Language Teacher Identity Tensions by Tajeddin, Zia; Yazan, Bedrettin;

Short description:

Addressing the critical issue of teacher identity tensions, this edited volume looks at the tensions between teachers’ instructional beliefs, values, and priorities, and the contextual constraints and requirements.

Long description:

Addressing the critical issue of teacher identity tensions, this edited volume looks at the tensions between teachers’ instructional beliefs, values, and priorities, and the contextual constraints and requirements. It examines how teachers deal with these tensions to avoid demotivation and burnout, which play a significant role in identity construction. Tensions are inseparable from growth and transformation but have the potential to disrupt teacher identity construction. Therefore, continual efforts to resolve tensions in teaching are inevitable. The process of resolution or reconciliation might be extended, and teachers could need support in that process to minimize the possible negative impacts on their identities. This process can simultaneously generate positive outcomes for teachers’ growth and learning. Therefore, how teachers perceive, respond to, and grapple with tensions are critical experiences that offer windows into the complexities of teacher identity negotiation.

The volume paints a picture of the personal, professional, and political dimensions of teacher identity tensions in various international contexts. The chapters draw on empirical studies with clear pedagogical implications to illustrate what identity tensions language teachers face in and outside the classroom during their career trajectory, how language teachers cope with identity tensions in their professional life, and how teacher educators can integrate identity tensions into teacher learning activities.

This book is beneficial for students and lecturers in applied linguistics, educational linguistics, and educational psychology. It will also be helpful of interest to teacher educators, teacher education researchers, teacher supervisors, and MA and doctoral students interested in research on language teacher identity.

“This timely collection of works addresses a key issue in language teacher education. In the volume, colleagues have engaged with language teachers’ identity development and tensions in a variety of contexts such as Australia, Hong Kong, Kuwait and the US. They have also explored how this identity issue can be approached and addressed in language teacher education programs with significant implications for language teachers’ professional practice, well-being and growth.”

Andy Gao, University of New South Wales, Australia

“Zia Tajeddin and Bedrettin Yazan have presented an impressive collection of papers that shed light on some real tensions in the construction, negotiation, and maintenance of language teacher identity. Connecting three key ideas – agency, emotion, and investment – is a welcome addition to contemporary discussions of identity in language teaching and teacher education. I am confident that graduate students, language teachers, and teacher educators will encounter many thought-provoking ideas between the covers of this book.”

Anwar Ahmed, University of British Columbia, Canada 

“In this timely and much-needed volume, Zia Tajeddin and Bedrettin Yazan curated chapters that present novel research on language teacher identity tensions. Drawing our attention to the fact that teacher identity is not shaped in a linear and conflict-free manner, the chapter authors examine tensions in identity, emotions, ideology and agency as key factors in influencing teachers’ professional growth and practices. The book is a must-read for teachers, teacher educators, and school administrators around the world.”

Anna Krulatz, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

“This volume brings together a burgeoning strand of research that foregrounds how teachers’ work in multilingual classrooms is intrinsically shaped by who they are in the world. Language is central to identity, but language is also a site of struggle. By centering the tensions that language teachers confront, Language Teacher Identity Tensions contributes to our understanding of how individuals’ lived experiences as language users, language teachers, and language learners form their professional identities.”

Peter Sayer, The Ohio State University, USA

"Examining recent developments in language teacher identity research, this book is an incredible source for researchers and teachers interested in better understanding the links between identity, emotion, agency and investment. As language classrooms are becoming increasingly complex environments, this timely volume presents data and critical commentaries on various aspects of language teacher identity to show how tensions arise and are addressed in practice."

Christina Gkonou, University of Essex, UK

Table of Contents:

Teacher identity tensions: An overview Section One: Tensions and Teacher Identity Construction 1. Making sense of teacher identity tensions through critical autoethnographic narrative: Pedagogizing identity in teacher education 2. Systemic tensions and ESOL teacher identity development: From affinity to disaffinity 3. Negotiating tensions between aspired and practiced identities: An Australian case of agency in language–content teacher collaboration 4. Age and Nationality: Identity Tensions in Kuwait 5. Borderland negotiations of personal-professional identity: South Korean university-level language educators in Japan 6. Raciolinguistic tensions in translingual and transnational identity as pedagogy 7. Barriers to entry as barriers to identity: Short stories of the struggles of ethnic minority English language teachers to enter teaching in Hong Kong Section Two: Identity Tensions and Teacher Education 8. Identity Tensions in Teacher Education 9. Understanding and promoting inclusive TESOL through participatory community engagements: A duoethnographic study 10. “I Am Not the Other”: A Yazidi American Teacher’s Identity Work 11. Navigating identities, tensions, and (non)agentive positions in a TESOL graduate course: A case study of one multilingual ESOL pre-service teacher Section Three: Identity Tensions and Teacher Beliefs and Practices 12. Language teachers’ gendered identity: Unpacking tensions in agency, instructional practice, and professional development 13. Enacting well-being: Identity and agency tensions for two TESOL educators14. Language teacher professional values, identity tensions, and agentive actions in the adult ESL setting 15. Negotiating identity tensions through feeling power. Epilogue.