Competence and Performance #7 – The language teacher’s identity

In the latest post in his series on what distinguishes the very best language teachers, Interchange author Jack C. Richards explores the part played by the language teacher’s identity.

One of the things a person has to learn when he or she becomes a language teacher is what it means to be a language teacher. A sociocultural perspective on teacher learning posits a central aspect of this process as the reshaping of identity and identities within the social interaction of the classroom. Identity refers to the differing social and cultural roles teacher-learners enact through their interactions with their students during the process of learning. These roles are not static but emerge through the social processes of the classroom. Identity may be shaped by many factors, including personal biography, culture, working conditions, age, gender, and the school and classroom culture.

The concept of identity thus reflects how individuals see themselves and how they enact their roles within different settings. In a teacher education program, a teacher-learner’s identity is remade through the acquisition of new modes of discourse and new roles in the course room. Teacher learning thus involves not only discovering more about the skills and knowledge of language teaching but also what it means to be a language teacher.

In a training course or campus-based teacher education program, the student teacher’s identity emerges through the acquisition of new modes of discourse as well as new roles in the campus classroom. Once the student teacher starts teaching, his or her identity is gradually reshaped into the role of teacher.

This transition is not always easy and can create stress and anxiety. For many ESL teachers, their identity may partly reflect their wish to empower immigrants, refugees, and others for whom English is a way out of their current circumstances (Cooke and Simpson 2008), as these comments suggest:

When I went into the class first to observe my cooperating teacher I was so shocked at the reality of the differences in ethnic backgrounds of all the students and wondered how I would manage this and what my role was as a teacher of English. When I started to teach the class and got to know them better I realized my role would not only be to teach them how to speak English but also how to navigate the culture outside the classroom because now they were in a new country (USA). I realized that I would take on another role as that of cultural ambassador as I explained more and more about the US to them during and even after class. Eventually, I had them all over to my house. – Eva

Since I have been in teaching practice and inside teaching a real class with real ESL students I no longer feel an outsider in this profession even though I am a non-native speaker of English. Now that I have had a chance to prove myself as a teacher in front of these students and shown them that I know many different techniques as well as my skills using English (yes, and even if I still have a bit of an accent), they have begun to accept me as their teacher and I am beginning to feel more like a teacher of English. – Momoko

Native-speaker and non-native–speaker teacher learners may bring different identities to teacher learning and to teaching. Those untrained native speakers teaching EFL overseas face a different identity issue: They are sometimes credited with an identity they are not really entitled to (the “native speaker as expert” syndrome), finding that they have a status and credibility that they would not normally achieve in their own country. In language institutes, students may express a preference to study with native-speaker teachers, despite the fact that such teachers may be less qualified and less experienced that non-native–speaker teachers.

For non-native–speaker teachers studying in SLTE programs, identity issues may lead some to feel disadvantaged compared to native-speaker teachers in the same course. Whereas in their own country they were perceived as experienced and highly competent professionals, they now find themselves at a disadvantage and may experience feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. They may have a sense of inadequate language proficiency, and their unfamiliarity with the learning styles found in British or North American university course rooms may hinder their participation in some classroom activities.

References and Further Reading

Read all the posts in this series: