Exploration Of Identity Construction Of Chinese University EFL Teachers In Different Historical Contexts

Teacher identity has been considered as the internal drive for teacher professional development,thus greatly influencing teachers’ enthusiasm for teaching as well as their pedagogical practices.As such,exploration of language teacher identity has earned many researchers’ attention in China and beyond.Despite these abundant studies of language teacher identity,however,there lack sufficient studies of university EFL teacher identity in the Chinese context.Most of Chinese researchers have focused on the construction of teacher identity in specific socio-historical context,to some extent,neglecting how EFL teacher identity has been constructed in the long-run history of historical and social changes.Thus,it is of great necessity to explore how Chinese university EFL teachers interacted with their respective “lived” socio-historical contexts and how their professional identities have been shaped by such different contexts.To meet this end,informed by historical sociology,the author in this thesis adopted narrative inquiry by conducting in-depth of interviews with four Chinese university EFL teachers.These four informants have respectively experienced four different historical periods in China,namely,“the turbulent period(1949-1977)”,“the recovery and development period(1978-1999)”,“the rapid development period(2000-2011)” and “the further development period(2012-present)” in the long run of EFL education in China.The result of qualitative data analysis suggests that due to the influence of historical,social and political factors,university EFL teachers told different narrative stories about who they were as professional EFL teachers.The study further reveals that teacher identity was affected not only by different socio-historical factors,but also by teachers’ individual experiences,“significant others”,practices in professional learning community,important events,interpersonal relations and teacher agency as well.Therefore,influenced by different life experiences and socio-historical contexts,university EFL teachers continue to produce and reproduce their identity meaning in the negotiation of personal self and social expectations,thus constructing their own teacher identity.Moreover,in the process of teacher identity construction,“teaching and educating people”,“morality” and “love for students” have become the public discourse of university EFL teachers,which confirm the good traditions are inherited and shared by teachers.Based on the research findings,therefore,university EFL teachers need to realize the importance of self-identity and exercise teacher agency to overcome the constraints of teacher development in the new era.Universities and educational administrators also need to reorganize the organizational culture to attend to teachers’ inner needs,build and sustain teacher professional learning community with teacher development as its core,and strive to provide a supportive system and sociocultural environment for teachers to construct their professional identity.