A short story analytical approach to narratives of language teacher researcher identity in communities of practice

Although there is an increasing body of research on language teacher identity, scant attention has been paid to language teacher researcher identity, particularly how it is (re)shaped in shared research experiences in local... [ view full abstract ]

Although there is an increasing body of research on language teacher identity, scant attention has been paid to language teacher researcher identity, particularly how it is (re)shaped in shared research experiences in local social contexts and projected in personal narratives of these experiences by language teachers. This study adopts a short story analytical approach (Barkhuizen, 2016) to explore how a Chinese university EFL teacher constructed and reconstructed her identity as a teacher researcher through participation in an institutional research community of practice. Two meaningful short stories are extracted from narrative interviews and analyzed for both their content and the context in which the short stories were constructed and interpreted. Informed by the theory of community of practice (Wenger et al., 2014), the findings of the study indicate that both transitions from peripheral to full participation and the teacher’s exercise of agency to overcome contextual obstacles and to enhance the community are part of an overall trajectory of identity formation. This study is part of a growing body of research on language teacher identity and language teacher research. In this presentation, I show how it contributes to this field by suggesting ways for both language teachers and institutional leaders to help teachers construct a robust researcher identity and foster a conducive environment for teacher research.