Case Studies of Sudanese EFL Student Teachers' Knowledge and Identity Construction

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N

272

Case Studies; Language Teachers; English (Second Language); Second Language Learning; Second Language Instruction; Professional Identity; Interviews; Focus Groups; Pedagogical Content Knowledge; Teacher Attitudes; Foreign Countries; Correlation; Student Teachers; Qualitative Research; Coding; Discourse Analysis; Educational Experience

978-1-267-73780-9

This study examines English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' professional identity construction through an examination of the relationship between teachers' emerging knowledge and emerging identity. The participants in this study were four EFL student teachers enrolled in the fourth and final year of an EFL teacher education program in a major city in Sudan. The data were collected over a period of nine months through interviews, classroom observations, focus group discussions, field notes, and curriculum documents. The study draws on post-structural and post-modern conceptualizations of identity as multiple, a site of struggle, relational, negotiated, and constructed discursively. The data were treated as discourse and were analyzed using standard qualitative coding procedures. In terms of professional identity the student teachers presented themselves as knowledgeable, effective, authority figures, and so on through the deployment of their pedagogical knowledge as well as through their talk about teaching conception and the sociopolitical and economic forces of English language teaching (ELT). The student teachers' professional identity was also impacted by the politics of English as an international language as well as the low socioeconomic status of teachers in Sudan. This led two student teachers to prefer other more prestigious professions than teaching while the other two maintained that they still wanted to become teachers. Finally, there was a complex relationship between the student teachers' emerging knowledge and emerging identity represented in their everyday classroom practices. They utilized their formal and personal knowledge to aid them in their deployment of classroom materials, classroom management, use of first and second languages in instruction, and the relationships they aspired to establish with their students. These findings suggest that teacher education programs in EFL settings should work to make teaching an attractive profession as well as cultivate the student teachers' subjectivities and prior schooling experiences to help them understand and cope with the complexities of teaching in fragile contexts. The study also adds to the theorization of the discursive construction of professional identity as well as providing new insights into the relationship between teachers' knowledge and identity. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

As Provided

2014

ED551197