A Study Of High School English Teachers’ Professional Identity Metaphors

Teachers’ professional identity is an important part of their professional development.Teachers’ professional identity refers to their way of looking at professional roles and views aboutthe teacher-student relationship and teaching profession. Researchers have conducted a substantialbody of research concerning language teachers’ professional identity. And in the field of Englishlanguage teaching, abundant studies about teachers’ professional identity were made on collegeteachers from the narrative perspective. As metaphor study has become one of the most importantmeans and tactics in doing teaching narrative, it is regarded as a key way to unveil teachers’professional identity.The current study aims at probing high school English teachers’professional identity from theangle of metaphors. The questions of this study are as follows:1. What metaphors do high school English teachers use to describe a teacher role?2. What do the metaphors reveal about high school English teachers’ sense of theirprofessional identity?The thesis investigated and collected98high school English teachers’ metaphors throughquestionnaire. Based on the data, the researcher analyzed the English teachers’ metaphors andclassified them into ten categories. The roles high school English teachers play in the process ofteaching, the relationship between teacher and students and the teaching concept involved in themetaphors are illustrated in detail in the paper. In addition, the researcher selected ten teachers withdifferent length of teaching practice from the participants to take part in a semi-structured interview to have a deeper understanding of high school English teachers’professional identity.The study unveiled the main metaphor categories high school English teachers use to describetheir professional identity, of which the three most dominant metaphorical categories include“Teacher as nurturer”,“Teacher as guide” and “Teacher as devotee”. Using conceptual metaphortheory to analyze the mapping relations between source domain and target domain, high schoolEnglish teachers’ metaphors are explained by the inner-mechanism of cognitive frame, to reveal thefeatures of their professional identity. By analyzing the elements of metaphors and the teachingconcepts and beliefs underneath the metaphors, the study has also found that student-centeredteaching concept occupies the dominant position among high school English teachers. Both positiveand negative concepts of high school English teachers’ professional identity were presented,embodying positive culture transmitters and negative knowledge providers. In addition, the studyshows high school English teachers’conception of professional identity is diverse and dynamic. It ishoped that more attention could be paid to raising awareness of high school English teachers’professional identity through this exploratory research.