and manifested through classroom practices.
In order to fill the research gaps, the present study sets out to investigate the complicated professional identity construction of three secondary school EFL teachers who are teaching in remote, rural and multiethnic regions in southwest China. In order to achieve this goal, the following questions are raised:
1) How is secondary school EFL teachers’ professional identity formed and developed by their personal and professional experiences?
2) What are the possible factors that shape teachers’ professional identity construction in diferent phases of their professional development?