Narrative Research On Foreign Language University Teachers’ Identity From The Perspective Of Positioning Theory

Teacher identity plays a crucial role in shaping teachers’ teaching beliefs and affecting teachers’ teaching behaviors.As foreign language teachers in colleges and universities are facing challenges and problems in this new era after the publishing of China National Teaching Quality Standards for Foreign Language Majors,teacher identity becomes a key element to understand teachers’ professional development and improving their teaching.Positioning theory,was firstly introduced into educational field by Bronwyn Davies and Rom Harre(1990).It focuses on how individuals are positioned in interactions and narratives.It is composed of three main parts,story lines,positions,and speech acts.One or more positions embedded in discourses are presented within a storyline or storylines and speech acts refer to communicative practices that happened between the person-to-person or personto-social group,which reveal a cluster of rights and duties that individuals should perform or prohibit perform.The dynamic episodes or patterns created through speech acts and positions construct a storyline.There are different modes of positioning.First-order positioning refers to the initial positions given by others.The second-order positioning occurs when the first-order positioning is resisted or rejected.Interactive positioning refers to the one person says positions to another and reflexive positioning describes the positioning of oneself.A main branch of Positioning theory was contributed by Michael Bamberg(1997;2012),who provided a clear methodological process for the analysis of narrative structure and performance.He proposed a three-layer analytic approach which are respectively:(1)How are the characters positioned in relation to one another within the story?(2)How does the speaker position him or herself within the story to the audience?(3)How do narrators position themselves to themselves?Given the importance of identity development,the aim and goal of this narrative study are to explore three research questions of three foreign languages teachers from the same university by using positioning theory and three levels of analysis.(1)What are the three participants’ first and second-order positionings during their early language learning experiences?What are their interactive and reflexive positionings when they became university language teachers?(2)What kind of identities of participants can be revealed?(3)What are the implications that can be learned in order to promote professional identity development?Within the framework of positioning theory and Michael Bamberg’s analytic tool,the findings indicate that:(1)The first and second-order positionings are revealed by the participants’ early language learning,and the positive positions have a great impact on their career choice.The interactive positions mainly come from their interactions with students,institutions,and their children.The reflexive positions focus on how to answer the question "Who am I?" The interactive and reflexive positions reveal the challenges and conflicts brought by multiple identities.(2)Foreign language teachers in a China university present their identities as multiple and dynamic accompanied by the accumulating experiences and responsibilities they should take.In this study,the participants present their identities as teachers,mothers,and researchers.(3)In the end,foreign language teachers now are facing more dilemmas and challenges,which require them to have self-regulated ability and research abilities.Besides,women teachers should be given more attention.This study takes three foreign language teachers from the same universities as the research participants and applied positioning theory and Michael Bamberg’s narrative analysis method to analyze the discourse materials of the professional identity development of three foreign language teachers in universities.It explores the development process and influencing factors of their professional identity,and provides insights on how to promote the professional identity identification of foreign language teachers in universities.