Research Information System
Teachers Research!, ISTANBUL 2017 IATEFL SIG, İstanbul, Turkey, 02 June 2017, vol.1, no.1, pp.22-23, (Summary Text)
Teacher emotions and tensions: A ‘critical’ stance on teacher identity construction in EFL contexts Each occupation provides individuals with diverse emotional experiences, and the repetitive nature of them has a great impact on their professional identities. The teaching profession is not different from other occupations in terms of its vulnerability to emotional experiences (Hargreaves, 2001; Lasky, 2005; Song, 2016; Zembylas, 2002, 2003, 2005). According to Feiman-Nemser (2008), learning to teach involves four main processes: “learning to think like a teacher, learning to know like a teacher, learning to feel like a teacher and learning to act like a teacher” (p. 698) (emphasis original). While aspects of thinking, knowing and acting have been studied a lot in relation to epistemological, ontological and pedagogical aspects of teacher education, our knowledge is quite limited when it comes to the role of teachers’ emotions on their trajectory to be a teacher and their actual teaching practices in different socio-cultural contexts (e.g., Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). Thus, using critical applied linguistics as our theoretical stance, in this longitudinal case study, we explored the teacher professional identity construction of two novice native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) working in an EFL context, Turkey. By collecting data over a six-month-period through weekly journal entries, semi-structured follow-up interviews and field notes, we aimed to gain insights into Emily and David’s experiences and reflections in terms of their emotions and tensions throughout their teacher identity construction in their first year. While this is not yet another study on native-nonnative dichotomy in TESOL, our findings do have implications to challenge the so-called ‘privileged status’ of NESTs especially in EFL contexts where local exigencies either facilitate or restrict their professional identity construction, and thus, their praxis.