CHAPTER FIVE Discussion
Theme 1: Positioning school teachers reveals how the buxiban teacher constructed his own professional identity constructed his own professional identity
This is a story about Mill, who dedicated himself not to be a school English teacher but to devote his teaching skills and experiences in different types of English buxiban. In the previous chapter, I have presented Mill’s English learning and his teaching
experiences. This chapter addresses the research question－How does the participant position himself and how does he perceive other’s positioning in the overall Taiwanese educational context?
As Davis and Harré’s (1990) proposed, “position” is a replacement of “role” which can be reflected in the “actual conversations between particular people on particular occasions (p.44).” What a speaker says in the conversation is often based on his memories and experiences in life, such as social relationships and beliefs about what is wrong or right. While making a speech, one may also have different interpretations; and thus, through the discursive conversations on certain topics with certain people, an individual can position and be positioned.
In this chapter, key themes related to being positioned and positioning are identified in Mill’s story which have been presented in the previous chapter. This chapter is divided into two sections; the first section is positioning school teachers, which reveals Mill, the buxiban teacher, to construct his own professional identity and the second section is positively positioning, which allows the buxiban teacher identify his unique self worth and value.
Theme 1: Positioning school teachers reveals how the buxiban teacher constructed his own professional identity
Mill’s story illustrated issues buxiban teachers might face while taking up the
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identity of “a teacher.” This section addresses how the buxiban teacher constructed his own professional identity through positioning school English teachers as unprofessional teachers under three perspectives. The first one is his earlier English learning experience, the second one is questioning the necessity of having the conventional teacher’s
certificate, and the third one is the different teaching systems between school and buxiban.
First of all, Mill identified buxiban teachers as more professional based on his earlier English learning experiences. Martel and Wang (2014) mentioned, teachers’ identities are shaped by significant others. In Duff and Uchida’s (1997) study, they interviewed four teachers who were recognized as good teachers. Among all, one of the teachers, Danny, did not like the way his high school French teacher guided him using decontextualized grammar lessons. After he became a teacher, he was reluctant to use textbooks in his teaching due to his earlier learning experience. Like Danny’s experience, Mill’s English learning experience has a huge impact on his teacher career. Mill considered his English learning was inspired by his buxiban English teacher who impressed Mill by his sweat, action and voice.
According to Davis and Harré (1990), positioning happens in an interactive way.
“There can be interactive positioning in which what one person says positions another (Davis and Harré, 1990, p.48).” While a person is making the speech, he is positioning others through his speech; in the meanwhile, he shows his self-position as well. Through pointing out the school teachers were “huì rén bù juàn”, 毀人不倦 (“destroying
students’ interests non-stop”), provided students with English studying skills such as grammar or vocabulary and they even avoided answering students’ questions, the school teachers were positioned as being lack of professionalism.
The similar findings was found in Trent’s (2012) study, local Hong Kong English
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teachers’ teaching were positioned as “traditional teaching” which was “exam-based” and about “memorization.” Native English teachers thought local English teacher “taught to the tests.” By positioning local teachers as just “teaching about English,” native English teachers determined to teach the students how to use the language and implemented some activities and games. Through positioning local Hong Kong English teachers taught traditionally, native English teachers constructed their own professional identities as “real English teachers.” In this study, Mill positioned buxiban teachers as hard-working
teachers who cared about students’ feelings and tried hard to create happiness for them during teaching. In this way, buxiban teachers’ professional identities were constructed and they improve their own English abilities with times. The image of professionalism of buxiban teachers deeply rooted in Mill’s mind; therefore, he determined not to be one of the school teachers, but a buxiban teacher.
Secondly, Mill questioned the school English teachers’ professionalism as defined by having a conventional teacher’s certificate. This practice is common all over the world, as Lin & Byram’s (2016) asserted that a qualified teacher is one who passes the teacher’s certification exam and shows his or her professionalism by receiving a series of teacher training. However, buxiban teachers’ professionalism is quite different: Mill believed that English teachers’ professionalism can best be demonstrated by holding certificates from passing different kinds of English proficiency tests. For a buxiban teacher, a certified English proficiency is highly needed as the students take courses as “eating at a sushi bar.” Operating based on a customer-oriented concept, a buxiban teacher would have no use of a conventional teacher’s certificate. Having a teacher certificate would not be able to show his professionalism. Therefore, in this study, Mill as a buxiban teacher devoted himself in getting as high scores as possible in different kinds of English certification examinations. With certified high English proficiency, he believes he could impress his
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students and keep them in his classes. He positioned a buxiban teacher as being different from school English teachers, who can remain lazy all their lives without attempting to prove or improve themselves. Through positioning school teachers as not needing to enhance their own English ability while the buxiban teachers’ English proficiency is better because they need to survive in a cruel professional world, buxiban teachers are positioned as being more professional than school English teachers.
At last, Mill indicated that the educational system was different between school and buxiban. School English teachers did not need to worry about their salary because their salary were given by the government, but the buxiban teacher’s salary was based on the number of students that the teacher has in the class. As Chou (2014) said, buxiban is a profitable educational industry. Teachers in buxiban have to hold the students in place and had their own ways to attract their students. By describing buxiban’s working
environment like “eating at a buffet” or “eating at a shushi-go around,” Mill indicated that the students in buxibans had the rights to choose their teachers. If the students do not like the teachers, they could change to another classes anytime. However, the students at school could not choose their own teachers. Mill clearly positioned buxiban teachers as needing to spend more time on teaching in order to meet students’ needs and
expectations. Through positioning students at school as not having rights to choose their teachers, Mill again positioned buxiban teachers as being more professional than school teachers.
Buxiban teachers’ teacher identities could be found in Trent’s (2016) study. In Trent’s (2016) study, the identities of buxiban teachers were discursive. The participants did not construct themselves as a “proper teacher” because they did not have “paper qualifications,” the so-called, “conventional teacher’s certificate.” They positioned themselves as not being qualified and they did not think to take up the identity of a
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“teacher” because they did not work at school. Indeed formal teacher credentials symbolized the teacher have passed teacher training, and they are certified as real teachers. However, “a teacher identity that was more congruent with her personal and professional sense of self and related values and ideologies (Arvaja, 2016).”Anna, the participant in Arvaja’s study (Arvaja, 2016), showed her teacher identity by taking up her own positioning as a “teacher” through her respect to the students’ uniquess. As Davis and Harré (1990) mentioned, “those who develop their particular concept of mother in anticipation that they will one day be positioned as mother will do so differently from someone who knows that they will never be so positioned.” In this study, Mill, the buxiban teacher constructed his identity by taking up his own positioning to the identity of a teacher based on his earlier experience of buxiban teacher who worked hard and meet the students’ needs.
Interestingly, though Mill was quite confident of buxiban teachers’ professionalism and thought that buxiban teachers are more professional than the school teachers, he rejected being called an educator. He even said, “I don’t care about the students,” and “I am just a passing-by traveler.” Mill’s denial of being regarded as an educator was similar to teachers in Trent’s (2016) study.
In Trent’s (2016), the participants who were teachers of informal learning contexts tended to underscore themselves and did not view themselves as “teachers” because they did not teach in a real school or they did not have close relationships with the students.
They positioned teachers as people who cared and have close professional relations with the students. In this study, Mill denied an educator identity because he positioned “an educator” as the one who could have a profound effect on students and care about all the students. This is similar to Davis and Harré’s comment that (1990, p.47), how a person recognized his own positioning was based on his categories which matched the
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characteristics that he believed in. Although what Mill said and how he acted matched the characteristics of an educator, his positioning towards “an educator” did not match. The participants in Trent’s (2016) study and this study both reflect Norton’s (2013, p.5) assumption that the construction of ones’ identities are based on how they position themselves.