Professor Gary Barkhuizen on Teacher Identity

conference I'm really happy to be

involved I've been keeping an eye on

what's been going on and I've attended

one or two sessions in lightening

sessions I really enjoyed them I've

learnt a lot and I feel quite honored to

be invited to take part and I just want

to thank dia and and the other

organizers for in for inviting me it's

really it's really I think some

excellent work that's taking place and

I'm amazed that the at the attendance of

the participants has been so good and so

consistently hi it's it's it's

absolutely wonderful to see the interest

and the enthusiasm especially at these

difficult times that we we are living

through at the moment so they're just

after those introductions and welcomes I

thought that gets straight on to my

topic for the day which is looking at

language teacher identity and I think

language teacher identity is something

that we all are necessarily interested

in perhaps we don't think about identity

from a research perspective or perhaps

not even from a professional perspective

but it's something they'll be thinking

about all the time in our workers

teachers and those researchers as

language teachers and researchers in

language teaching we do think about

identity all the time maybe we don't

articulate it as identity but we're

certainly asking questions about you

know Who am I who are we who do our work

with who who are these people that I

work with who are the East who other

people in my institutions and how do I

fit in how does who I think I am affect

my practice what I do in the classroom

so and what I do in schools so and what

I do in the broader community so even if

we don't think about teacher identity in

a academic sense so in a scholarly sense

or you know researcher sense that is

something that we constantly do in our

lives as as practice

and my practitioner I mean as a teacher

practitioner or a researcher

practitioner and things have changed

over the years when many years ago

teachers language teachers included

we're seen as like machines they receive

as technicians where they were given the

syllabus and then they were put in the

classroom and they just had to work

through the syllabus and there was an

assessment at the end and then they had

to grade the assessment in the next year

or the next semester they would do the

same thing but for the past 20 30 years

now teachers have been seen as as

thinking and feeling people who have

beliefs who had theories about teaching

and who consider the place who

considered their place in the context

that they work in and by context I don't

only mean the classroom but also the

institution's the schools the

educational systems which could be

regional but even national and even on a

global stage as we go some of us have

opportunities to go to international

conferences where we interact with

people who come from different

educational systems and although there

may not be the same as ours but it gives

us to reflect on what we do in our

system so this is one of the things I

want to say as I go through my talk

today what I'm saying about language

teacher identity today and I will

reflect on some some theories and study

on language teacher identity I'm not

telling you that this is the way it is

I'm just throwing out some ideas there

and what I'm hoping you'll do is you'll

reflect on your own experience and on

your own context of language teaching so

I'll just share my screen here with you

if someone can let me know can you see

my screen yes sir yes okay thank you

very much these are

on this thank you very much so on the

screen this is what I'm going to be

talking about today exploring language

teacher identity how and why so I'll try

and answer those questions and I'll

start off by talking quite generally

about seven facets of identity these are

sort of general facets of identity what

what I like to think about what identity

is generally and then focus a little bit

more on constructing language teacher

identity and negotiating language

teacher identity specifically so moving

broadly from general ideas about

identity to language teacher identity

and then I'll talk a little bit about a

conceptualization of language teacher

identity that I put together from an

edited book that I published a couple of

years ago so I'll go through that

conceptualization then I'll talk a

little generally about why I think it's

necessary first to explore language

teacher identity and then I present a

study that I did a couple of years ago

where I did as a researcher explore

language teacher identity and show you

by the end of it why I think that had

benefits for me as a researcher and then

depending on how much time we got

I'll go through a list of some quite

interesting hot topics on language

teacher identity research for those who

have an interest in this topic from a

researcher perspective but those topics

also interesting for those who want to

do teacher research or who want to

reflect on their own lives as teachers

as a reflective practitioner to think

about who they are

as teachers how their teacher identity

affects their own practice or how it

relates to their own practice in the

classroom so I'll be going through an

research topics I had many more and

perhaps I can ask the question

afterwards if there's a place on the

Delta web site maybe I could I could

give you these topics and they could be

put on the webpage for people who are

looking for research topics in this area

that I can I can share with you there's

no time to go through one of them in the

presentation today but I've got a long

list and if there's a place on the

webpage where you can file them away

somewhere you have access so well

someone sounds interested in mine we

teach identity that's good so why don't

you is I saw it straight away with these

seven facets I've got just I've got this

thing on my screen here which is asking

me about the waiting room I'd like to

get rid of that discontent that yes yeah

it's obvious professor Kane please yeah

it's got it's in the way of my screen

here just asking it's asking me to put

people in the waiting room others in his

seat oh yes sir I'm just doing it also

said can you please just go wait hey

it's gone that's a cool okay thank you

thank you very much so so these seven

facets of identity you know we often ask

the question what do we mean by identity

well they are let's come back but it's

okay there are lots of theories about

what identity is from different

theoretical perspectives psychological

perspective sociological perspective

social cultural perspective there's lots

and lots of months but these are 7-7

perspective that help me make sense of

it myself and I always feel more

comfortable about talking about identity

when I remember these seven maybe you'll

also find them useful for yourself

so the

first one is called embodied identity

right so this is the identity which

relates to this body so if I talk about

about Gary's identity it's the identity

in this body the self we locate some way

inside this body like it's mobile so my

identity goes with me it's in this body

it's always related to where the body is

in in space in time and space right so

it's not complicated it's just simply

saying if I'm talking about Gary's

identity it's this person's identity

it's in this it relates to the same body

and there's a beautiful picture on my

body over there okay that blue body the

second facet has to do with reflexive

identity this is the selfs view of the

self so this is who we think we are so

it's how I see myself all right

one aspect of identity is how I see

myself

movie think we are and it's a

complicated mesh of very different

attributes my capability is my ability

is the things I can do the things I

can't do the way I perceive myself to

look the things I am good at the things

I can't do and so on so all the way I

perceive myself the self view of the

self reflexive meaning it comes in words

the cells view of the self but as you

know identity is not only something that

is going inwards with our social human

beings we live in communities we live in

societies we live with other people we

interact with other people and so we

also project our identities projected

identities this is how we want others to

see us so this is language is very

important here because we use language

to express our identities but but many

of the semiotic resources as well such

as our appearance the way

nope the gestures we use that how we

dress all these semiotic resources we

use in our interaction with other people

we project our identities okay so we've

got three so far we've got an embodied

identity which is the identity that

relates to this body how I see myself

and how I project myself so I want

others to see me the fourth facet

relates to how other people then

recognize their identity then I project

alright so we interact with other people

so here in this little picture here

you've got the other person recognizing

the identity that I projected so when

I'm interacting with someone I'm

projecting an identity through my

semiotic resources such as my language

and so on but that person is then

perceiving me interacting and so they

then recognize that identity the way the

projected identities are understood and

acted upon by others in specific social

contexts how they see us all right

sometimes we get an identity imposed on

us or ascribe to us in specific contexts

by other people they impose on identity

on us even though they don't know us or

they don't know what we do and often

these identities are in conflict with

the way we perceive ourselves without

reflexive identity so we may see

ourselves in one way but other people or

other institutions may ascribe an

identity to us which which is in

conflict sometimes it may be in harmony

with the way we perceive our own

identities but sometimes it may be in

conflict as well and then an oppressor

of identity is the imagined identity

these are our possible selves how we

imagine ourselves in other communities

in other times and in other spaces so we

can you know

when you embark on your teacher training

you imagine yourself as a teacher in a

school one day in three or four years

time so you have an imagined teacher

identity or sometimes when you are a

teacher you imagine yourself as a PhD

student or you imagine yourself as a

school principal so you often or you

imagine yourself teaching in a different

city or in a smaller school or a bigger

school and so you can imagine yourself

in different teacher identities in other

times or in other places and imagine

identity and then to talk about these

identities we use different cultural

embedded terms that then are available

to us in any socio-cultural context so

these identity categories that we are

very familiar with so we can talk about

a cultural identity or gender identity

or age identity so these are over here

for example a gender identity age

identity is Nick identity social past

sexual sexuality identity race

nationality religious identity as are so

these are some of the culturally

familiar terms that are available to us

to talk about those other facets of

identity okay all right so

I don't know why this is not moving on

okay all right so if we now think about

a teacher identity right there's we got

we've got a teacher and we've got the

personal identity which we've just been

talking about we are people outside of

the classroom right outside of the

school we all have a life outside of

Education outside of schools but we have

of course a professional I did so these

identities overlap when we walk into the

classroom or walk into the school part

of our personal identity comes into the

classroom with us of course we can't

separate the two they obviously are

connected so a personal identity and the

professional identity are very much

interconnected and then if we look a

little more closely at what this

professional identity with professional

teacher identity does there are many

aspects of this identity for example we

relate our teacher identity to an

institution so we could be a teacher in

a university context or we could be in a

primary school or we could be in a rural

school or urban school we could be in a

high schools at different institutions

that we work in if you think of a

language teacher in words in university

context and a primary school their

identities are quite different right and

so the institution is very closely

interconnected with the identity and the

construction the ongoing construction of

the identity of the individual teacher

and the roles that we have so we have

roles such as a maybe a classroom

teacher we may be a head of a department

we could be a curriculum developer we we

sometimes we are grading papers we are

an Assessor for example we have multiple

roles as a team

we're not just simply teacher the

various roles that we have also as

teachers we have different beliefs about

what teaching is different theories

about teaching and these affect the way

that we work in the classroom that we do

our preparation that we do our

assessments and so on our theories our

beliefs about teaching sometimes these

are not always easily implemented in

certain educational systems because

there's a lot of resistance there are a

lot of constraints within systems but

nevertheless we do still have theories

and beliefs about what good teaching is

what bad teaching is what learners

should be learning what the needs of our

learners are and so on and some of these

theories and beliefs we developed in the

teacher education programs that we go

through and therefore I experience and

our history is very important in the

developing the construction of our

teacher identities and the history

includes our language learning history

so as English teachers if we are English

teachers one is our English learning

history and how does that relate to who

we are as as English teachers our

identities with English teachers and our

practice what we actually do now in the

classroom relates to our identity is

just a couple more here the materials we

use but not only the faster materials

like textbooks and worksheets and test

papers but also other types of materials

and this interesting research taking

place now on looking at materiality so

how things in the classroom like

furniture and even light and space and

electricity there's other material

things and technology and the lack of it

and so on now a lot of teachers are

working online in this new koban item

environment we're working in Howard's

house

relating to our identities as teachers

how is it disrupting our identities and

how are we negotiating new identities

very interesting questions to talk about

so materials is not only the textbook

for example but is other material or

physical aspects of our teaching lives

just two more much more research has

been dedicated to emotions and desires

how we feel about who we are and the

work that we do and how that relates to

our identity so emotions and identities

and practice the interconnection among

those three particularly emotions and

desires identity and what we do our

practice very much interconnected and

then finally our moral stance what we

believe is right what we believe is

ethical in our teaching and that says a

lot about who we are as teachers our

identities and this is constantly

changing because we are often faced with

quite interesting moral dilemmas in our

teaching as we sometimes confronted by

significant policy changes often within

schools but even at a national level or

international level these policy changes

which dictate to us what we must be

doing what should be doing and what does

that make us feel emotionally but in

terms of morally do we think that's

right how does it think what we do eat

no smashing you lose this and we go

along with it would you be one to

transform in the way that's been

suggested as much so there's a lot of

tension there's a lot of bubbling under

a lot of die limits that we sometimes

face with in our lives as teachers and

these are very interesting topics to

explore in our in our reflections as

teachers but I will say in our research

for those who are interested in doing

teacher research on teacher identity

okay this

was a book that I edited in 2017 and a

number of people say he on people wrote

chapters about teaching high fantasy and

they've put together there are constant

realizations of what they believe

teacher identity to be and what I did in

the introduction of the book was I did a

thematic analysis of their

conceptualizations of teacher identity

and I put it together into this this

conceptualization a composite

conceptualization of teacher identity

almost like a definition of teacher

identity although it's a bit dangerous

to try to define what is meant by

teacher identity because as soon as you

do that you know there's a

counter-argument that will come from

every direction but this is this is

quite a long definition on what can you

go through at all but just to highlight

some of the points that are here in red

so for example language teacher

identities are cognitive so it's

something inside the head but they're

also social entities are constructed

socially with other people and they will

say emotional they emotional we have

feelings and when we are constructing

our identities we feel about these

identities sometimes the feelings are

happy sometimes the feelings are

intention fold and stressing or

stressful their ideological because we

live in an ideological well there's

always policy there's always politics in

what we do as teachers and I've been

hearing that quite a bit in the

conference where a lot of decisions that

have to be made and sometimes you agree

with them you as a teacher agree

sometimes you don't agree so identity is

doing it's being who you are but it's

also doing you do your identity in

practice with other people they are

sometimes contested therefore we

in any social interaction sometimes

there is the the identity are contested

they resisted by other people but often

they accepted and they acknowledged and

valued so the work that we do and who we

are is acknowledged and accepted by

others often came there came up in the

definitions by the by the contributors

to the book was that sometimes we have a

core identity there's a part of us that

remains very much stable but on the

periphery on the outside there's other

aspects of identity that is much more

susceptible to change it's the other

bits can change more easily but the core

of us tends to stay much more stable in

terms of who we are but mostly they

acknowledge that LT is over here where

I'm pointing out language teachers

identities do change short-term in

short-term interactions but over time as

well so over the years in a teacher

career that identities do change over

time so particularly in social

interaction and also in material

interaction so not only in interaction

with other people but in interaction

with spaces and places and objects in

classrooms and institutions and even

online so the interaction we have with

people and with spaces and places is

where our identities change so I think

this is very much reflects a sort of

post-structuralist view of what teacher

identity is something that is there are

multiple identities you can go back to

this diagram here there are multiple

identities that are constantly changing

within different contexts in which we

work

okay so I think why why do we explore

language teacher identities why is it

something worth exploring

I think we're from from a teacher's

perspective I think it's you know to get

to know who we are in our particular

contexts so then we can reflect on our

practice I think as I said right at the

beginning I think this is something that

we all will all probably do sometimes

just not systematically but other times

much more systematically

who are we professionally by reflecting

on who we are we get to know a little

bit more about who we are who we are

professionally we bring knowledge of our

identities to a level of awareness

through the process of reflection and

particularly through the process of

teacher research such as action research

exploratory practice we bring instead of

just yeah when we're talking to other

teachers or we're talking to family and

we talk about school we talk about what

happened when we're doing that we

attract just me but you know our

implicitly talking about teach identity

but we're not really doing that

systematically through reflective

practice or through teacher research we

more systematically bring their to

conscious awareness and when we do that

then we able to relate it much more to

to our practice as I said you know we're

not just simply technicians we walk into

a classroom and implement the syllabus

without thinking without feeling without

knowing what it is that we're doing so

from a from a teaching perspective from

the teachers perspective it's really

useful to get to know what it is we're

doing so that we can think more deeply

about our practice that's an old

argument that's been that's been put

forward you know by people like Tom

Farrell and other and burns in action

research for a long long time I'm just

saying it here again particularly about

teacher identity but from

a researcher perspective it's also

really useful because as researchers by

focusing on teacher identity we get to

explore our teachers in their schools we

get to explore teachers in their

communities and teachers in their

teacher education programs so getting to

know who these people are

and what it is that they are doing from

their perspective who are these people

who are these teachers what are their

identities and then by getting to know

they teach identities we're able to

learn more about what the most effective

type of professional development is for

them the more implications for teacher

education implications for the syllabus

that we use in teacher education for

example

okay so that's a little bit about the

rush mal I'm going to come back to the

PowerPoint if you can let me share the

screen again please

if I could share the screen is DN there

yeah think so let me do it okay

okay so now we can do sir okay okay so I

thought I'd share with you a short study

I'll go through it quite quickly how we

doing for time you okay I'll go through

the study quite quickly which is study

on a teacher on a pre-service teacher

it's a it's it's based on a TESOL

courtyard right a couple of years ago

now but I just want to show you how I

use some narrative analysis to explore

her developing teacher identity and what

I learned from it when I as a researcher

learn from it and how that helped me

understand her developing teacher

identity which I have used in my own

practice as a teacher educator so for

those of you who in my presentation a

couple of weeks ago I used short story

analysis if you missed that it'll be new

for you if you saw that presentation

there will be some revision for you so

please bear with me if you did that this

is a study with seller I'll call her

seller and the first time I encountered

her was during her pre-service teacher

education at the time she was in her

mid-twenties and she was born the

Pacific island of Tonga an island right

in the middle of Pacific Ocean and there

she went to her primary she went to

primary and secondary school in Tonga

and she worked after school she worked

as a teacher aide for a couple of years

and then moved to New Zealand then she

started to become an English teacher

where she

masters there in May in language

teaching and I was the supervisor of a

dissertation and she wanted to be an

English teacher but she did not want to

teach in high school right she

definitely did not want to teach in high

school and English proficiency was was

really high okay and the aim of the

study was to explore her identity

development as a pre-service and an

in-service English teacher

including her imagined identity over

time so what happened was when she was a

pre-service teacher I connected some

data which I'll I'll tell you about and

then what happened was when the study

finished she went off and what happened

to her after she graduated and then

eight years later I said I wonder what

happened to seven and I contacted her

and discovered that she was teaching in

a high school and I said it would be

great to meet up with you and so we met

up and we continued to study eight years

later so it was a nice long attitudinal

study so eight years later we had

another couple of interviews and I was

able to ask her how things had developed

over time over that eight year period so

that's what I'll share with you today

through this narrative study I wanted to

examine the construct on the

construction of her identity through

narrative analysis over this time so let

me share with you what the are what the

data was so there was a set of four

written narratives from the Graduate

ranch this was at the beginning eight

years ago and there were three narrative

interviews which I recorded

and we also had a number of informal

conversations which I didn't record we

went for coffee she became a good friend

during that priest that pre-service year

which she did MA so we got we got to

know each other quite well this a little

bit of rationale for why narratives are

useful for exploring identity on the

statement here says that identities are

constructed and displayed in the

narratives we tell about our past about

our present and about our imagined

future who we have been who we are and

who we would like to be or afraid to be

so I rather like this because it's got a

nice time dimension past present and

imagined future and in this particular

study I was interested in how seller

imagine the future teaching career so

let's go look at the board story short

story number one so I was asking her

during one of the interviews how she

imagined herself teaching in an

institution one day in the future and

this is what she said I went to read it

for you so I can give it some voice for

you she says um the one thing that keeps

coming up in my mind it is I had

originally thought about having a little

like night class in our garage with

whoever people on my street or my

auntie's or my cousin who want to

improve their English that's what I

really want to do so what she said is

that I don't II go teach in the school I

will rather just teach the people on my

street my family on my street in the

garage where we parked the car I make a

little school there and have a night

class for the people to come and learn

English right she says but if I wanted

to go on here but if I want to teach you

terms of like

institution I would most likely like to

teach common adults now remember she

stolen from that Pacific island of Tonga

so she wants to teach adults from her

community the Tom antennas I would

ideally want to teach what to do things

like constructing curriculum or a

syllabus

specifically from Turin and all

immigrants which she is that is who she

is she is an adult

immigrant from Tonga and so she wants to

teach a group of immigrants from her

immigrant community from Tana and now

she says why she says and that's coming

from conversations I've had with people

who've taken English courses and I mean

their activities and everything is

interesting and they've really enjoyed

the classes but sometimes the content

and materials used they did not quite

understand and they're not quite in sync

with their purposes of why they were

learning English so yes the conflict in

this short story she says she knows some

tongue in among immigrants who have

taken English classes in the city or

somewhere and she says the curriculum

doesn't suit them the curriculum is not

specifically suited to our it's not in

sync with their purpose what their needs

and so what she wants to do therefore is

to have a night class in her

neighborhood in her community

specifically for these dominant adults

the story goes on a little bit but I

just cut it short so let's just have a

look at this story let's focus on who

the characters are in the story I've

bolded them here in red so she starts

off on line one this coming up in my

mind I hope you could all see this

clearly this is Stella like mine she's

the narrator of the story she's the main

character in the story in my

and then she talks about our errands so

now let's think about this for my

identity perspective

she's got my the narrator and then she

says our so she puts herself as a member

of the community strong identity

statement that she is making

she's identifying herself with our which

is the community of health immigrants

from Tonga and then she says people on

my street again these are the common end

of community members now her family

included my auntie's all my cousins

so she's building up this connection

between who she is and her community

identified very strongly with her

community all right but teacher identity

don't forget this is her imagined

teacher identity she's imagining herself

as a teacher working in the garage on

the street amongst her immigrant

community and who are they over here

these are Tong and animals these are

further down Tommen and on immigrants

these are the community members where

she wants to teach there are other

people in the story and this is where

she builds up her case in the story she

says these are people who have already

taken English classes and they have

helped her to understand what the

problem is and she says they've enjoyed

of the classrooms but they did not quite

understand what was going on because the

curriculum was not suited to their needs

right so just by looking at the

characters in the story that in this

narrative by focusing on who is in the

story I'm looking at the characters we

able to understand what the conflict in

the story is and the conflict has to do

with a curriculum that does not

suits the English learners in this story

and therefore this forms a dilemma in

they imagined identity of the narrator

Sarah in her pre-service teacher

identity its forms a dilemma in her

imagined future identity I hope you all

see that right so this is an important

question to ask a short story analysis

you asked blue is in the story who is

who who is your what and what happened

with these people together the narrator

who are the others in the story what's

their relationship what is their

position visibly each other how do they

position themselves against each other

on varying social and physical distance

scales so you've got Sarah and her

aunties and her cousins and you've got

the seller and the tolerance and you've

got seller and the other migrants are

the immigrants and you've got these big

distances you've got New Zealand and

you've got Tonga so these are big scales

and also small scales okay I think

you're getting the idea

look at this here you've got um in our

garage on my street

now we asking where we're in the sword

story in our garage on my street that is

the local place then the small scale

place where she wants to do her teaching

and then in comparison in contrast to an

institution where over here in contrast

to this institution which is where she

does not want to teach and then we've

got Tom and adults this is the place

this is another whole country and then

the other where the places of his

English courses would she did not agree

with because the curriculum was not

suitable and then we've got the English

classes that they enjoyed but were not

suitable to what they are these classes

and these English courses set up the

conflict that that caused the dilemma in

her imagined teacher identity so we've

got those who questions here we've got

some where questions or questions to do

with place or space right so I don't

know why sometimes this thing doesn't

move it's a bit odd just give me a

moment

whose hold on

just hold on this is not it seems to

have got stuck it's not moving on there

we go okay so where and what happened or

will happen there these are the places

and sequences of places in the story so

we bought who we must wear and this

tends to do with frame ends I'll go

through this something something keeps

coming up in my mind that's what I

really want to do I would most likely in

the future I would ideally want to in

the future and these past tense and past

tense I think you've got that

so when has to do with past present

future and on various scales there can

be small small time scales or large time

scales so we've got these three

dimensions of where they're when and who

forms a like a three-dimensional space

here right this narrative space in which

to explore the content we explore the

content right and these are called short

stories excerpts from data from

conversations or interviews or written

narratives or multi modal stories and

short stories are just narrative

experiences stories the way there's some

action that takes place they sort of

typically have a time or temporal

dimension and they include some

reflection on that action that takes

place in the stories and as we've seen

so far there's been a phonetic analysis

of the content where of us who where and

when who where and when dramatic

analysis of the content but also

important with short story analysis is

to look at the context in which the

action of the story takes place content

and the context this is a really useful

way for doing teacher reflection or

teacher research or given very

systematic academic research where you

get a short story and you do a

systematic rigorous thorough analysis of

the short story that you've extracted

from some data it makes you look at it

very very carefully instead of just

doing a quick reading and say oh that's

what it's about it's to avoid you doing

a cursory quick analysis of the text it

makes you look at it very very closely

okay so when you look at the context I

think some of you may have seen this

before you get three expanding scales of

context one is story with small letters

or they're small letters so it's a small

scale the intimate scale is a particular

teacher story the personal story on

small scales we get story with a capital

letter S this is moving outwards like

it's not just the teacher in the

classroom but now you're moving our

teacher in the school in the institution

in the community you're moving upwards

right medium looking at the meso medium

scale and then you get story with

capital letters in the macro context so

in interpreting the story you don't only

look at the micro level but you move out

move out to interpret what's going on

so with Sarah's story we don't only look

at what's happening in the street but we

look also at what's happening in the

community in the other English courses

we look at what's happening in in New

Zealand generally we look what's

happening in in corner and the relation

between those countries and the

immigration policies so and the

education the English courses that are

offered to immigrants so you look at the

big picture and how immigrants are

assessed for their English skills before

they get a visa to come into the country

so you look at these big picture stories

as well and often these are very

political very ideological spaces at

these macro levels so we look at story

expanding outwards story of the

capitalism story with capital letters so

you've got the content and you've got

the context and you put them together

and you got this lovely narrative space

that where you focus your analytical

attention within that space like so

here's another story where I'm going

through the detail but what happened

eight years later was that in fact when

we did the interview it turned out that

she did not teach in the garage in her

neighborhood with the immigrant Tongan

community she ended up teaching in a

high school which she did not want to do

but what was really interesting was that

this particular school where she was

teaching was in a different community it

wasn't in an immigrant community an

immigrant community where she lived was

of a lower socioeconomic class a lower

socioeconomic group lived it but she got

a job in a community on the other side

of town where it was a much higher

socioeconomic class and the ethnicity of

the students that went to that group was

reflected that different socio-economic

class as you can see in the story this

story she is now driving to school on

the very first day of her teaching when

she graduated she's going to teach at

school she said oh wow oh my god I

remember the first day the first day at

school when I was driving into school it

was a totally different world and she

laughs right you know we were on our way

to school she says we because she had

her daughter in the car daughter was

going to the same school we drove past

many local high schools these are the

schools in her neighborhood

where she lives we'd like pass this

school and that school in her

neighborhood and so you'd see all these

kids walking to school and eating pie as

these are LED meat pies you can buy in

the in the the corner shop and you know

the fizzy the soda drinks and they're

eating for breakfast meat pies and soda

drinks very unhealthy right this is in

the morning you know highs and fizzy it

was just so common and now she's setting

up the contrast which gets to the other

neighborhood and as soon as you get into

the area where the other school is the

highest socio-economic school kids are

walking to school with like a bottle of

water or coffee you know from a cafe and

like the contrast you know just in terms

of social economic and just you know

everything and it was so white she says

so there she is referring to the

ethnicity of the students in the

neighborhood so what we've got here if

you look at the red you can see we've

got the characters in the story that who

I remember I was she's the narrator all

these kids I and I and all these kids

are in her neighborhood representing the

immigrant groups right of the lower

socioeconomic school but then you get

contrasts in here that other kids are

walking to school they from the other

side of town and these kids here are

those that are of a different ethnicity

she explicitly says they've stolen white

from a higher socio-economic group so

you've got this contrast set up just by

focusing in the narrative on the

characters in the story but the place

here is very interesting though bear in

the story the totally different world

she says and it's not only the school

children but it's the neighborhoods with

the difference

economic growth but also on a macro

level

you've probably got the immigrants

coming from many different countries and

then you've got you know probably the

more New Zealand white population coming

from the higher socio-economic group

okay so you've got these tensions set up

so be getting an idea so just to go back

to her identity yes she is moving to the

school as a teacher which is not what

she expected because she she indents

Storch never on the immigrant group

never wanted to teach high school and

now she's going to go and work in this

new school which is completely not what

she wanted to do right anyway I just

want to tell you the end of the story I

won't this is this is just a summary so

what happens is right at the end because

it's so different from what she imagined

eight years earlier so she says well

that you know she wanted to help them a

lot of my family I ever saw that when I

just moved to New Zealand I went to

university and I have a decent job so

she didn't help them in the way that she

planned to so is that sort of like that

ripple effect so now they're really

encouraging the kids to go to school she

says I didn't help them the way that I

plan to but in another way I am helping

them by being a role model she says her

family on our aiming to go to university

even they say my gosh you can do it I

haven't really given back in the way I

initially had intended I don't think

people just need to be surrounded by a

kind of role models people they know so

it's quite interesting that she had

initially imagined herself teaching in a

in the community in the garage that

didn't happen so she may have felt

disappointed but in fact it turned out

that she she did have a very positive

effect on the community because they saw

her as a role model

and so she was able to through that

ripple effect she was able to you know

get them to have higher aspirations for

themselves so it was you know I learnt a

lot as a researcher about her

pre-service identity she was a migrant

Tom and she imagined herself working in

the community later on as an in-service

schoolteacher she had a very successful

role model as a as an outsider in that

new school but eventually in the new

school she made the children say this

but in the new school she had a very

successful job she eventually became a

hit of that okay so you know she

invested in this job as a teacher and

had a very successful outcome and so

what I've done as a result of this is in

my teacher education I get my students

to imagine where they think they're

going in their teaching what identities

they see for themselves and then I get

them to imagine what might not work out

and what some alternatives might be and

why that may be the case and to write

stories about who they may become or who

they may not become and some of the

reasons for that so they reflect in

different ways on their potential

identities and the possibilities for why

that why those identities may or may not

be the case I I don't know how we doing

forward for time yet but the end can I

just engage with you quickly okay okay

so how are we doing for time or actually

time even they're incorrect since there

might be they will ask the question 5

minute 10 minute they can ask the

question it's asthma okay so can either

why do I have about five minutes or do

you want to ask questions for five

minutes okay you can

if you don't feel so much difficult in

time because there is I think it's it's

nearly ten ten or eleven yes lemon yeah

so if you can n get five to ten minutes

we can go over okay can I've got another

five minutes yes sir okay fine I thought

what I do is I would just I would just

go if you could just let me share my

screen again okay done sir

thank you I thought I would just share a

number I could just I could just end

with this and and again if there's a

space on your webpage somewhere and I

can I can put these up there these are

for those of you who are interested in

doing research on teacher identity these

are a number of specific areas for

teacher research that you can focus on I

was in the session yesterday there was a

there was a nice where you were

discussing you know what are some

research topics and how do you discover

research topics are very good

suggestions about reading and talking to

your supervisor and so on so these are

topics to do with teacher research I

mean to do with teacher identity for

people who are interested in it I've got

many many more which I can give you but

these are like sort of ten areas that

aren't we suggested in that book by the

other contributors and I sort of put

them together into this but I'll just

quickly go through these and these are

some of my own suggestions this one has

to do with classroom practice and

innovation in practice for example over

here for example introducing new

textbooks or blended learning which

we've been doing now in online teaching

or creating your materials and how that

then and how that then relates to you as

a teacher how did that affect your tea

entity when you suddenly have to do

blended learning or there's a new

textbook or we new forms of assessment I

imposed from the top down Conner's that

you know how does that relate to your

practice as a teacher your your

reflexive identity how does that relate

to how you see yourself as a teacher

there's some strange marks on the screen

I don't know what those are where

they're coming from it's not me can you

please just a 15 dear friends please

don't leave them screening these

animations it's not me no no friends I'm

asking to fence

oh I don't mind I can go on implementing

toss pace or whatever so it's done thank

you

okay yep sometimes the screen just there

we go

another area of teacher research has to

do with you know the native native

English speaking or non anything you're

speaking identities this is an old one

but to theorize the concept you know

what do we actually mean by this be some

good research that's come out recently

but how does this relate to teachers

emotions and beliefs in particular

contexts so looking at these concepts of

the native speaker and the non-native

speaker and how it relates to emotions

and beliefs how do we feel about that

you know feelings a collective teacher

identities you know much as me as an

individual but me as a group in a school

for example if we non-native

english-speakers in a group how do we

feel as a connective as opposed to just

an individual that's quite an

interesting topic

LTI dial amperes so you know performing

LTI categories whether their sexual

identities gender and religious in the

workplace you know if we perform them

how do you are they sometimes contested

and how how does that relate to me also

how does it relate to the students and

how do students

react to how we project our identities

or do students ascribe identities to us

that may or may not be the way we see

ourselves or other teachers implementing

policies and practices in multilingual

context teacher agency and

transformative education in any critical

agency in teacher education programs is

it possible do we work in contexts where

it is possible to teach critically to

have agency to teach critically do we

have autonomy as teachers do be working

education systems we're like that it is

possible to have autonomy and so on

engagement in policy to do teachers have

any say in macro level policy and if we

don't how does that relate to our

identities teaching young learners I

don't know how many of you are involved

in teaching young learners but do we

advocate for appropriate funding and

resources especially when this constants

you know pressure to change in early

education to teach English earlier for

example how much say do we do we have as

teachers and how does that relate to our

perceptions of who we are and

negotiating learner motivation and

parent involvement

becomes quite heavy when we deal with

young learners parents tend to get

involved with young learners how does

that affect who we are as teachers

identity and languages other than

English without been talking a lot of

money is but what about other languages

in the face of other languages and

looking at trance language in the

classroom and preparing teachers of

languages to teach in English dominant

context as a teacher of other languages

how do you feel when English is the

dominant language teacher status in

society perceptions are like me teaching

as a professional to teachers and have a

particular status and how does that

relate to their identity teachers and

researcher do teachers have the power to

cause all schools and communities the

man be the case that they absolutely

don't or maybe they do

teacher aspirations visions and imagined

identities I've spoken a bit about that

in the study that I shared with you the

relationship between teachers believes

the emotions and identity is very nice

looking at the interconnections among

those three investing your name is

teacher and teacher education for self

it's nice one linguistic choices for

teachers do we teach the stand and

hardly stand in English with standard

variety what about the use of other

languages in the classroom what what

standards do we teach in writing do we

have a choice what does that mean when

we come to preparing our learners for

IELTS or TOEFL or for external

assessments how do how do we feel about

being pressured to teach in a certain

way and not in another way and then

finally looking at some ethical

considerations yeah a teacher commitment

work rather than burnout

how does that relate to identity a lot

of teachers feel a copy to you you know

overloaded teacher beliefs and policy

with standards and the learner outcomes

these are big ethical issues you know

looking at learner needs how do we

contribute to that and so on this will

be my final slide we got five new areas

that I seen the teacher

identity research of publications that I

come across materiality and new

technologies so how does identity relate

to technology material spaces and places

the connection between identity emotion

and beliefs are those three you relate

to each other number three

looking at our teachers lagging with

learning histories you know I'm not

taking into account when we look at each

identities how do these language

learning histories relate to our

teaching practice and our identities

lovely area to do research on and very

little research on that interesting and

the concepts of self and identity house

what are they are they the same are they

different and

cognitive and social definitions of

identity and then finally individual

definitions of identity and collective

looking at teacher collective identities

as opposed to individual identities you

know if we work in the same school do we

develop a collective teacher identity

and how is that different from

individual identities so those are you

know quite quite interesting