英語教師身份認知的掙扎：一位英語教師的敘事探究 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文. 指導教授：黃怡萍博士 Advisor: Dr. Yi-Ping Huang. 政治大 Language Teacher 立Identity as a Site of Struggle for Recognition: 英語教師身份認知的掙扎：一位英語教師的敘事探究. A Narrative Understanding of an English Teacher’s Identity Construction. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生:朱家鈺撰 Name: Chia-Yu (Ravi) Chu 中華民國 103 年 4 月 April 2014. v.

(2) LANGUAGE TEACHER IDENTITY AS A SITE OD STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION: A NARRATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF AN ENGLISH TEACHER’S IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION. A Dissertation 治政大 Submitted to. 學. ‧ 國. 立 Department of English,. National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. In Partial Fulfillment. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Philosophy. by Chia-Yu (Ravi) Chu April 2014.

(3) Aknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the genuine guidance, direction, and encouragement from my advisor, Dr. Yi-Ping Huang, who, with her insights, enabled me to develop an understanding of the topic from initial to the final level. I am also indebted to Professor Chin-chi Chao at National Chengchi University and Yi-Hsuan Gloria Lo at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology for their helpful suggestions when. 政治大. reading the thesis. My biggest thanks go to Marcel, who wholeheartedly shared his life stories. 立. with me. Without him, the thesis would not have been possible. My thanks as well go to Jean,. ‧ 國. 學. who unresearvedly shared with me her experiences in LLC.. ‧. Also, I would like to thank my friends, Emily Chen, Yi-Hang Ma, Ilas Wang, Herric Pu, Sasha Shun-Hua Wang, and Wei-Chou Chen for their support on the completion of the thesis.. y. Nat. io. sit. I also appreciate Evan Tsai for his technical contribution to the format of this thesis.. n. al. er. Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to my parents and my grandmom for being there for me.. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(4) TABLE OF CONTENTS. Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………………iii Chinese Abstract…….………………………………….………………………………...…vi English Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………vii Chapter 1: PROLOGUE ............................................................................................................ 1 An Autobiographical Moment .............................................................................. 1 . 治政 The Personal Context of the Research .................................................................. 2 大立 My Narrative 1- First Few Years about Teaching English .......................... 2 ‧ 國. 學. My Narrative 2- Exploring More about Language Teaching....................... 4 . ‧. My Narrative 3- Encountering Frustration ................................................... 5 My Narrative 4- Who Am I as an English Teacher? .................................... 5 . y. Nat. io. sit. My Narrative 5- A Casual Talk between Marcel and I ................................ 6 . n. al. er. The Sociocultural Context of the Research .......................................................... 7 . Ch. i n U. v. Tutoring/Cramming Industry in Taiwan ...................................................... 7 . engchi. Approaching the Research Puzzles ..................................................................... 11 Chapter 2: CONCEPUALIZING THE RESEARCH .............................................................. 13 Connecting with Existing Stories ....................................................................... 13 (Language) Teacher Identity ...................................................................... 13 English and Tutoring .................................................................................. 19 Formulating the Theoretical Framework ............................................................ 20 Postmodern Identity ................................................................................... 20 Bourdieu’s Field and Capital ..................................................................... 23 Discourse .................................................................................................... 24 iii.

(5) Research Questions ............................................................................................. 26 Chapter 3: EMBARKING ON THE RESEARCH JOURNEY ............................................... 27 Postmodernism and Knowledge ......................................................................... 27 Why Narrative Approach? .................................................................................. 27 Narrative and Human Complexity ............................................................. 28 Narrative and Identit(ies) ........................................................................... 28 Acknowledging My Presence .................................................................... 29 Introducing the Research Landscape .................................................................. 30 My Monologue ........................................................................................... 31 . 政治大. A Monologue from a Former Academic Chair .......................................... 31 . 立. Introducing the Main Character with Whom I Was Traveling ........................... 32 . ‧ 國. 學. How We Met Prior to the Journey ............................................................. 33 Emerging Commitment to English Teaching ............................................. 33 . ‧. We Are Both Sailors on the Same Boat ..................................................... 34 . Nat. sit. y. Exploring Together .................................................................................... 35 . n. al. er. io. Capturing the Scenery along the Journey ........................................................... 36 . i n U. v. Semi-structured Interview(s) ...................................................................... 36 . Ch. engchi. Marcel .................................................................................................. 36 Jean: A Former Academic Chair ......................................................... 37 Marcel’s Facebook Posts............................................................................ 39 Cultural Artifacts ........................................................................................ 39 Researcher’s Research Notes ..................................................................... 40 Moving from Field Text to Research Text ......................................................... 40 Paradigmatic Cognition and Narrative Cognition ...................................... 41 Analyzing the Narrative Data..................................................................... 42 Securing Trustworthiness of the Research Journey ............................................ 46 iii.

(6) Member Checking ...................................................................................... 46 Researcher’s Positioning and Reflexivity .................................................. 46 Sharing the Scenery along the Journey ............................................................... 49 Chapter 4: A NARRATIVE ACCOUNT OF MARCEL ......................................................... 51 Narrative 1: Earlier Teaching Experience: I Taught Knowledge about Language ..................................................................................... 51 Narrative 2: Emerging Teacher Identity in the TESOL Program: Did I Have to Be a Student Pleaser? .................................................... 52 Narrative 3: My Influential Mentor: The Person I Respect and Admire. 治政 Narrative 4: Envisioning an Academic Future大 in TESOL .................................. 56 立 the Most....................................................................................... 54 . 學. ‧ 國. Narrative 5: Developing Confidence in Near-nativelikeness through. Social Contact: What about My Students? ................................. 58 . Narrative 6: Struggling in LLC: This Is Not Language Teaching! .................... 62 . ‧. Narrative 7 Aggravating Frustration: How Can You Not Take This. Nat. sit. y. Seriously? I Thought You Wanted To Be an English. io. er. Teacher! ...................................................................................... 66 . al. Narrative 8: Relocating To Shanghai: A New Start ........................................... 68 . n. v i n C Chapter 5: THE PLOT CONNECTINGhTHE — TEACHER IDENTIY AS A e nTHREADS gchi U. SITE OF STRUGGLE FOR RECOGNITION ..................................................... 71 Recognition from the Mentor ............................................................................. 73 Recognized as a Near-Native English Speaker .................................................. 74 Misrecognition and Misacknowledgement ......................................................... 78 An Unexpected Resonance ................................................................................. 83 . Chapter 6: EPILOGUE－ A REVIST TO TEACHER IDENTITY IN TESOL .................... 85 Reflecting on Issues of Language Teacher Identity in Marcel’s Stories ............ 85 TESOL Education as a Platform for Identity Construction and Reflection ....... 88 Identity Construction through Enhanced Identity Options ........................ 88 iii.

(7) Identity Reflection through Narrative ........................................................ 91 Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research .............................................. 92 Limitations ................................................................................................. 92 Suggestions for Future Research ................................................................ 93 A Postcript .................................................................................................. 95 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................ 97 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………………………..117. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(8) 中文摘要. 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要. 論文名稱：英語教師身份認知的掙扎：一位英語教師的敘事探究指導教授：黃怡萍博士. ‧. ‧ 國. 論文提要內容：. 學. 研究生：朱家鈺. 立. 政治大. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. 本論文透過敘事探究的方式，探討一位補教業英文老師之身份認知與建構。經由半結構訪談、分析此教師社群網站發表之文章，以及筆者之研究筆記，本論文意圖呈現補教英語老師之身份認知與建構，是一段持續掙扎、探索進而取得認同(recognition)的過程。. Ch. i n U. v. 經由分析、探討此個案的人生經驗與自我敘述後，本研究發現，教師遭逢之人、事、物，以及言談敘述背後所隱含的思維與價值，皆影響教師之自我身份認知與建構。教師. engchi. 在教學歷程中，往往具有多重的身分認同選項(不論此選項是教師堅信或是外在加諸)，這些身分認同的差異選項可能相互牴觸，並由於自身內部之認知與外部價值思維的衝突，進而引發一連串的「不被認同」(misrecognition and misacknowledgment)。本研究呈現出過去英語師資培育之相關研究往往忽略教師個人身分認同選項的現象，因此，如何敘述、協調個人的身分認同選項與衝突，並應用於英語師資的培養與自我調適，是本論文著眼之處。透過本論文之研究，亦希望提供英語師資培育課程不同的視野。第一，相關課程如何透過介紹不同言談思維價值，使教師能夠適當運用多種身分認同選項；第二，如何將敘事概念融入相關課程，協助教師解讀其教學中遭遇之人、事、物之關係與衝突，並進一步思考對教師本身之影響。. vii.

(9) English Abstract This narrative research journey is a process in which the life experiences of an English teacher working in the context of private tutoring/cramming are re-presented and reconstructed. It was within this context that the teacher moved back and forth between his lived past, temporal present, and envisioned future. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, his Facebook posts, and the researcher’s research notes, eight narratives were. 政治大. reconstructed to provide a snapshot of the teacher’s experiences spanning 10 years his life.. 立. The stories reveal the complexity of language teacher identity enactment. Drawing on. ‧ 國. 學. postmodern identity, Bourdieu’s (1990, 1993) field and capital, and Gee’s (1999, 2000) Discourse, the study illustrates that the teacher’s identity can be conceptualized as a site of. ‧. struggle for recognition. Whom the teacher had met and how he was imagined both inside and. y. Nat. sit. outside his situated teaching context impacted the construction of his professional identity.. n. al. er. io. During his 10 years of life, the teacher drew on multiple discourses as sources for his identity. i n U. v. construction (i.e., his TESOL knowledge, his mentor, and his foreign friends), and at the same. Ch. engchi. time, he encountered different and sometimes competing discourses that undermined the carving of his teacher identity (i.e., the social view about the language teaching profession, the commercial profit-oriented values in the private tutoring/cramming industry, and his student’s lack of commitment in teaching). It was a struggle as the teacher searched for recognition but was caught up with misrecognition and misacknowledgement. The research provides implications for language teacher education. First, opportunities are encouraged to promote and increase identity options through the introductions of different discourses surrounding language teaching to teachers. Second, the concept of narrative can be incorporated into curriculum so as to assist teachers to explore and understand deeply about vii.

(10) their own identities formations and their relationship with other people.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vii. i n U. v.

(11) Chapter 1: PROLOGUE. An Autobiographical Moment This narrative inquiry is not only about Marcel, the main character of the story, but also about me as a researcher, an English teacher, a friend, and a social being. As Clandinin and Connelly (2000) state, “narrative inquiry characteristically begins with the researcher’s autobiographically oriented narrative associated with the research puzzle” (italics in original) (p.41). The researcher’s worldview, the knowledge he/she brings to the research, is embedded in the process of narrative inquiry in which he/she operates. The contextual. 政治大. factors surrounding the researcher inevitably bring his/her values, backgrounds, and beliefs. 立. to the research. I, as a living being, need to be aware of my own stories as I enter the inquiry.. ‧ 國. 學. This understanding calls for an obligation that I present some of my autobiographical details that may hopefully enable readers who are reading this dissertation to know more. ‧. about me, about the knowledge I bring to the research. I am aware that these short. y. Nat. io. sit. autobiographical moments are not comprehensive enough to capture who I was, who I am,. n. al. er. and who I will become. Nor do I intend to do so, since what is captured and expressed in. Ch. i n U. v. these short accounts, as Clandinin and Connelly suggest, is myself always in transition,. engchi. constantly incorporating and referencing to the past and the future. The following section is organized under The Personal Context of the Research, and is interwoven, though not chronologically1, with four of my autobiographical moments and one that I shared with Marcel. Together, they set the stage for the research.. 1. The date indicated within the parentheses represents the time when the narrative was written rather than the time when the story happened. 1.

(12) The Personal Context of the Research. “Research, like almost everything in life has autobiographical roots.” — (Seidman, 1991, p.24). My Narrative 1First Few Years about Teaching English I have always wanted to be an English teacher. I started to teach English to children when I was a sophomore as an English major in 1991. I taught at a small, private after-school care center run by a married couple. It was really small because there were only 20 students. The kids were small, too; they were around 8~10 years old. I did not know how to teach at the time, and all I did with the children was simply about having fun by doing lots of games and activities, getting them to like English. Both of us did not know what to expect in the classroom, but that does not mean I did not prepare. I did prepare before going to class. I felt like I wasn’t teaching at the time; I felt more like a babysitter. One year later, I found a teaching position at a cram school2teaching junior high school students. Unlike the experience with children, teaching here was more systematic and organized because I had to teach based on what they learned in school. I felt I was actually teaching English at the time. Grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary were the focus since the students had a monthly English test at school. Coincidentally, my English department was offering an undergraduate elective course, TESOL Methodology, and I thought it was about time that I sharpened my teaching skills. We did a lot of reading from books such as “Teaching By Principles,” “Principles of Language Learning and Teaching,” both of which were written by H. Douglas Brown, “Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching” by Diane Larsen-Freeman, and “Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching” by Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers. Yes! They were all about methods and approaches. Not only did we read, we also needed to actually teach by applying these approaches and methods. When I say “applying”, I do mean following the. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. 2. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Cram schools in Taiwan are called buxiban (Liu, 2012); literally they mean “supplementary learning class.” Most exist commonly to help students pass the entrance examinations of high schools or universities. “Cramming” refers studying hard or studying a large amount of material in a short period of time. 2.

(13) procedure and steps outlined in different methods/approaches. I even designed a matrix diagram to check whether I followed the sprit of each method. I was excited because I learned lots of knowledge about how to teach, and I was eager to demonstrate what I had learned to those junior high school students. But I did not care about how they felt about my use of these approaches, probably because I did not know why I should, and perhaps how. Besides, they did not react well to my new way of teaching. I eventually fell back to the original purpose and style of teaching by aiming for the test they had in school. In 2007, in order to gain professional credential, which at the time I thought would be crucial to receive recognition in language teaching, I attended a co-coordinated certificated program initiated by a world-renowned University X3 and Language Institute Y4. It was a three-day session in which we were introduced to lots of teaching approaches, methods, and SLA theories, and specific attention was devoted to the teaching of four skills, as well as the teaching of vocabulary, pronunciation, and material design. I felt inspired even though what was introduced had mostly been covered in the course of TESOL Methodology that I attended earlier. And I thought I was credentialed by one of the most world-renowned educational institutes. Hooray! I not only gained knowledge about how to teach, but most importantly, I thought, I would earn myself a place, a position, in this competitive teaching profession (Journal Entry 22nd August 2011).. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. These years of my learning about language teaching centered around the subject matter. Nat. sit. y. or disciplinary knowledge (Johnson & Golombek, 2011). I was deeply enlightened by those. n. al. er. io. courses and was convinced that it was in part these knowledge that set language education. i n U. v. apart from other disciplines. However, I also wondered whether this knowledge was. Ch. engchi. sufficient enough for teachers to act upon their teaching. This question seemed to be answered after I enrolled in a master TESOL program, where I learned that teaching was not always about robotically and routinely imparting knowledge, but also about understanding the many people involved (e.g., the learner), the connotation conveyed with language (e.g., culture), and reflecting on our teaching practice. Such awakening is delineated in my next narrative. 3. University X is located in the U.S. and is famous for its programs on education and business management.. 4. Language Institute Y is a commercialized, franchised language-learning center in Taiwan. 3.

(14) My Narrative 2Exploring More about Language Teaching To fine-tune and sharpen my teaching, as well as to fulfill my dream to become a teacher and satiate my intrinsic thirst for knowledge about language teaching, I need more than a certificate. I need something more powerful, something that can elevate my professional development, at least, something that is the first step to my professional development. I need a master degree. In 2010, I was admitted to a nationally well-recognized TESOL program in Taiwan. I took courses such as “TESOL Method,” “Qualitative Research Methods,” “TESOL Practicum,” “Culture in TESOL,” “Issues and Studies in Computer-Enhanced EFL Instruction,” “Sociolinguistics in TESOL,” “Self, Identity, and Agency: Focusing on the Language Learner,” and “Studies on Course Design and Materials Evaluation.” These courses were enlightening because they opened my eyes by offering me other perspectives from which language teaching could be approached. Rather than and unlike focusing on the teaching of four skills and delivering the technical knowledge about learning and teaching, I begin to be cognizant of the multifaceted phenomena associated with language teaching and learning. For example, the reflective practice emphasized in the “TESOL Practicum” made me aware the ways in which I was influencing learners, and the kinds of beliefs and values I was imposing on them. In “Self, Identity, and Agency: Focusing on the Language Learner,” my thoughts on language teaching were transformed not because I learned new skills of teaching but rather I realized that each learner had a life story to tell, which both directly and indirectly impacted their trajectory of learning English. This understanding prompted me to listen, to appreciate and to understand their experiences, and more importantly, it made me realize that I was no longer a robotic knowledge transmitter, but an organic social being that was capable of feeling and empathizing (Journal Entry, 20th Jun 2012).. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. Just when I thought I was fully equipped and prepared to finally enter the teaching profession, I encountered some difficulties in my teaching context, especially the ones that involved what language teaching meant to this particular social space, and most importantly, how language teachers were perceived by those gatekeepers. My narrative 3 is one of such concerns.. 4.

(15) My Narrative 3Encountering Frustration In May 2007, I started to teach adults at one of the biggest commercialized language centers in Northern Taiwan. In retrospect, I was indeed excited and enthusiastic in the first place. I figured I got the whole package and all I needed was to gain real experiences of teaching adults and learn from these experiences. During my second year in this private language center, I was once approached by an academic chair, who asked me if I would take over a TOEIC preparation course. “I have not yet taken TOEIC test, and I don’t quite understand what TOEIC is about. I don’t think I am qualified enough to teach the course,” I responded. “If you do not want to take over this class, we have hundreds of teachers who want to do this. If you want to take this course, you can just use this book for your own reference and preparation,” he went on. I was left speechless and astounded. “I can just go to the classroom and tell my students this is what it is like in the real TOEIC test, so you need to do this and do that before taking the test,” I thought, but I did not, because this ran counter to my conscience and it would not be right (Journal Entry, 9th Jul 2012).. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學 ‧. My journey in the TESOL program went on, so did my teaching in the commercialized language center. But this experience was characterized by lots of episodes. y. Nat. io. sit. that were beyond my comprehension and therefore prompted me to explore more about. n. al. er. my personal experiences as a teacher in this particular social space. A casual talk. Ch. i n U. v. presented in my narrative 4 between a student of mine and I was one of these episodes that. engchi. fuelled this research journey. The student’s response reveals how language teachers are conceptualized and treated in Taiwanese society, especially how the view is saturated in the private sector of education.. My Narrative 4Who Am I as an English Teacher? One student expressed willingness to be an English teacher in a cram school5. 5. Cram schools and commercialized profit-oriented language centers/schools are used interchangeably. 5.

(16) “Do you have any teaching experiences? Or have you received any professional training in language teaching, like a formal degree?” I asked. “No, I majored in social work, but I am interested in teaching English.” I then asked if she would want to pursue a professional degree, but “I know that many teachers here don’t have a professional degree or qualification. I mean they studied other subjects in college. It’s written on the faculty page. So I think if I can improve my English, I can be a teacher. And they all seem to memorize a lot of vocabulary. When I am taking their courses, I feel like I am reading a dictionary,” she responded. “What about being an English teacher in school, I mean in the context of formal schooling?” I continued. “No, it’s too challenging and lots of teachers who want to teach there cannot have a position because of the fierce competition.” The student’s words were kind of a slap in the face for me. It seemed that she was saying the threshold for being an English teacher outside formal schooling was low. The feeling that I was not only competing with teachers sharing the same disciplinary background but also with those without proper training appears to be distressing, because I do believe language teaching requires not only content knowledge but also pedagogical knowledge, and it is these knowledge that fundamentally differentiates language teaching from other professions. It has gradually become obvious to me that I am in a place that presents conflicting values to my own. The talk with the student reminded me of my experience with the academic chair (My Narrative – 3). These two stories in some way reflect the broader sociocultural discourse(s) surrounding the profession of language teaching in Taiwan, where English teaching is carried out substantially outside formal schooling. Am I the only one experiencing this? In the eyes of my students, am I only a person, not a teacher, who happens to know a sizable amount of vocabulary? In other words, can my professionalism be defined only by the linguistic knowledge I know? (Journal Entry, 11th January 2012). 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. My Narrative 5-. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. A Casual Talk between Marcel and I One day we were chatting in the teachers’ lounge of the language center while Marcel was talking to me about the feedback from an academic chair after he brought up students’ opinions of him to her. The academic chair told Marcel that he was being too serious and earnest about teaching and sometimes he had to loosen up and wanted Marcel to treat this like an ordinary job that paid, as Marcel quoted, “You just think and do like other teachers in this center and perhaps you would be more content and happier.” To recollect, I was surprised that I did not entirely disagree with what the academic chair said to Marcel. In fact, I found part of her words true, especially “You just think and do like other teachers in this center.” My reaction at the moment was “yah, I never thought I could be content and happier by just acting like others in this center, and maybe I should so that I 6.

(17) would feel less frustrated and get rid of the feeling that I have a moral and professional obligation to do what I am doing.” Marcel sarcastically recounted, “Next time I walk into the class, I will just write as much vocabulary as I could on the board, read along the textbook, and make students do a lot of grammar drills. And class dismissed! How wonderful is that! It saves me time!”(Journal Entry, 15th June 2012).. My personal narratives situate this research on the missing piece reflected in my narrative 2, the teacher. Placing the inquiry within a broader sociocultural context in which my emotions, values, concerns, and motivations emerge, this study hopes to understand the experiences of teachers. To begin, I present you the sociocultural context. 政治大. in which the current research is located.. 學. ‧ 國. 立. The Sociocultural Context of the Research. Tutoring/Cramming Industry in Taiwan. ‧. Both Marcel’s and my story cannot develop without a reference to the phenomenon of. sit. y. Nat. private tutoring/cramming in Taiwan. The phenomenon of private tutoring, also known as cram schooling (Liu, 2012) and shadow education (Bray, 1999) has been prominent in Asia.. io. n. al. er. As out-of-school educational and supplementary activities aimed at supplementing formal. i n U. v. schooling (Baker et al., 2001; Bray, 1999), private tutoring has been observed to have. Ch. engchi. existed in as early as the mid-1900s among at least 41 nations (Baker et al., 2001) to help students reach educational requirements and take advantages of educational opportunities. According to Davies and Aurini (2006), and among others, by closely following, mimicking, or shadowing the curricula of the formal school system, lessons are usually provided through both one-on-one and one-to-many formats, aiming to assist learners to master academic subjects in school. Buxiban (Liu, 2012) in Taiwan, Juku (Harnisch, 1994; Dawson, 2010) in Japan, tutorial schools (Kwok, 2004) in Hong Kong, and Hagwon (Park, 2009; Dawson, 2010) in South Korea are examples of such widespread tutoring/cramming schools. In Taiwan, cram schooling emerged since the enactment of Supplementary Education Act in 1944 (Ministry of Education, 2013) and has proliferated after the 9 Year National 7.

(18) Compulsory Education Act was approved in 1968 (Liu, 2012). Although at the time Taiwan society felt displeasure and anxiety about the fact that regular education at school would be disrupted and distorted, “this centralization of educational resources had indirectly created the current large-scale emphasis on schools” (p. 47). The diversification of cram schooling is noted in the Amendment Of Supplementary Education Act in 2009, namely, supplementary compulsory education, supplementary advanced education, and short-term tutorial education. The Amendment states: Supplementary compulsory education shall be carried out by supplementary compulsory schools affiliated with an elementary or junior high school…Citizens past the school age who have not yet received nine years of compulsory education shall receive supplementary compulsory education. Supplementary advanced education is offered as necessary by supplementary schools affiliated with schools at the level of senior secondary school or higher… Citizens who have already received nine years of compulsory education may receive supplementary advanced education.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. Unlike supplementary compulsory education and supplementary advanced education,. sit. y. Nat. which are affiliated with formal schooling and therefore take place usually in formal. n. al. er. io. schooling, short-term tutorial education position itself outside formal schooling. This form. v. of supplementary education, the most ubiquitous type among the three (Ho, 2008), is. Ch. engchi. i n U. suitable for citizens seeking to acquire general knowledge and skills (Article 3, Amendment Of Supplementary Education Act, 2009). Liu (2012) characterizes cram schooling into two kinds. The primary objective of academic cram schools is for educational advancement, such as English, mathematics, and science, helping learners to improve their test scores at school and preparing them for higher grades on entrance to senior high schools and universities. For people to accumulate cultural capital such as music, art, or sports other than test preparations, they go to non-academic cram schools (Wu, 1993). According to Ministry of Education (2013), learners flock to the cram schools, and the number of cramming centers has gone from 1,248 in 1997 to nearly 2,500 in 2000 and recently to 8.

(19) 10600 in 2013 (Ministry of Education, 2013). Among them, more than 5,000, regardless of scale and purposes (Liu’s characterizations earlier), are catering to English (foreign) language learning. This number is 2.38 times larger than 10 years ago. The development of tutoring/cramming centers in Taiwan echoes the transformation of traditional ones observed by Davies and Aurini (2006), who state that traditional private tutoring has gradually developed in response to investment, infrastructure, standardization, and securing and expanding revenue sources by providing appropriate customer service. In documenting this new breed of tutoring, Aurini (2004) outlines three differences on this transformation from the traditional shadow education to self-proclaimed learning centers.. 治政大 test preparation but also First, the learning centers are not only helping learners with 立. lifelong learning and skills building. Second, unlike traditional shadow education that. ‧ 國. 學. adopts school subjects as the guideline, learning centers develop their own curriculum and. ‧. design their own teaching materials (e.g., course books, and audio-visual aids). Finally,. sit. y. Nat. learning centers are now catering to a wide variety of age groups, going beyond its. io. er. original primary and secondary school learners and aiming for adult education and life-long learning in general.. al. n. v i n Ch The proliferation of tutoring/cramming in Taiwan, though continues to grow, e n gindustry chi U. has evoked criticism. Among the concerns, the most noted, as Liu (2012) points out, is. whether teachers in private tutoring institutions hold adequate credentials to qualify their teaching. As an English teacher who has received professional training in TESOL and working in this industry, I relate strongly to Liu’s concern. In where I work, only 20 percent of the teachers hold a master degree in relevant areas such as TESOL, Bilingualism, and Applied Linguistics. I thought this only happened in my workplace, but when the media in Taiwan in May 2013 reported that lots of teenaged learners went to English private tutoring/cramming centers not only for test preparation, but also for. 9.

(20) good-looking and star-like teachers, I knew this couldn’t be my experience only. The news wrote: These multitalented, versatile, and humorous teachers are gaining popularity because they are treated like superstars (my translation)6. Another news account reported the type of English teachers desired in this commercialized private tutoring/cramming industry: You can be an English teacher as long as you are interested in English, interested in teaching, eloquent, and have a decent character (my translation)7.. 政治大 language teacher with their enthusiasm and commitment to teaching, with their bubbling 立. My interpretation of this news account is that people can just work their way up to being a. ‧ 國. 學. personality, and that their professionalism can just magically develop through their teaching experiences. “Then what am I doing with all these TESOL knowledge?” I asked. ‧. myself. I am not implying that teaching requires no devotion and passion; teaching. sit. y. Nat. requires professional training, from which theoretical knowledge provides basis for. io. er. teachers to act upon their teaching. I agree with Johnson and Golombek’s (2011) emphasis. al. on the needs of theoretical training, since without professional training, teachers develop. n. v i n C h empirical learning only everyday concepts, which result from e n g c h i U only, and these concepts. “are limiting in that they are based solely on observations and/or generalizations gleaned. 6. Yahoo News. (2013, May 2). 辣師跳舞教「指對數」!英文課唱歌夯. Retrieved from http://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E7%8D%A8%E5%AE%B6-%E8%BE%A3%E5%B8%AB%E8%B7% B3%E8%88%9E%E6%95%99-%E6%8C%87%E5%B0%8D%E6%95%B8-%E8%8B%B1%E6%96 %87%E8%AA%B2%E5%94%B1%E6%AD%8C%E5%A4%AF-093848298.html. 7. Yahoo News. (2012, November 2). 名師薪資無上限.. Retrieved from http://tw.news.yahoo.com/%E5%90%8D%E5%B8%AB%E8%96%AA%E8%B3%87%E7%84%A1 %E4%B8%8A%E9%99%90-%E9%82%84%E5%8F%AF%E5%88%86%E7%B4%85%E8%AA%8 D%E8%82%A1-%E5%8D%87%E5%AD%B8%E8%A3%9C%E6%95%99%E6%A5%AD-%E6%89 %BE%E4%B8%8D%E5%88%B0%E4%BA%BA-%E5%85%A8%E9%9D%A2%E6%80%A7%E9 %9B%A3%E6%89%BE-053229053.html. 10.

(21) from a surface-level understanding of what language teaching and teaching is all about” (p. 2). This intuitive understanding cannot be consciously articulated and therefore may force teachers to fall back to robotic practices, serving no transformative power for (re)modification and improvement and may lead to misconceptions about language learning and teaching.. Approaching the Research Puzzles At this point, I feel myself trapped in a space interfaced with multiple ways of. 政治大 are permeated. My journal entries, together with the discourses pervading the society 立. thinking about language teaching, in which different actions, words, values, and beliefs. ‧ 國. 學. about language teaching in the tutoring/cramming industry, raise distressing concerns. I am at a crossroad. How do I position myself comfortably, if possible? How does this. ‧. positioning impact who I am and who I will become, both as a teacher and as a being? If. sit. y. Nat. my interpretation of the student’s words is correct, it can be assumed that teaching outside. io. er. formal schooling is comparatively more flexible. Then, how do I envision myself in the. al. future through this flexibility? Or whether this flexibility of going into and leaving the. n. v i n C the profession of English industry lowers the bar for entry to h e n g c h i U teaching? Do I need to prove the student and the media that they are wrong? If so, why should I? These questions directed my attention to what is said about teacher identity, which I shall present in the next chapter.. 11.

(22) [W]e speak — or sing — our selves as a chorus of voices/ not just as the tenor or soprano soloist. — (Mishler, 1999, p.8). This research is a journey that Marcel and I collectively undertook. We together explored, understood, appreciated, imagined, (re)positioned, transformed and reflected on ourselves and our lives through the telling of and listening to his stories by moving backward, forward, across time and space. All the questions asked are phrased with the use of the first person voice “I,” but they represent a shared struggle that Marcel and I. 政治大. have experienced, the concerns we have raised, and the future we have envisioned.. 立. Through the eyes of Marcel, we together bring to the fore what language teaching is. ‧ 國. 學. conceptualized in the private tutoring/cramming industry and how professionally credentialed teachers have struggled to make their voice heard. Through Marcel’s eyes, I. ‧. know I am not alone.. y. Nat. sit. It was in the social space of private tutoring/cramming industry that Marcel’s story. n. al. er. io. emerged. It was also in such context that Marcel was able to narrate his experiences that. i n U. v. spanned 10 years of his life. In these 10 years, Marcel encountered disparate people and. Ch. engchi. events, rendering him multiple roles in relation to the broader sociocultural context in which he was situated. The research journey can never capture the wholeness of the 10 years, but the scattered pieces of Marcel’s eight narratives put together the transitional process, in which Marcel’s identity enactment as an English teacher was impacted by the experiences that were personally meaningful and influential to him. Viewing identity as unfinalizable (Clarke, 2009), the research brings a snapshot of these experiences by placing them in a developmental and coherent order; the tentative ending of the story was Marcel’s decision to leave Taiwan and relocate to Shanghai.. 12.

(23) Chapter 2: CONCEPUALIZING THE RESEARCH. Connecting with Existing Stories Teachers develop a sense of who they are, at least in part, through their life experiences. As a result of these experiences, they assign meanings to the values, aspirations and beliefs they hold about teaching. This chapter presents a review of the existing literature as I entered the research site. It is by no means exhaustive or representative of all of the literature that now exists on language teacher identity and English tutoring. Yet, it sets the parameter within which the research journey lies.. 立. 政治大. (Language) Teacher Identity. ‧ 國. 學. ‧. “…we are continually in the process of fashioning and refashioning our identities by patching together fragments of the discourses to which we are exposed … understanding how teachers fashion their identities is especially important, since much of the work that is done in the classrooms by teachers and their students involves the crafting of identities with and for one another.”. er. io. sit. y. Nat. — (Miller, 2003, p. 8-9). al. n. v i n A messy construct, teacher C identity has received considerable attention in research on hen gchi U. language teacher education and development (Clarke, 2008; Duff & Uchida, 1997; Morgan, 2004; Pavlenko, 2003; Tsui, 2007; Varghese, 2001). The significance of understanding teacher identity is well articulated based on the assumption that. in order to understand language teaching and learning we need to understand teachers; and in order to understand teachers, we need to have a clearer sense of who they are: the professional, cultural, political, and individual identities which they claim or which are assigned to them. (Varghese et al., 2005, p. 254) This attention to teachers brings to the front the many intricate and complex aspects. 13.

(24) that situationally weave into shaping, constructing, and constituting teacher identity (Duff & Uchida, 1997; Flores, 2001; Flores & Day, 2006; Miller, 2009; Tsui, 2007). Duff and Uchida (1997) state some of the issues to capture the complexity and the need for understanding language teacher identity: Language teachers and students in any setting naturally represent a wide array of social and cultural roles and identities: as teachers or students, as gendered and cultured individuals, as expatriates or nationals, as native speaker or nonnative speakers, as content-area of TESL/English language specialists, as individuals with political convictions, and as members of families, organizations, and society at large. (p. 451). 政治大. What is implicated in the authors’ words is that teacher identity is constantly negotiated in. 立. response to the many contexts and situations in which teachers find themselves, using their. ‧ 國. 學. personal resources, which include, but are not limited to, skills, knowledge, and beliefs, to. ‧. “test” (Miller, 2009, p.175) as they enact their professional teacher identity. The identity resources teachers utilize may be at odds with what is expected of them, leading Maclure. y. Nat. io. sit. (1993) to conceive such construct as “a continuing site of struggle” (p. 312). In researching. er. teacher identity, the nexus between teachers’ personal history and the context in which they. al. n. v i n are currently situated is foregrounded & Verloop, 2004; Johnson, 2003). C(Beijaard h e n g&cMeijer hi U A large number of empirical studies have put forth the understanding that context impacts how a teacher perceives himself and is perceived by others. With a particular focus on the development of pre-service and student teachers’ learning-to-teach experience within a graduate or teacher certification program (Barkhuizen, 2008; Clarke, 2008; Golombek & Jordan, 2005; Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Liu & Fisher, 2006), these studies provide insight into student teachers’ teaching experiences in relation to their development of identity by drawing on the concept of identities-in-practice, identities-in-pedagogy to understand how these pre-service and student teachers develop personal knowledge in terms of cognitive. 14.

(25) development. However, seldom research publicized the experience of those who moved on to the teaching profession after leaving these programs. The lack of this line of inquiry is partly because the participants recruited and data obtained in graduate programs are easy to secure (Borg, 2006) and most teachers do not want their teaching to be scrutinized and are often swamped with their heavy workloads (Bueno & Casar, 2003; Hobbs & Kubanyiova, 2008). Fortunately, emerging studies have started to concentrate on how in-service teachers go about their work in the workplace, what difficulties they have encountered and how they negotiated themselves to enact or resist their identities in response to their situated needs.. 治政大probably the first who For example, using ethnography, Duff and Uchida (1997), 立. investigated language teacher identity in commercialized language centers, demonstrates. ‧ 國. 學. that language teacher identity is developed and formed along at least two dimensions: first,. ‧. a biographical/professional basis, which include past learning experiences, past teaching. sit. y. Nat. experiences, and cross-cultural experiences; and second, the needs of immediate context.. io. er. The study explored, in particular, the connection between culture (in terms of nationality) and identity, which is intricate and is interwoven with teachers' meta-cultural perceptions. al. n. v i n C h and the way theirUown identities as social beings and behaviors in their EFL classrooms engchi taking up particular social and cultural roles.. Emphasizing the contextual discourses surrounding the participants, Johnston (1997), using life interviews with 17 local and native in-service English teachers in Poland, reported that most of the teachers lacked agency and that they always considered leaving the teaching profession an option. Drawing on Bakhtin (1981), Johnston found that the professional, social, political, and personal discourses that the teachers in the study drew on clashed at a meeting point at which multiple subjectivities emerged. This foregrounded the presence of oftentimes conflicting struggle and (re)conceptualization of what it meant. 15.

(26) to work as an EFL teacher in Poland. Their lack of professional identity and fulfillment, according to the author, was a reflection of the unsatisfactory economic circumstances at the time, which later leading the teachers to consider language teaching a less financially stable and viable career. Highlighting the complexity of identity formation, Tsui (2007) drew on Wenger’s (1998) communities of practice to study the experiences of a beginning teacher’s six-year teaching experience in China. The study reported that the teacher struggled with identity formation in terms of being “reified as a member of a community” (p. 678). Not given legitimacy of access to practice and opportunities for developing competence and not. 治政大 a sense of marginalization, having his competence acknowledged, the teacher experienced 立 disengagement, and nonparticipation. She further argues that the formation of teacher. ‧ 國. 學. identity, a sense of who one is as a teacher, surfaces when one acquires “the competence. ‧. that defined this learner community through engaging in the social discourse and activities,. sit. y. Nat. and aligning himself with the norms and expectations of its members” (p. 674-675).. io. er. Trent’s (2012) study, informed by Hall (2000), Weedon (1997), and Jorgensn and Phillips (2002), revealed the power of discourse in maintaining the in-service teachers’. al. n. v i n C hThe discourse thatUthe in-service teachers chose to self-positioning and positioning others. engchi embody, and the discourse used to position others were evident in the study. The author states that identity and positioning are shaped by systems of power relations among different stakeholders and the discourse they employ to identify with or differentiate from through these relations. The four studies foreground the contextual understanding of teacher identity, each of which illustrates that who we are as teachers is a negotiated, socially constructed, ongoing and transforming project. Johnston’s study, in particular, highlighted the power of discourses surrounding the context of the research, in which the teachers struggle to make. 16.

(27) sense of their lives at the intersection of competing discourses. As Johnston argued, the teachers’ lives “are lived in complex contexts in which personal, educational, political, and socio-economical discourses all influence the way life is told” (p. 708). In addition, for their research purposes, Tsui’s and Trent’s studies approached teacher identity in relation to the teachers’ professionalism, linking their identity to their professional role. This perspective treats identity, though in a negotiable and contested sense, with regards to the possession of a defined set of assets required for the profession (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). As illuminating as they are, this line of inquiry of teacher identity implicates that teachers have only one identity—who they are as teachers,. 治政 overshadowing the powerful force of teachers as being 大 a social being as well. According 立. to ven den Berg (2002), teacher identity is also constructed “as the result of an interaction. ‧ 國. 學. between the personal experiences of teachers and the social, cultural, and institutional. ‧. environment in which they function on a daily (italics added) basis”(p. 579). Their words. sit. y. Nat. remind me that I am not only a teacher, but also a social being, and that it is the interplay. io. er. between my professional identity and my identity as an ordinary individual going about my daily life impacts who I am as a consequence. This lack of emphasis on multiple. al. n. v i n identities will be addressed laterC as h I relate my choice on e n g c h i U the theoretical framework through the lens of postmodern identity.. Despite the acknowledgement on the impacts of context on language teacher identity, the previous studies primarily concentrate on the context of formal schooling. As Johnston (2003) states, however, an enormously large percentage of English teaching is carried out outside formal primary and secondary education, with commercialized private language schools or centers, for instance, being one. But as I was immersing myself in the reading of literature, hoping to find out language teaching in the social space of tutoring/cramming industry, I did not find much. What I found, instead, was a proliferative examination of. 17.

(28) private tutoring/cramming industry across the globe in the education, sociology, and economics literature (Aurini and Davies, 2004; Aurini, 2004; Bray & Koo, 2004; Buchmann, 2002; Popa & Acedo, 2006; Psacharopoulos & Patrinos, 2004). Quite understandably, language teaching and learning in this social space has not received parallel consideration in the ELT discourse. With an attempt to justify why researching this social space is of significance, I came across an article by Clandinin, Pushor and Orr (2007), who call for researchers engaging narrative research to attend to three kinds of justifications: They are personal, practical, and social. Personal justification, by retelling and reliving their own stories, requires that researchers situate themselves in the. 治政大 to, and interest in, the phenomenon under study, speaking to “the researcher’s relationship 立. inquiry” (p. 25). Practical justification refers to the extent of insightfulness and how it will. ‧ 國. 學. change or influence researchers’ own and others’ practice. Social justification invites. ‧. researchers’ to attend to “the larger social and educational issues the study might address”. sit. y. Nat. (p. 25). By making visible the complexities, contradictions, silences, and disruptions. io. er. inherent in the human experiences, social justification of an attempted research fuels up possible future social actions and policy justifications (Clandinin & Huber, 2010). My. al. n. v i n C h for this researchUjourney: narrative illustrates the three justifications engchi. I expected myself to find something related to language teaching and private tutoring industry in the scholarly publications, but I did not find much. Fortunately, I encountered Johnston’s (2003) observation. The missing of these teachers’ voice working in this social space, coupling with my personal experiences addressed in my narratives in the introduction (personal justification), as well as a vision to possibly change the common module of teacher preparation (practical justification) by raising language teacher educators’ awareness of how language teaching may have been conceptualized differently in different social spaces (social justification) prompted this research journey. (My Journal Entry, 13th Apr 2012). When I typed in private tutoring industry and language teaching, I found the type of 18.

(29) tutoring that was unlike what I had in mind. Not skipping these publications, however, I found them useful for situating and characterizing the nature of context of this research, which is the focus of the next section.. English and Tutoring Usually two types of tutoring practice are examined in the ELT discourse. First, in the context of graduate-level courses in the TESOL program such as practicum or relevant teacher education/training programs/schemes, tutoring other students (the duration can range from few hours to the whole semester) is one of the requirements in order for students. 治政 to earn full credits upon the completion of the course (Busch, 大 2010; Weigle & Nelson, 立 2004; Wong, 2009). These studies examine the tutors’ teaching behaviors, the negotiation ‧ 國. 學. of their roles, and the changes in their beliefs about language teaching and learning. The. ‧. second type of tutoring examined, comparatively of scarcity, involves viewing tutoring as private in a sense that it takes place outside formal schooling as supplementary activities.. y. Nat. er. io. sit. In their studies, Khuwaileh and Al-Shoumali (2001), by employing questionnaire survey and interviews, reported that Jordan parents hired private tutors to help their university. al. n. v i n offspring improve their academicCEnglish for ESP courses. h e n g c h i U Hamid at al. (2009) showed that there were positive associations between learners’ participation and their academic. performance in English, though the links were not strong. The study also demonstrates that the chance for receiving private tutoring was positively correlated with the family’s financial backgrounds and that learners viewed such English tutoring practice imperative as it would help them achieve better school performance. The two strands of study markedly differ in terms of the nature of the tutoring targeted, the purpose of the tutoring, and the impacts each type of tutoring generates. As opposed to the tutoring examined in the first type of study, in which tutoring is part of. 19.

(30) course requirements that exists for research purposes, tutoring in the second line of study is regarded as a natural phenomenon occurring in response to particular sociocultural needs and values. This research focuses on the second type of tutoring, especially in its franchise form, in which the voice of another group of social agents in this social space, the teacher, is largely muted. The paucity of literature left me wondering about the lack of voice of teachers working in this social space. Who are these teachers? How do they experience their teaching? Are their experiences different from those working in the formal schooling? What problems have they encountered? These are some of the questions that I intend to explore.. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. Formulating the Theoretical Framework. ‧. Our worldview “shapes what we look at, how we look at things, what we label as problems, what problems we consider worth investigating and solving, and what methods are preferred for investigations and action.”. y. Nat. er. io. sit. —(Maguire, 1987, p. 14). al. This section presents the theoretical lenses through which I view Marcel’s story. They. n. v i n are postmodern identity, Bourdieu’sC (1990, h e1993) h iandUcapital, and Gee’s (1999, 2000) n g cfield Discourse. Each of them is organized first by its explanatory force for human action and its assumptions about social reality, followed by how it was conceptualized in relation to the research journey. Taken together, they illuminate the unique, rich, and holistic nature of Marcel’s narratives.. Postmodern Identity There is no agreed-upon definition of identity, but what is shared by many scholars in educational research is that identity, whether understood as a way of belonging, as a form 20.

(31) of justification, as a category of policymaking, or in many other ways, is interwoven to the ways that we interact, learn, and teach (Ball & Ellis, 2007; Gee, 2000; Hall, 2000; Maclure, 1993; Norton, 1997, 2000; Toohey, 2000). This way of thinking about identity, which takes into account sociocultural factors surrounding a person, contrasts itself markedly with what is termed the essentialist view of identity associated with the cognitive and psychological revolution that took place in the 1950s and 1960s (Erikson, 1968). The essentialist view treats identity as developmentally linear stages of moving from Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Identity moratorium, to Identity Achievement, known as The Identity Status Paradigm (Marcia, 1966, in Coˆ te & Schwartz,. 治政大of identity emphasizes how one 2002). Moreover, the structuralist analysis (e.g., Marxism) 立 is viewed is based on the trajectories predetermined for people’s lives, which have formed. ‧ 國. 學. a common experience among people with similar class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality. ‧. and language. The essentialist view, therefore, treats identity as an interior entity in terms. sit. y. Nat. of observable aspects of a person, leading to the view that identity is unproblematically. io. er. assumed to exist with stability.. The essentialist view of identity has recently been leveled against by scholars who. al. n. v i n C h within sociocultural regard identity as a process emerging e n g c h i U practices rather than a pre-given product. The common assertions about identity framed from this social constructionist. view are that identity can be a process in negotiation (Nasir &Saxe, 2003; Norton, 2000; Olsen, 2008) and a negotiated product and artifact (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004; Nasir & Saxe, 2003; Olsen, 2008), varying in context and interaction (Hall, 2000) and impacted by power relations and discourses manifested in the interplay between a person and the social structure (Bailey, 2000; Norton, 2000). Therefore, the markers such as race, class and gender are not fixed but are fluid and are therefore open to shifts and negotiation. However, this fluidity also implicates the possibility that the agency to take up certain identities may. 21.

(32) be met with resistance from others, since we construct who we are in relation to the perceptions of others (Anzaldua, 1999, in McCarthey & Moje, 2002; Bailey, 2000; Sarup; 1998; Taylor, 1995). The postmodern identity best captures these views on identity. In the postmodern world today, it is assumed that individuals are located in social spaces in relation to others. The question “Who am I?” is inevitably interrelated with the blurry between the personal and the social. Accounts of postmodern identity emphasize the contextual understanding of who one is; identity is situated, depending on the where; identity is relational, depending on the who/whom. The person comes to be seen in the wider social structure. This postmodern turn of identity is described by Hall (1992):. 治政大in social theory. In essence, The question of ‘identity’ is being rigorously debated the argument is that old立 identities, which stabilized the social world for so long, are ‧. ‧ 國. 學. in declining, giving rise to new identities and fragmenting the modern individual as a unified subject. This so-called ‘crisis of identity’ is seen as part of wider process of change, which is dislocating the central structures and processes of modern societies and undermining the frameworks, which gave individuals stable anchorage in the social world.. sit. y. Nat. (p. 274). n. al. er. io. How, then, does postmodern identity shed light on our understanding of teacher identity? If. i n U. v. we acknowledge that teachers are not exclusively characterized by their professional. Ch. engchi. expertise but also an individual situated in broader sociocultural space, then it can be assumed that teacher identity is multiple, fragmented, and hybrid, constantly adjusting and transforming in relation to the diverse social spaces they engage in. Gergen (2000) spoke of individuals’ participation in different communities, which causes a self to be decentralized into a multiplicity of social contexts, leading to varied and dynamic identity. Gee’s (1990) statement shares a similar idea: The “kind of person” one is recognized as “being,” at a given time and place, can change from moment to moment in the interaction, can change from context to context, and, of course, can be ambiguous, or unstable … all people have multiple identities connected not to their “internal state” but to their performances in society. 22.

(33) (p. 99) In conceptualizing teacher identity, I not only view teachers as a professional with expertise but also take into account their personal life since their “lives and work are influenced and made meaningful by factors and conditions inside and outside the classroom and school” (Goodson & Cole, 1993, p. 88). Foregrounding what is happening outside the classroom and school can also exert impacts on teachers’ identity, a small number of empirical studies addressed teachers’ personal life (Aslup, 2006; Blase & Pajak, 1989; Kelchtermans, 1993; Olsen, 2008). The postmodern accounts of identity, therefore, views teacher identity as constructed in relation to broader social, cultural and political discourses and negotiated. 政治大. through relationship with others. Teacher identity, therefore, is contingent, multiple, and. 立. unstable. It is not a predetermined substantive entity of who I am, but a relational sense of. ‧ 國. 學. who I can be, or should be. Therefore, rather than analyzing teacher identity so as to find a core self, I explored how Marcel incorporated the personal, the professional and the situated. ‧. in a negotiable sense (Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington & Gu, 2007).. er. io. sit. y. Nat Bourdieu’s Field and Capital. al. n. v i n From a critical sociologicalC perspective (Grenfell, 2011), Bourdieu’s (1990, 1993) hengchi U. constructs of field and capital function as an analytical tool to examine a person’s. functioning in relation to the context in which he is situated. A social field, Bourdieu (1992) argued, is a social space occupied by both dominant and subordinate social agents (people or institutions), struggling to make their voice heard or to maintain their positions. Regulated by its own logic of practice, a field is envisioned by Bourdieu as “a game of struggle,” in which “configuration of relations between positions objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon the occupants, agents or institutions (…)” (pp. 72-73). The TESOL field, as a case in point, is not a specific context. 23.

(34) or place, but a socially structured space occupied by social agents such as applied linguists, critical applied linguists, language teachers, language teacher educators, generic learners, marginalized learners, to name a few, coming from different positions and backgrounds with different interests to be served. Extending the concept, Thomson (2008) explicates that a field cannot be equated to any material place in the universe, even though “all of the people, practices, institutions, goods and services in social fields do have a physical manifestation” (p. 74). The conventions, rituals, and rules within a field determine the appropriate discourse embodied and the activities practiced. Within each field, there is that which is sanctioned and that which is rejected.. 治政大 addressing the friction Bourdieu’s constructs provide lenses through which questions 立. between the teachers’ competence and capital as credentialed language teachers and their. ‧ 國. 學. positioning in relation to the discourse permeating the private tutoring industry could be. er. io. sit. y. Nat. Discourse. ‧. closely examined.. The term discourse can have many different meanings based on where and how it is. al. n. v i n used (Mills, 2004). As Ward (1997)C stated, a discourse is U h e n g c h i “an abstract public sphere of. words and images” (p. 129). Other similar concepts such as communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and discourse communities (Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1995), though not used synonymously and interchangeably, have also given rise to the theoretical, philosophical, and practical debate of how discourse can be defined. Since identity is enacted within and through, not outside, human interaction, postmodern or poststructuralist thinkers such as Derrida (1981), Butler, (1993) and Foucault (1978) have emphasized how powerful discourse can be to shape or create, and even to demean certain identity options. For Foucault, discourse is conceptualized with. 24.

(35) regard to rules, systems and procedures that constitute, and are constituted by, our will to knowledge, mapping out the terrain that circumscribes certain forms of writing, speaking, or thinking, thereby forming and producing knowledge. Gee’s (1999, 2000) definition of discourse, which is conceptualized broader in a way than Foucault’s, highlights the comprehensive and holistic nature of human’s experience between the personal and the larger sociocultural space. He defined Discourse (as apposed to discourse with a small d) as: different ways in which we humans integrate language with non-language “stuffs,” such as different ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, believing, and using symbols, tools, and objects in the right places and at the right times so as to enact and recognize different identities and activities, give the material world certain meanings, distribute social goods in a certain way, make certain sorts of meaningful connections in our experience, and privilege certain symbol systems and ways of knowing over others.. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. (Gee, 1999, p. 13). ‧. A Discourse, according to Gee, is an identity “kit” (p. 142) that is in some way expressed. sit. y. Nat. through words, actions, beliefs and values, and helps shape how one is and how he should. io. er. be viewed, thereby forming a sense of belonging and affiliation to certain community.. al. Identities, in this way, are eventually “rooted in recognition processes tied to specific. n. v i n C is through discourseUthat socially constructed meanings, Discourses” (Gee, 2000, p. 111). It h engchi relations, and identities are produced, negotiated, and maintained (Clarke, 2008). Therefore, identity and discourse are constitutive of each other and the interplay between the two shapes how we act upon the world. If identities are tied to certain discourse so that they could be enacted, discourse simultaneously establishes and defines identities in relation of difference to what they are not (Weedon, 2004), thereby contesting, undermining, and even demeaning certain identity options. Both Foucault’s and Gee’s emphasis on the power of discourse shed light on the troubling aspect of identity formation, that is, the interplay and the conflict between the 25.

(36) discourses one person choose to embody and the discourses of the larger sociocultural context surrounding him. When conceptualizing the research, I am using the term discourse throughout the process in a way similar to Discourse (with a capital D) coined by Gee to include not only linguistic but also other non-linguistic stuff. In addition, I am also aware that discourse is a social practice that imposes particular views and social values.. Research Questions Together, the lenses of postmodern identity, Bourdieu’s field and capital, and Gee’s. 治政 Discourse, each of which helps shed light on Marcel’s disparate 大 experiences, are 立 complementary and enlightening in providing a holistic perspective from which the ‧ 國. 學. enactment, negotiation, and multiplicity of Marcel’s identity both as a language teacher. ‧. and a social being is examined in relation to those experiences. I believe that the very. y. Nat. nature of being a teacher means that one’s personal life and professional life intersect and. er. io. sit. thus identity is subject to competing tensions and results from active negotiation of the multiple discourses from which it evolves. As Weedon (1997) so eloquently put, “Our. al. n. v i n C hour choices, practices relations to the world and other people, and language constantly engchi U. create, construct and reconstruct our identity” (p. 33). To this end, I am interested in how Marcel came to understand and negotiate his professional selves through his lived experiences of professional and his private social life, and how he struggled to claim the rights to particular identities and resist others that were imposed on him. Through the frameworks, I’m presenting Marcel’s story to answer two questions: 1. What discourses does the teacher draw on as he constructs his teacher identity? 2. How does the teacher negotiate the meanings in this process of becoming an English teacher? 26.

(37) Chapter 3: EMBARKING ON THE RESEARCH JOURNEY Postmodernism and Knowledge The study is situated under the postmodern paradigm. I will now address the epistemological and ontological viewpoints informing this study. Epistemologically, the study emphasizes the subjective and multiple truths (Reeves, 1996). It is assumed that in the postmodern conditions, the substantive centered self is eroded, the objective truth is deteriorated, and authority is questioned (Gergen, 2000), and that each person brings his or her view, or past life experiences to a current situation. Therefore, there is a plurality of. 政治大 world we live in that subsequently frame a person‘s notion of reality (Corbin & Strauss, 立. knowledge. Ontologically, a researcher’s worldview—the beliefs and attitudes about the. ‧ 國. 學. 2008). Therefore, viewing truth and knowledge as a constructed reality, postmodernism rejects single objective truth (Carson, 1996, in Webster & Mertova, 2007), underscoring. ‧. the plurality of voices struggling for the right to be heard. In a postmodern framework, I. sit. y. Nat. am cognizant that there are no absolute ‘facts,’ and knowledge is thought to be. al. er. io. constructed within the context in which it is generated. This consideration entails an. v. n. awareness of who the knower is, how the knowledge is obtained, whose voice is. Ch. engchi. i n U. privileged, and how constructed understandings are embedded in the sociocultural setting and time in which the research takes place.. Why Narrative Approach? It’s “the importance of narratives as an expressive embodiment of our experience, as a mode of communication, and as a form for understanding the world and ultimately ourselves.” — (Brockmeier & Carbaugh, 2001, p.1). 27.