Exploring English Teachers' Journey of Change and Identity Construction: An Auto/Ethnographic Inquiry

Abstract

This is an auto/ethnographic research based on my and my participants’ experiences that I examined critically in association with culture and society that brings the transformation in my identity and my participants’ identity as English teachers. The research is the exhibition of the struggles in personal life that reflects on professional life. It aims at exploring the life events and stories of the change and shifting identities that led to our identity as English teachers. The story of how the childhood understanding of the Dīkṣā mantra impacted professional life and how the maturity worked to apprehend its deep meaning is commendable to read. Childhood etiquette and its impact on professional life afterward is an excellent aspect covered by the research. The theoretical framework of the transformation theory and identity process theory has guided me to look at the growth we got in our professional career as English teachers through the changes we brought to our teaching practices. The research depicts the construction of our identity as English teachers and the shift in identity that occured in our life as English teachers. Identity construction is such a phase in life that it makes teachers conceptualize who they are in their profession. This construction of identity in English teachers’ life and their struggle while constructing identity has got space in the research. I used auto/ethnography as the method of study, which has given strength for me as a researcher to capture ‘self’ and ‘others’ that are portrayed with different life stories in the research. With the interview and observation, I generated data from the participants and I too generated the data of my ‘self’ by using reflections, journals and by noting the events and stories. The research conveys the critical awareness of how my participants and I established our identity as professional English teachers and what did we face on the way to construct our identities in different life experiences we went through. The emancipation we exercised in teaching English and the way we chose to sharpen our professionalism is something good to read. Our experiences and life stories have been used as data for the research since it is an auto/ethnography. The stories and experiences were given meaning, building a passage to get the final insights that English teachers face different hurdles during their journey as English teachers and those experiences differ from one person to the other. The context they have and the events they go through are different too, since we live in different societies and have different roles in those societies as individuals. The research concludes that English teachers’ identity has different layers within it since it is a combination of personal and professional life. Critical reflection on the life journey and teaching journey assists them in understanding their journey of identity construction and professional growth. The research concludes that the identity gets constructed with many situations that demand ‘change’ and that change assists teachers for the transformation. As a result, that transformation in teachers’ lives encourages them to reflect on their teaching and life journeys as a whole. The study contributes to the knowledge that teachers’ identity construction gets root from unexpected, unsuspected and unanticipated stories teachers carry due to societal norms and values or unavoidable circumstances that come in their life and they add onto their learning phases. The idea of a ‘born-again teacher’ is also the contribution that the research has made in the field of knowledge since it could initiate the awareness to be updated, competent and efficient teachers.