Teaching As Farming:a Narrative Inquiry Into Teacher Identity Of A College English Teacher

"Good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher"(Palmer,1998)."Professional action is doing professional identity"(Watson,2006). Therefore, to teach well, a teacher is supposed to develop proper identities. The present research aims to explore the characteristics of the professional identity of a college English teacher and the factors underlying her professional identity formationThis research chooses Hope, a college English teacher with over30years’ teaching experiences as the research subject. The methodologies include narrative inquiry and case study. Fieldwork has been done for one academic year to collect data by means of classroom observation, audio recording, field notes, semi-interviews, conversations, teacher-student emails, students’ journals and students’ writings etc. Grounded Theory (Glaser,1978) is adopted to analyze data to answer three questions:1). What features can be found in the teaching of the teacher, Hope?2). What teacher identity can be identified from her teaching features?3). What are the possible factors underlying her teacher identity shaping?The results show that the teaching of Hope presents "teaching as farming", a metaphor from Hope herself, as the typical feature of her teaching. First, she started constructing learning culture before she had first met her students that she thought of as cultivating soil before sowing, which is presented through four small narratives, such as:"1am eager to hear from you","Two statues of an eagle starved to death and a skinned horse","Today is a special day","Nurturing a culture matters more than teaching knowledge". Second, she gave the first class as sowing seeds in the ground, consisting of "Self-introduction","The road not taken","Introduction of activity curriculum". Third, she removed learning barriers as hoeing crops presented by three narratives of "You are a teacher, too","Teaching is seasonal","Tell you my secret". Fourth, she appreciated students’achievements as reaping in autumn, which is presented in the narratives of "Who, first, finger-guessing game?!","You are not only our teacher, but also a friend, a grandma, a guider". The "teaching as farming" feature of Hope’s teaching practice embodies her teacher identities of teacher as authentic person, teacher as pedagogic carer, teacher as curriculum developer, teacher as researcher and teacher as educator.The factors underlying Hope’s professional identities can be identified as RICH reform experiences, further education, community cooperative exploration, reflection in practice, and influence of important academic helpers.