Speaker
Description
As a “ubiquitous feature of language classrooms” (Guerrettaz & Johnston, 2013, p. 781), the prominence of language textbooks and other curriculum materials has raised ideological, sociocultural, and pedagogical concerns in the education sphere (Mishan, 2022). Indeed, strict adherence to the structured delivery of tasks may arguably beget the marginalisation of language teachers, thereby potentially hindering their professional development (Littlejohn, 2011). Drawing on the theoretical foundation of teacher development, professional identities, and material use, this study is an endeavour to explore the (re)construction and negotiation of professional identities experienced by five EFL teachers in Vietnamese public high schools through their utilisation of curriculum materials. Semi-structured interviews and classroom artefacts were analysed to shed light on these language educators’ identities in professional domains. After two coding cycles using holistic and axial coding (Saldana, 2021), six head codes were identified: context, authority, change, students, negotiation, and evaluation. The analysis reveals that the participants unanimously perceived themselves as mediators between the curriculum materials and their learners. Through their resistance to the authority of curriculum materials, these language educators positioned themselves as decision makers with the professional capability to select, reject, replace and modify contents to accommodate contextual requirements. These narratives of material utilisation also highlight the important question of what the (re)construction and negotiation of teachers’ professional identities may mean for students’ learning.
Keywords: professional identity, curriculum materials, materials use
Biography
Nha Nguyen received her Master’s degree in Applied Linguistics and TESOL from Lancaster University (UK). With an interest in language education, particularly literacy studies, her research focuses on language educators’ identities, material utilisations, and writing proficiency. As a language educator, she primarily works with high school and university students in IELTS preparation and English for Academic Purposes courses.
