The Sociocultural Perspective on Non-native Teacher Identity Formation Process

Abstract

Research on teacher professional identity has been flourishing in recent decades as part of a drive to understand how identity can influence self-perceptions and professional practice amongst teachers. This qualitative study investigates the identity formation process of seven non-native TESOL tutors working in a tertiary environment in the United Kingdom, and it examines the contextualized factors shaping their identities. To explore the teacher identity construction process, a sociocultural theoretical lens that emphasises the social embeddedness of teacher identity has been utilised. The findings of the study show that non-native teachers working in higher education are active agents who are able to construct and reconstruct their unique teaching identities, corresponding to the demands of the social contexts they are engaged within. The results of the study also demonstrate that a non-native status, through which teachers perceive their identities, does not disempower them as professional experts, but empowers them to enhance their professional identities through the process of context-specific acquisition of knowledge and new experience.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.28.15129