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English Language Educators' Professional Learning as a Site of Identity Struggle

Christine Manara

Pertanika Journal of Social Science and Humanities, Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2013

Keywords: English language teaching, narrative-based inquiry, professional learning, teacher identity, teacher educators

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This study explored teacher educators' account of how they make meaning of their professional learning. The study aimed to understand how they conceptualize their "professionalism" as English language teacher educators, particularly within the context of Indonesia. The research participants were four English language teacher educators of a pre-service teacher education programme. The data were collected using in-depth interviews. In the interviews, the teacher educators were involved in reflexive accounts of their professional work and lives. The narrative data depict how the sense of "struggle" is an important part of the teacher educators' process of learning. Therefore, in this article, I chose to further explore the notion of "struggle" in living with various discourses of professionalism in English Language Teaching (ELT) as brought up by the teacher educators through their teaching narratives. Their narratives display tensions, paradoxes, transformations, and (re)negotiations of beliefs, values and conceptions of teaching-self within overlapping dimensions of their teaching professional landscapes (historical, social, political, and institutional). Their narratives illustrate how their professional learning is closely related to their process of learning and re-learning their identities and the "struggle for voice" (Britzman, 2003) in interacting with various discourses of professionalism they encounter in their teaching works and lives.

ISSN 0128-7702

e-ISSN 2231-8534

Article ID

JSSH-0752-2012

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