Identities in Practice and Discourse: Transnational English Language Teachers

Abstract

This thesis examines the language teacher identities (LTIs) of transnational teachers who are completing a language teacher education (LTE) program in Australia. Using an integrated framework of identity-in-practice and identity-in-discourse based on Trent (2015) and Varghese et al. (2005), the thesis, primarily, explores how these teachers represent their LTIs and, secondarily, whether and how teacher educators integrate identity into their teaching.

Three qualitative studies were conducted. The first study employed photo-elicitation to explore the LTIs of teachers in terms of claimed, assigned, practised and imagined identities. The second study employed the talk-around-text method to investigate how the teachers discursively represented their LTIs in their written assignments. The third study used interviews to examine the teacher educators’ integration of identity into their teaching.

The first two studies revealed that the LTIs of the transnational teachers – such as research-informed and empowered multilingual teachers – were highly idealised, likely influenced by common educational discourses, such as evidence-based teaching and multilingualism. Yet, tensions emerged in their LTI representations due to perceived contradictions between teacher preparation in Australia and expectations in their teaching contexts. The third study found three possible levels of identity integration in LTE: explicit, implicit and theoretical. This study also found three practices emphasised by the educators: bridging theory and practice, shifting away from deficit-based discourses, and developing critical reflexivity. Although not necessarily intended as identity pedagogy, these practices were perceived as contributing to the LTIs of teachers. These findings are discussed in light of calls to make LTI a leitmotif in LTE. Based on the findings from the three studies, the thesis presents an extension to Trent’s (2015) framework of identity-in-practice and identity-in-discourse.