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TESL Teacher Educators’ Professional Self-Development, Identity, and Agency Bed

TESL Teacher Educators’ Professional Self-Development, Identity, and Agency BedreĴ in Yazan Using the concepts of identity and agency, this Perspectives article discusses my recent eﬀ orts of self-development when designing an identity-oriented Teaching English as a second language (TESL) teacher education course around teacher candidates’ semester-long autoethnography writing assignment called “critical autoethnographic narrative” (CAN). It speciﬁ cally unpacks the ways I negotiated and enacted my identities of teacher educator and researcher of teacher educa- tion while I was incorporating identity as the main goal in teacher candidates’ learning. In closing, this article oﬀ ers recommendations for TESL teacher educa- tors who consider designing identity-oriented courses and suggests some future research directions. À l’aide des concepts de l’identité et de l’agentivité (ou capacité d’agir), cet article de Perspectives illustre mes récents eﬀ orts d’autoperfectionnement alors que je concevais un cours de formation d’enseignantes et enseignants d’anglais langue seconde axé sur l’identité, et ce, autour de l’imposition d’un projet d’écriture au- toethnographique d’un semestre appelé « exposé autoethnographique critique » à des candidates et candidats à l’enseignement. L’article révèle spéciﬁ quement la façon dont je suis parvenu à négocier et faire valoir mes identités de forma- teur d’enseignants et de chercheur en éducation d’enseignants alors que je faisais de l’identité le principal objectif de l’apprentissage des candidats et candidates à l’ enseignement. En terminant, cet article oﬀ re des recommandations à l’inten- tion des formateurs d’enseignantes et enseignants d’anglais langue seconde qui songent à concevoir des cours axés sur l’identité, et ce, en plus de proposer des orientations futures en matière de recherche. јђѦѤќџёѠ: teacher educator self-development, identity, agency, critical autoethnographic narrative Introduction The line of research on identity in Teaching English as a second or other language (TESOL)/applied linguistics was spearheaded by Bonny Norton’s (1995) seminal work, and it was mostly focused on the important role of learners’ identity in the process of language learning and use. This was later followed by studies on language teachers’ identities, and there is now an established strand of research that seeks to understand language teacher TESL CANADA JOURNAL/REVUE TESL DU CANADA 140 VOLUME 35, ISSUE 2, 2018 PP. 140–155 https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v35i2.12894 TESL CANADA JOURNAL/REVUE TESL DU CANADA 141 VOLUME 35, ISSUE 2, 2018 identity in relation to varying aspects of teaching practices and surround- ing sociopolitical and cultural discourses and power relations (Faez, 2012; Varghese, Motha, Trent, Park, & Reeves, 2016; Yazan & Rudolph, 2018). More recently, the development of language teacher educators (TEs) has also been scrutinized because they play a “central role in deﬁ ning and disseminating ideas about pedagogy” through their work with teacher candidates (TCs; Wright, 2009, p. 102). Researchers aĴ ended to the ways in which language TEs construct their knowledge base of language teacher education, conceive of their beliefs, values, and priorities in the practices of teacher education (Peercy & Sharkey, 2018), and negotiate their identities (Yuan, 2017). How- ever, language TE identity is still undertheorized and underresearched. Although all practitioners (e.g., doctoral students, practicum supervisors, adjunct lecturers, university researchers) who teach courses to language TCs could call themselves language TEs, that identity is mostly assigned to the university professors in the teacher certiﬁ cation programs who also have research responsibilities in their job description. To address the gap, this article unpacks some questions about the ongoing negotiation of the being and becoming of a language TE and the inﬂ uence of this negotiation on self-development. More speciﬁ cally, it includes my viewpoints and opin- ions regarding the role of the Teaching English as a second language (TESL) practitioner identities as a teacher, TE, and researcher in professional self- development. To substantiate these viewpoints, it also presents an illustra- tive case to discuss my recent experience of exercising agency to redesign a teacher education course for TESL TCs around the semester-long activity of authoring an autoethnography. TESL TEs use narrative writing, particularly literacy and language learner autobiographies, as an important teacher learning instrument in their courses, for example, to explore TCs’ instructional beliefs, values, and priorities (Bailey et al., 1996), understand the intersection of professional and linguistic identi- ties (Pavlenko, 2003), and ﬁ nd an issue to study in an action research project (Selvi & Martin-Beltrán, 2016). The approach of critical autoethnography in the current article builds upon this narrative tradition, but it also aĴ empts to expand it in three ways (Yazan, 2018). First, it aims to help TCs develop a critical perspective to English language teaching practices because such prac- tices include the teaching of language and discourse through which people negotiate, construct, and circulate meanings, representations, and ideologies (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). This critical perspective includes understand- ing and questioning the interests that language and discourses serve and the messages they convey overtly and covertly (Hawkins & Norton, 2009). Second, because of its ethnographic focus, autoethnography includes “stories of/about the self told through the lens of culture” (Adams, Holman Jones, & Ellis, 2015, p. 2), and autoethnography as a teacher-learning tool focuses on the situated nature of TCs’ identities in the social, cultural, economic, and political contexts. Last, critical autoethnography aﬀ ords the discursive 142 BEDRETTIN YAZAN and experiential space for TCs to not only re-remember their prior language learning and teaching experiences, but also (re)story their current experiences in the teacher education program (Golombek, 2017). These aspects of critical autoethnography guided the changes I made in a 16-week graduate course (Linguistics for Classroom Teachers) that I taught at a large state university in Southeastern United States in Spring 2018. Positioning myself as a teacher educator and researcher of teacher educa- tion, I incorporated critical autoethnography as the main assignment of my course, in which ﬁ ve teacher candidates and a doctoral student participated. Because I understand teacher identity as an organizing construct and frame- work to conceive of teacher learning, knowledge, skills, experience, and prac- tice (Olsen, 2016), I discuss identity in every class I teach. However, in Spring 2018, I asserted agency to make a fundamental change in the Linguistics course to center it on teacher identity as an explicit focus. Upon introducing this assignment to my students, they sounded excited to do a diﬀ erent project that would be about themselves, but also rightfully and expectedly expressed concerns about their need for support along the way. I had designed the critical autoethnography assignment with such support and scaﬀ olding in mind. That is, it included writing four installments and for each installment, I gave wriĴ en feedback through Microsoft Word comment boxes and one- on-one meetings to discuss my comments and their questions. During class meetings, we discussed their questions as a large group, talked about their progress in their narratives, and potential theoretical frameworks they could use to analyze their experiences. In the last class meeting, they were expected to present their critical autoethnographies, answer questions from their peers, and brieﬂ y talk about the venues for the presentation and publication of their autoethnographies. As this article discusses one of my self-development eﬀ orts by using the concepts of identity and agency, the introduction should include some relevant background information about me. I am originally from Northwest- ern Turkey, bordering Greece and Bulgaria, and I started imagining and positioning myself as a teacher when I was placed in a teacher training high school that prepared me for a university-level English language teaching (ELT) program. Despite a very test-oriented English language instruction, I could safely say that I started learning English in high school, but my sub- stantial language development occurred in the ELT program, which granted me the diploma to teach English as a foreign language in Turkey. Apart from tutoring and unoﬃ cial teaching jobs, my ﬁ rst teaching position was in an intensive English program at a small private university in Turkey’s capital, where I taught all levels of English to young adult learners for 5 years before I moved to the United States for my doctoral studies in July 2009. Leaving Turkey was a signiﬁ cant experience for me, not only because it was my ﬁ rst time outside my home country, but also because I had left my job, coworkers, and entire support network of friends and family. TESL CANADA JOURNAL/REVUE TESL DU CANADA 143 VOLUME 35, ISSUE 2, 2018 My doctoral studies were in the second language education and culture program housed in a Curriculum and Instruction Department at a large research-intensive state university located in the mid-Atlantic United States. I served in this department as a graduate teaching assistant for 5 years, which gave me the opportunity to teach courses to undergraduate and graduate- level TCs and conduct my dissertation research on these TCs’ identities. Upon graduation in August 2014, I started working at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at a large state university in the Southeastern United States. Although I am in a research-intense tenure-track position that requires a consistent record of publication, I identify myself as a teacher edu- cator as much as a researcher. I work with both undergraduate and graduate- level uploads/Litterature/ 2018-tesl-teacher-educators-professional-self-development-identity-and-agency-yazan 1 .pdf