A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Two Pre-service Eneglish Teachers' Identity

Teacher identity,as one of the research on the identity construction,has been widely studied in various academic fields.It also draws more and more attention from a host of researchers.Many studies combined teacher identity and discourse to explore the identities of the teacher.However,the research on the construction of pre-service teacher identity,especially the empirical research from the perspective of critical discourse analysis is relatively rare.Besides,the power relations behind the discourses in various communities are sometimes neglected.Therefore,it is of both theoretical and practical significance to conduct the present study.This study starts from November,2015—at the end of the two participants'internship to August,2016 before they became the real teachers.The two research participants are the senior students in a normal university.Besides,they are female students and during the process of becoming real teachers,and they possessed their own special experiences.Adopting one qualitative research method—case study,this study collected data need through three research instruments(semi-structured interview,documents and classroom observation)to solve the following three research questions:(1)YWhat are the discourses in Julia and Fang's various communities?(2)What are the power relations hidden in the discourses?(3)What are the identities constructed under the influence of discourses and power relations?The findings were gained by interpreting the data based on the theoretical framework of critical discourse analysis and community of practice.Research findings are as follows:(1)There mainly exists five kinds of discourses in the two pre-service English teachers' communities of practice:social discourse,curriculum discourse,pedagogic discourse,border discourse,and self-reflective discourse.(2)The two participants were enormously "manipulated" by the power relations,which were hidden in the diversified discourses.They were both subject to the power and equipped with knowledge on teaching under the power.(3)Identity is not static,but continuously renegotiated.Under the influence of various discourses and power relations,two major sub-identities were constructed—"follower" and"breaker".Finally,based on the research findings above,this study offers some suggestions to the training of pre-service teachers,and to future research on pre-service teachers'identity construction.