Identity constructions of tertiary EFL teachers doing professional doctorate

Abstract

Using identity as a lens, the thesis investigates the experiences of mid-career Chinese tertiary English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers doing professional doctorates for professional development. The study is motived by the increasing number of in-service EFL teachers pursuing doctoral degrees, the upsurge of professional doctoral programs as a means of professional development for mid-career practitioners, and the paucity of extant literature on the experiences of in-service EFL teachers who choose to pursue doctoral studies. Specifically, the study seeks to examine the motives and projected identities these teachers hold for pursuing a professional doctorate, their identity negotiations as they juggle the dual activity systems of professional work and doctoral studies, and the role of pursuing a professional doctorate in reshaping their identity configurations as tertiary EFL teachers. To explore these issues, I developed an integrated conceptual framework which comprised identity-in-activity and identity-in-discourse, integrating third-generation activity theory with a discourse analytical framework. Guided by the conceptual framework, the study adopted a narrative case study design and collected data from twelve participants, all mid-career EFL teachers pursuing professional doctoral degrees (i.e., Professional Doctorate in Education and Professional Doctorate in Applied Linguistics). Multiple sources of data were collected through narrative frames, semi-structured interviews, informal communications, netnographic observation, and observation of artefacts. The collected data were analyzed thematically and at the discursive level. In parallel, they were subject to activity systems analysis. Findings showed that EFL teachers’ motives of pursuing a professional doctorate were largely instrumental, reflecting a pragmatic trade-off between career advancement, doctoral admission opportunities, and the realities of their professional contexts. Professional doctorate was viewed as a strategic alternative to traditional PhD programs amid multiple contextual constraints. Instead of aiming to foster the practice-research nexus, teachers’ pursuit of professional doctorates was motived by a desire to enhance their research productivity to meet promotion requirements and to establish professional legitimacy within the professional context of higher education. Accordingly, their projected identities were characterized more as credential-seeking researchers than as researching professionals, which stands in contrast to the intended aims of professional doctoral programs. These motives and identity projections reflected systemic shortcomings that can be further traced back to the broader neoliberal higher education landscape. In teachers’ navigation of the dual demands of their professional work and doctoral studies, they encountered challenges arising from multi-level misalignments between activity components both within and across activity systems. To address these challenges and manage their dual roles, they employed agentic strategies, leveraging and adapting tools both across and beyond the dual activity systems of professional work and doctoral studies. Discursive analysis revealed salient identity negotiation patterns at the micro-discursive level. Overall, throughout the process of using tools to address ongoing challenges, teachers reconstructed themselves from burnout jugglers to resilient navigators, from passive supervisees to autonomous doctoral researchers, and from experienced professionals to open-minded beginners. Despite its challenging nature, pursuing a doctorate provided teachers with a diverse array of tools, including symbolic, conceptual, material, and social tools, to reimagine and reconstruct their professional identities, some of which extended beyond their original projections. The process of boundary crossing between the doctoral and the professional activity systems created opportunities for teachers to address longstanding tensions in their professional development and to re-envision their roles within the professional context of higher education. They leveraged and adapted the tools acquired through their doctoral studies to establish a foothold in higher education and achieve professional development in terms of both research and teaching. Micro-level discourse analysis revealed their identity transformations from outsiders to (quasi-)legitimate members in higher education, from non-researchers to researchers in the making, and from experienced teachers to informed teachers. Theoretically, the study proposes an integrated conceptual framework to examine how teachers’ identities are dynamically constructed and negotiated through both their practical engagements and their discursive meaning making of these engagements. By bridging two strands of theoretical perspectives in identity research (i.e., identity as experiential and identity as discursive), the study advances the understanding of identity as a practical and linguistic phenomenon closely embedded in sociocultural contexts. The framework proposed in this study can be adapted to investigate various forms of learning and identity development across diverse educational settings. Methodologically, the synergy of case study with narrative inquiry makes a novel approach to qualitative research, which enables contextualized understandings of the phenomenon under study, captures the meanings teachers assign to their experiences, and provides a dialogic space for them to narrate and construct their identities. The multiple methods in data analysis, including thematic analysis, activity systems analysis, and discourse analysis, allow for both nuance and systematicity in interpretation. Empirically, the study generates insights into the under-explored phenomenon of mid-career in-service EFL teachers pursuing further doctoral education. It also enriches existing scholarship on the professional development of teaching-focused academic staff within the current neoliberal climate of higher education, the development of the teaching-research nexus in TESOL and higher education, the doctoral trajectories of non-direct-pathway and mature doctoral students, and the actual impact and role of professional doctoral programs in bridging the practice-research gaps.