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to see how the enabling and constraining force of the possession of certain thoughts, values, and competence were played out when Marcel moved from one experience to the next. As Polkinghorne (1995) maintained, the configuration of data into a coherent story involves trials of testing. Taking this into mind, when I identified themes that were contradictory to the emerging plot, these themes had to be framed in a way that was better adapted to the coherence of the story, as well as the associations among events/experiences. Therefore, there were constant revisits to the data, the identified themes from Marcel’s reported events/experiences, and the emerging plot, as well as the connection between the themes and the plot. Building on the two types of analysis, I arrived at the final sequence of the eight stories:
Narrative 1: Earlier Teaching Experience: I Taught Knowledge about Language Narrative 2: Emerging Teacher Identity in the TESOL Program: Did I Have to Be a
Student Pleaser?
Narrative 3: My Influential Mentor: The Person I Respect and Admire the Most Narrative 4: Envisioning an Academic Future in TESOL
Narrative 5: Developing Confidence in Near-nativelikeness through Social Contact: What about My Students?
Narrative 6: Struggling in LLC: This Is Not Language Teaching!
Narrative 7: Aggravating Frustration: How Can You Not Take This Seriously? I Thought You Wanted to Be an English Teacher!
Narrative 8: Relocating to Shanghai: A New Start
Examining the data through the three theoretical frameworks, I conceptualized the plot connecting these themes, or stories, as Teacher Identity as a Site of Struggle for
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Recognition.
Securing Trustworthiness of the Research Journey Member Checking
The friendship Marcel and I have built up among each other over the years has allowed him to open his heart to me with the collection of rich data to secure trustworthiness of the study (Murray, 2009). Moreover, since Jean had already left LLC prior to the research, it was assumed that there had been no interest conflicts between Jean and LLC, and therefore, Jean was able to articulate what LLC was like based on her six-year of immersion in this context. Both Marcel and Jean signed the consent form and were guaranteed the right of sudden withdrawal from the research. I was fully aware that I was representing and reconstructing my participant’s life experience and every segment of story that was used in the writing, therefore, was sent back to the participant with my reflective comments for member check (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
Researcher’s Positioning and Reflexivity
I believe that it is impossible for me to be detached from this research process and to ignore the fact that my subjectivity as a researcher, with my own preconceived notions, such as complex values, ideologies, and experiences affecting how this research was conducted. One way for me to understand how my subjectivity and positioning may have influenced the course of this research is to monitor my reflexivity, which is commonly defined as a researcher engaging in “the process of a continual internal dialogue and critical self-evaluation of researcher’s positionality and as well as active
acknowledgement and explicit recognition that his position may affect the research
process and outcome” (Berger, 2013, p.2). In this view, researcher’s reflexivity challenges
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the view that knowledge production in a research is independent of a researcher producing it and that knowledge is objective; in other words, reflexivity helps “examine the impact of the position, perspective and presence of the researcher … open up unconscious motivations and implicit biases in the researcher’s approach” (Finlay, 2002). Member check, multiple interviews, and prolonged engagement, for instance, have been proposed to be some commonly employed strategies to increase researcher’s reflexivity (Padgett, 2008; Polkinghorne, 2007). In addition to the strategies employed in this research, I needed to be aware of my own positioning by documenting and examining how my attitude and values throughout the journey had changed (Bell, 2011; Berger, 2013;
Canagarajah, 1996; Menard-Warwick, 2011) in my research notes. I carried multiple identities during the course of this research journey. I was a graduate student, an English teacher working in LLC (perhaps also a teacher not acknowledged professionally by LLC), both Marcel’s friend and colleague, and a researcher interested in language teacher
education, to name a few (These identity options with Marcel are presented earlier under Introducing the Main Character with Whom I Was Traveling). As the research journey unfolded, I found that some of the identities I took on came into contradictions with others.
I will illustrate with two examples that document how being reflexive influenced my decisions in this research journey.
At the onset of this research journey, I intended to understand and explore Marcel’s experiences in LLC only, which limited my interview questions to those that probed into this particular context. Also working as an English teacher in LLC, I was an insider. On the one hand, this shared experience allowed me to conveniently approach this research journey with some knowledge about the subject under study and possibly the direction towards which the research oriented. However, it seemed that this insider perspective, on the other hand, also constantly made me filter the information that seemed irrelevant to
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Marcel’s experience in LLC, rendering it unworthy of exploration. Daly (1992, in Berger, 2013) pointed out the kind of tendency I experienced when researchers might have
overlooked certain aspects of participants’ experiences because of the shared experience between the researcher and the researched. It was through constant reading of Marcel’s first two interview transcripts that I wrote this question in my research note: “As a
colleague, I relate strongly to Marcel’s experience because of my familiarity with him and LLC, but as unique social being, how are we different?” The conscious and deliberate effort in reflecting on my attitude led me further to explore Marcel’s other experiences, especially the connection with his foreign friends. In turn, this change of attitude also modified how I framed my subsequent interview questions and later my data analysis.
Another example involves me as an outsider to Marcel’s experience with his foreign friends. As a friend, I respected Marcel’s private social life, and I believed that these friends played an important role in refueling Marcel from tiring teaching load. When probing into this experience further as a researcher interested in teacher education, however, I started to have the feeling that Marcel was letting his private social life interfere with his professionalism. Moreover, I, in my researcher mode, did know that it was part of the process that Marcel was going through when constructing his teacher identity, but I constantly found myself wanting to tell Marcel to be aware of this influence so that his voice of being himself as a teacher would not be lost. This anxiety illustrates a dilemma in which I, being Marcel’s close friend, had to act professionally with
responsibility to disseminate research findings (Bold, 2012). Nevertheless, I, as a
researcher, respected my participant as subjects, with both histories and intentions. To not influence what Marcel would have otherwise said and done, I did not tell Marcel how I felt eventually.
Like many, if not most, participants in narrative research, Marcel expressed interest
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in his own personal story (Smythe & Murray, 2000). “This is interesting, and I would really like to know how you write about me,” said Marcel in the member checking process.
My response to Marcel’s words demonstrates the ethical principle suggested by Josselson (2007) when I constructed his story. I wanted Marcel to know that the interpretation and analysis of his story served as “an exemplar that illustrates a conceptual and theoretical point” (p. 551) so that relevant conceptual implications of his experienced meanings could be generated to the academy, hoping that he would not take this personally. I wrote:
Dear participant,
The purpose of this member checking process is for you to see how our oral interviews were transformed into written texts for research purpose. At the same time, you are congenially welcome to identify or clarify any possible
misinterpretations. The reconstruction hopes to bring to the fore certain social phenomenon both constituting and mirroring social reality, especially the issues involving understanding and researching language teacher identity. Hopefully, the theorizing of TESOL teacher education can benefit from reading your stories.
Please note that the reconstruction of your stories does not intend to impose any value judgments on the many actions, thoughts, behaviors, and beliefs that you have brought with you to this research journey…
Jean also went through the same member checking process, despite, unlike Marcel, she did not express strong interests in reading the reconstruction of her interview, since, as she said, “I already left the company, so I don’t really care about what will be written, as long as you don’t reveal my name.” Both Marcel and Jean’s interview segments used in this research were an effort of my own translation, whose accuracy was confirmed through member check.
Sharing the Scenery along the Journey
When constructing Marcel’s story, I referenced to Polkinghorne’s (1988,1995) analysis of narrative and narrative analysis by taking into account Bruner’s (2001)
proposal on two characteristics narrative accounts, which first, should center around social
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agents’ intentional states (e.g., desires, beliefs, and motivations), and second, on how these intentional states led to certain kinds of activities and decisions. Therefore, the presentations of Marcel’s story was organized by centering upon his intentional states such as his beliefs, motivations, and desires, and further his decisions and actions as a result of those intentional states in a developmental order. However, human experiences are complex and sometimes messy, and many experiences may even happen
simultaneously within a specific duration of time frame. This makes imposing a structural view that connects the many threads of Marcel’s experiences challenging and problematic.
Therefore, I paid specific attention to time, people, and context in each of Marcel’s narratives, and you will see me reference back and forth between narratives when necessary to anchor their connections. In the next chapter, Marcel’s eight narratives will be presented. The plot formulated in conjunction with how Marcel’s teacher identity is conceptualized in relation to these narratives is to be presented in chapter 5.
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Chapter 4: A NARRATIVE ACCOUNT OF MARCEL
Narrative 1:
Earlier Teaching Experience:
I Taught Knowledge about Language
Reflecting on his earlier teaching experience before entering a master’s TESOL program, Marcel thought of himself as a transmitter of language knowledge, a teacher
“who taught knowledge about English.” He thought that he was good at English and as a result teaching English would not be a problem for him. Moreover, because students needed linguistic knowledge in order to pass tests, to speak, and to write English, Marcel invested himself in sharpening his linguistic understanding of English rather than his teaching skills. Marcel said, “In the first two to three years, I spent lots of time reading about English grammar. I bought a lot of reference books on grammar and vocabulary, and I even memorized sentence structures so that I could teach English.” Marcel, at the time, connected English teaching to exclusive imparting of linguistic knowledge to his learners by responding to their needs, feeling that “I needed to show them this is how English works in its structure in a very short time,” even though he did not know whether or not he was doing the right thing. Marcel briefly attributed this thought to his past learning experience. He said:
I used to learn this way, and almost all my teachers taught in this way (…) I was not sure if this worked or not (…) I just thought I needed to improve my linguistic knowledge so that I could further improve my students.
In the early years of his teaching, Marcel regarded transmitting linguistic knowledge as his main goal of language teaching.
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Narrative 2:
Emerging Teacher Identity in the TESOL Program:
Did I Have to Be a Student Pleaser?
In order to secure a teaching position, Marcel applied to a thesis-based master’s program of TESOL after graduating from a university in 2003. During his four years of study, Marcel took courses such as TESOL Methodology, Teaching Literacy in English as a Foreign Language, Learning Strategies, Second Language Acquisition, and CALL.
Marcel started to develop a sense of teaching by differentiating himself from his teachers in high schools and those in LLC14:
My grammar teachers and other teachers teaching grammar whom I met were not teaching their students right. They could be right, and that’s because that’s how they were taught (…) they did not major in TESOL, even though they are
successful language learners, but that does not mean the way they learned can be applied to their students (…) not all students can be as successful as they are.
During the second interview, Marcel constantly drew on the discourse of TESOL by referencing to SLA theory to illustrate what it was meant to be a teacher. In particular, he stated that teachers without professional training taught in the way they were taught, and this was not because they were right. “What I learned in the course of SLA is that the steps a teacher performs during class reflects his understanding about teaching and he should know something about learning so that appropriate measures can be taken,” he continued.
To relate theory to practice, Marcel incorporated what he had learned in the TESOL program into teaching. To arouse students’ interests and motivation, Marcel decided to experiment with teaching materials by utilizing the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” as
14 At this time, Marcel started to teach in LLC, and this experience will be presented in Narrative 6
“Struggling in LLC: This Is Not Language Teaching!”
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reading text. Being excited, Marcel announced that today they were going to read and do something different, but was later startled by one of the students’ response, who said, “I don’t want to read this.” “That was a slap in the face,” said Marcel. He started to ask himself whether or not he continued the lesson, since he was concerned about both students’ reactions and his rationale underpinning the use of this material. Marcel said, “I used this material to arouse students’ interests and motivation, but obviously I was the only one who found it interesting.” “Do I give up all the materials because students are showing no interests, or do I still proceed no matter what, since this is a result of my six hours hard work?” he wondered.
Reflecting on this event, Marcel struggled between, on the one hand, adhering to his teaching belief by doing “the right thing,” and “pleasing students” on the other. By pleasing students, Marcel referred to the fact that students had already got accustomed to the type of reading class characterized mostly by teacher translation The questions
“Should I teach the way that you have been familiar with? If I don’t challenge your [learners’] beliefs, will you not get irritated by me?” constantly echoed in Marcel’s head throughout this stage of his teaching. Marcel continued:
Was I doing the right thing? Should I challenge the “truth” that learners have been holding for a long time? Did I go back to the traditional teaching performed by traditional teachers or those without professional training? (…) Did I teach the way informed by my professional training or not? I was feeling suspicious about what I am doing.
After Marcel entered a TESOL program, his teacher identity started to emerge by taking up the discourses of TESOL, which informed both his thinking and actins. But at the same time, he also experienced a sense of uneasiness where he had to on the one hand challenge learner beliefs, and initiated efforts to put theory into practice on the other.
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The Person I Respect and Admire the Most
When talking about teaching, Marcel told about his connection with his mentor back in university. Marcel was in the teacher’s TESOL Methodology. To recall, not only was Marcel impressed by her commitment to and expertise in language teaching, but also her personal charisma. “She,” said Marcel, “was direct, straightforward, not pretentious at all.” That’s what I like about her.” Marcel provided an account of one incident to describe his mentor’s unpretentious way of teaching:
There was one time when we were learning about teaching approaches, and my group was assigned to introduce and demonstrate community language learning in which we had to use a tape recorder to record what students said. But in the actual demonstration, we thought at the time the use of a tape recorder was not important, so we did not bring one. When she saw us not bringing a tape recorder as we stepped on the podium, she asked us if we had one. “No we don’t,” we responded.
She said, “You can get down. This approach is officially ruined.” I was appalled.
What Marcel learned from this was that there was an “important essence” behind each teaching act, and teaching would be in vein if this essence was not realized. To Marcel, the mentor was not only a researcher who knew lots of theories and an expert who knew about what she was doing, but also a caring teacher who always provided practical advice and workable techniques to her students. During the first few years of teaching, Marcel regarded the mentor as a source to which he turned for advice whenever he had problems. The advice given by the mentor not only impacted the actual presentation and development of Marcel’s teaching materials and pedagogical techniques but also exerted influence over Marcel’s conceptualization of being a teacher. Marcel clearly remembered that:
When I was teaching vocabulary, I designed a vocabulary list for my students and I knew this was something that other teachers would do when they were teaching vocabulary (…) I showed this sheet to her. But all what she said was “If you are
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doing what other teachers are doing, then don’t bother coming and talking to me.”
“This conversation with her,” said Marcel, “left a permanent mark on me,” who gradually came to believe that teaching was not solely about transmitting linguistic knowledge, but also about paying attention to material selection and design, and most importantly, about being different, being creative, and about making changes, and this according to Marcel, included “shaking learner beliefs.”
As an expert in teaching grammar, the mentor did not deny the importance of
transmitting linguistic knowledge to learners. In fact, according to Marcel, she emphasized that teachers ought to have a sophisticated grasp of linguistic knowledge and be able to explain it with understandable and clear articulation. The feeling of being suspicious about whether he had to sharpen his linguistic knowledge so that he could improve his students’
(Narrative 1) and the desire to change students’ beliefs and actions about learning English (Narrative 2) seemed to be resolved with the recognition and affirmation by his mentor.
Another incident Marcel recalled to be influential involves the mentor’s comment on his pronunciation, which later reinforced his commitment to speaking standard American English. This incident, according to Marcel, is something that “I genuinely want to do for her and to make her proud.”
That was the time before I took her course of pronunciation correction. She once told me that there was something wrong with my pronunciation, my articulation of
That was the time before I took her course of pronunciation correction. She once told me that there was something wrong with my pronunciation, my articulation of