The previous studies (Chang, 2004; Chou, 2014; Chou, 2008b; Chou & Ching, 2012;
Kwok, 2004; Liu, 2002) not only show the function of English buxibans but also reveal the phenonmenon how people in Taiwan, including children and adults, trust buxiban English teachers and seldom question their professionlism as an English teacher. The professionalism of a teacher in the school system is based on qualification obtained from a teacher education program. As we know, to be a qualified English teacher in the school system, an English teacher must have entered a teacher education program, finished the teacher practice, passed the teacher’s certification exam and end up getting a teaching certificate (Lin & Byram, 2016). Owning an English teaching certificate symbolizes that the English teacher has received a lot of professional training and his or her
professionalism is unquestionable. However, thus far, there have not been many teacher training programs offered by the MOE or any univiersities in Taiwan for buxiban English teachers, so their teaching professionalism can not be certified. This lead to the question how buxiban teachers develop their teaching identities and how they consider themselves as teachers in the Taiwanese educational context.
Few studies focusing on identity construction of buxiban teachers can be identified particularly in Asia. Some of the exceptions are Trent (2012) and Trent (2016) which will be discussed later.
Language Teacher Identity and the Concept of Positioning
Teacher identity is a dynamic transformation which involves the context that teachers experience in and outside of schools as well as the teachers’ belief and value of what kind of teachers they want to become (Sachs, 2001). It is a continuous constructing process that can be manifested through teacher training. As Burns and Richards (2009) states, teacher training (or learning) should be viewed as a process “constructing new knowledge and theory through participating in specific social contexts and engaging in
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particular types of activities and processes’’ (Burns & Richards, 2009, p. 4). Novice teachers gain experiences through teacher practice and develop their own beliefs and perceptions on what it means to be a good teacher. The transforming process from not being a teacher to becoming a teacher is like going across a threshold and then grow into the profession (Vonk, 1989). However, such an identity is not stable; rather, it is
‘‘something that they use, to justify, explain and make sense of themselves in relation to other people, and to the contexts in which they operate’’ (Maclure, 1993, p. 312).
Martel and Wang (2014) argue that language teachers’ identities are shaped with significant others, personal biographies and contexts. They then give the examples from Park’s (2012) study, Duff and Uchida’s (1997) study and Yi’s (2009) study to
demonstrate the insecurity and constant negotiation between teachers, others and the teachers themselves. From Duff and Uchida’s (1997, p. 291) study, a native Chinese-speaking English teacher began to question herself about being an English teacher after her students’ mocking that “you were only here for one and a half years and you are going to teach English [to kids who don’t speak English]? ” This comment made her unsure about whether she was capable of teaching English to those students. This reflects that language teacher’s identity has the following features: “the contingent, shifting and context-dependent nature of identities emphasizes that identities are not merely given by social structures or ascribed by others, but are also neogtiated by agents who wish to position themselves” (Norton, 2013, p. 5).
In the poststructuralist theory, the concept of identity can be derived from Davis and Harré’s (1990) concept of “positioning.” As Davis and Harré’s (1990, p.48) proposes, positioning is a discursive process “whereby selves are located in conversations as
observably and subjectively coherent participants in jointly produced story lines.” In other words, speakers claim their own identities for themselves and assign similar or
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contrasting identities to their interlocutors in social interactions (Menard-Warwick, 2008) by which positioning and being positioned between them are shown (Davis and Harré, 1990). Hence, positioning implies how identities are manifested through discourse and accentuates the relationship among individuals in the teacher’s life story (Barkhuizen, 2009).
Many researchers have conducted their research through the conception of
positioning (Canagarajah, 2004; De Costa, 2011; Duff, 2002; Kayi‐Aydar, 2014; Menard-Warwick, 2008; McKinney & Pletzen, 2004; Reeves, 2009; Talmy, 2008). For example, De Costa (2011) examined how positioning and being positioned affect the English learning outcome through observing the interaction between a Chinese immigrant student in a Singapore secondary school with her classmates and teachers and found that
teachers’ and colleagues’ positioning had some impact on her learning. A number of studies (Canagarajah, 2004; De Costa, 2011; Duff, 2002; Kayi‐Aydar, 2014; Menard-Warwick, 2008; McKinney & Pletzen, 2004; Reeves, 2009; Talmy, 2008) have been using positioning as a way to reveal the impact of second language acquisition through
documenting the interaction between language teacher and students. Some studies
(Arvaja, 2016; Pinnegar & Murphy, 2011; Trent, 2012; Vanassche & Kelchtermans, 2014) have conducted to investigate the positioning and being positioned between teachers in school and shadow education.
More recently, some limited studies began to emphasize how positioning works on constructing teacher identity, such as Trent (2012) and Trent (2016). In Trent’s (2012) study, the researcher investigated how in-service teachers position themselves and others through discourse. The results shows that discourse used to position others has a great power to shape the identities. Trent (2016) aims at investigating how private
supplementary tutors, or teachers who are employed by tutorial companies providing
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tutoring in English for a fee in Hong Kong, construct their professional identities.
In Trent’s (2016) study, he interviewed six private tutors and found out that these private tutors shared similar paradox about being as “private tutors”, instead of being as
“teachers.” Some of them found it hard to realize their dreams of becoming teachers because they lack of formal qualifications. As one of the participants, Grace, mentioned,
“I’m not qualified as a teacher” and regards herself as merely a “private tutor.” To this point of view, Trent (2016, p.122) proposes, “This positioning, according to Grace, reflects the existence of an identity hierarchy in which those who are able to take on the identity “teacher”, and who are located in real schools are contrasted with a “private
tutor”, located in a tutorial center.” Another participant, Vicky, also notes that “When I
was a student I know that some of my school teachers did look down on those working in tutorial schools, as just exam machines with short term goals only on exam results…”This supports the subordinate position of these private tutors and their distinction with school teachers.
The results of Trent’s (2016) study indicate a phenomenon that the private tutors tend to minor their identities due to lacking teaching qualifications, considering
themselves as “exam machines” (excerpt 5, p. 125), lacking the chance to construct close relationship with the students and without the opportunities to expand their teaching abilities. However, there is no hierarchy in teaching in the real world. A teacher’s duty is to give service to his or her students and solve students’ learning problems. What teaching context that a teacher is involves in does not matter. Trent’s (2016) study begins a
conversation between school teachers and teachers who teach beyond school and offers a chance for general public to understand the perceptions of private tutors. This study tries to call for public attention to envisage the existence of these shadow teachers, including both researchers and policy makers.
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Similar to private tutoring in Hong Kong, there is also a growing buxiban
phenomenon in Taiwanese teaching context. Since this phenomenon has typically been considered an indispensable part of Taiwanese educational context by both parents and students, it is crucial for the general public, researchers and policy makers to envisage this phenomenon and to develop a deep understanding of buxiban teachers. Therefore, the research question for this study focusing on Mill, a teacher who has rich experiences in buxibans is:
How does the participant position himself and how does he perceive other’s positioning in the overall Taiwanese educational context?
To address this research question, the study traced Mill’s journey as an English teacher and attempted to understand what he thought about his teaching practice and his unique contributions as well as how he positioned himself and how he was positioned.
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This study adopts narrative inquiry approach. According to Barkhuizen (2007),
“Narrative inquiry is reflective inquiry. Through constructing, sharing, analysing and interpreting their teaching stories, teachers get the opportunity to reflect on their own practice and to articulate their interpretations of this practice. Constructing and thinking about stories in this way, therefore, involves both introspection and interrogation (p.
232).” In other words, teachers can derive valuable resource to understand teaching and learning by inquiring into teaching experiences (Beattie, 2000).
In order to have an in-depth picture of the study, I used multiple sources, including narratives, interviews, dialogues, documents, artifacts and observations, as my data. More detailed description of the research context, the background of the participant, data collection and data analysis are presented in the following sections.
Context and Participant
This study was conducted in northern Taiwan, involving one participant, Mill
(pseudonym), who was in his late 30s and has the experiences of working at almost all the possible tracks of the Taiwanese buxiban English-teaching practice, including those for children, secondary students, and adults. Followings are information about Mill.
Although Mill had rich buxiban teaching experience, as a learner he actually had very little buxiban learning experience. During his schooling, he attended buxiban once when he was a third grader. After that, he had no experience of learning at a buxiban. As he described it himself, he was quite interested in English learning but did not pay much attention to the English classes in school. During college, he began to teach as an Enlglish tutor. He even went to Cambodia to be a volunteered English teacher for one month. After