Understanding tertiary EFL teacher learning & identity development

Language education happens in any setting in which people of diverse linguistic, educational, cultural or social biographies communicate with one another through spoken, written or multimodal interaction. Much of this exchange happens in settings of formal education; in classrooms, schools, higher education institutions, digital platforms or adult education centres in which language instruction is a primary goal. But language education concerns are also relevant outside of formal education, when people learn to negotiate, honour or resolve their differences in their daily lives; in school yards, university residence halls, families, museums, galleries, churches, orchestra rehearsals, cafes, sports halls, village fairs or city markets. CLER is interested in investigating the role of language and its educational consequences for people and communities in all these settings.Our work is interdisciplinary (theoretically and methodologically, we draw on disciplines across social sciences and arts & humanities), collaborative (we work with diverse stakeholders in the educational, arts and public sectors), and has a global reach (our research and impact work spans Armenia, Cameroon, China, Chile, Ghana, Indonesia, Iran, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and many others).Our current research programme focuses on two overarching themes: language and inclusive society and language and engaging pedagogies in linguistically and culturally diverse settings.

Centre for Language Education Research (CLER)

A cultural-historical activity theory perspective

Hillary Place - Coach House Seminar Room

Although current scholarship has conducted much research on teacher learning and teacher identity respectively, there are limited empirical studies examining the combination of these two constructs. This study, drawing upon cultural-historical activity theory, aims at exploring two tertiary EFL teachers’ specific learning processes and how they develop their identities through learning. Data sources include observations, interviews, informal communications, and artifacts concerning the two participants’ learning and identity constructions. The findings reveal that teacher learning is an expansive learning process that starts with triggering events, and reflection permeates all the phases of teachers’ expansive learning. Besides, teacher learning is driven by multiple contradictions. Facing these contradictions, teachers exert their agency, negotiate with significant others and cross various boundaries in their learning activities, which eventually promotes their identity development. The findings provide implications for further explorations of teacher learning and teacher identity.

Xia Li is an associate professor of applied linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Jiangsu University, China. She received her PhD from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. Now, she is a visiting scholar at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include teacher education, foreign language teaching and second language acquisition. Her publications have appeared in various journals, including the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, RELC Journal, Journal of Education for Teaching, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, etc.

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Understanding tertiary EFL teacher learning & identity development

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