Download or read book Exploring Japanese University English Teachers Professional Identity written by Diane Nagatomo and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2012 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the professional identities of a highly influential group of English language teachers in Japan: Japanese university English teachers. It focuses on how relatively new teachers develop their professional identities, how gender impacts the professional identities of female professors, and how teaching practices and beliefs reflect personal and professional identity.
Download or read book Identity Gender and Teaching English in Japan written by Diane Hawley Nagatomo and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do teachers who have chosen to settle down in one country manage the difficulties of living and teaching English in that country? How do they develop and sustain their careers, and what factors shape their identity? This book answers these questions by investigating the personal and professional identity development of ten Western women who teach English in various educational contexts in Japan, all of whom have Japanese spouses. The book covers issues of interracial relationships, expatriation, equality and employment practices as well as the broader topics of gender and identity. The book also provides a useful overview of English language teaching and learning in Japan.
Download or read book Exploring Japanese University English Teachers Professional Identity written by Diane Hawley Nagatomo and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2012-01-30 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to the growing field of EFL teacher identity, which is now recognized to influence numerous aspects of classroom teaching and of student learning. It focuses on an under-researched, and yet highly influential group of teachers that shape English language education in Japan: Japanese university English teachers. In three interrelated narrative studies, it examines how four relatively new teachers develop professional identity as they become members of the community of practice of university English teachers; how gender impacts the professional identity of seven female professors ranging in age from their early 30s to their 60s; and how one teacher’s teaching practices and beliefs reflect her personal and professional identity.
Download or read book The Development of Professional Identity in Higher Education written by Myint Swe Khine and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, first-hand accounts from academics and practitioners explore the concept of "professional identity development" in the context of higher education and provide guidance to develop and enhance professionalism. The Development of Professional Identity in Higher Education presents a new understanding of identity development. Highlighting the importance of building positive identities in the development of a professional career, it argues for a reframing of the way academics think of themselves, suggesting the role of "practitioner" as one in which there is a continuous need to develop their professionalism as it connects to their daily practices and different identities. With contributions from a range of international authors, it demonstrates how professional development can change our beliefs and perceptions of the profession itself, whether it be through on-the-job instruction aimed at making teachers/researchers better, or through "self-learning" whereby teachers and researchers learn to develop and enhance their teaching and research competency through daily activities and self-analysis. This book will be of great interest to researchers and graduate and postgraduate students in teacher education and professional development.
Download or read book Foreign Female English Teachers in Japanese Higher Education Narratives From Our Quarter written by and published by Candlin & Mynard. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this book is to provide information, inspiration, and mentorship to teachers (namely foreign women, but not restricted to such) as they navigate the gendered waters of teaching English in Japanese higher education. Such a book is timely because foreign female university teachers are outnumbered by their foreign male colleagues by nearly three to one. This imbalance, however, is likely to change as reforms in hiring policies (which have until recently generally favored male applicants) have been widely implemented to encourage more female teachers and researchers. The narratives by the contributors to this book offer a kaleidoscope of experiences that transverse several loosely connected and overlapping themes. This book is, in a sense, a “girlfriend’s guide to teaching in a Japanese university” in that it provides much practical information from those who are already in the field. It covers areas such as gaining entry into Japanese higher education teaching, searching for and obtaining tenure, managing a long-term professorial career, and taking on leadership responsibilities. The personal side of teaching is examined, with authors describing how individual interests have shaped their teaching practices. Family matters, such as negotiating maternity leave, reentering the workforce, and difficulties in balancing family and work are discussed by those who have “been there and done that”. The darker issues of the job, such as harassment, racism, and native-speakerism are introduced, and several chapters with practical and legal information about how to combat them are included, as well as a list of valuable resources. The contributors to this volume have drawn upon their own unique experiences and have situated their stories in areas that are of great personal importance. The individual narratives, when taken together, highlight not only the complexity of the professional identity of EFL teachers but also the myriad of issues that shape the careers of women in Japanese higher education. These issues will resonate with all female EFL faculty, regardless of their geographical location.
Download or read book Exploring NNESTs Beliefs and Identities A Case Study of Japanese EFL High School Teachers written by Ryosuke Aoyama and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies have suggested that, to understand language teaching and learning, it is critical to examine teachers’ beliefs and identities, along with their impacts on actual teaching practices in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to explore teaching beliefs and teacher identities of eight non-native English speaking teachers (NNESTs) in Japanese public high schools. Three research questions were addressed to examine what teaching beliefs they have, what influences their belief formation and professional identity development, and what identities constitute their teacher identity. To do this, a qualitative case study was undertaken. An in-depth analysis of the interview transcripts revealed the participants’ beliefs toward communicative language teaching, student-centered instruction, and the medium of instruction in the classroom. It was also found that the following factors impacted their teaching beliefs and practices and their identity: personal experiences in childhood and adolescence, experiences as an in-service teacher, and English education policy in Japan. As for the question pertaining to their teacher identity, the data analysis found four salient identities that are closely connected to their identity as an English teacher, which include general teacher identity, context-related identity, language teacher identity, and non-native English speaking teacher identity. It is concluded that the teachers’ beliefs and identities are formed through continuous negotiations with external factors, such as past experiences, contextual factors surrounding their teaching sites, and students’ expectations of and the national policy on English education. Furthermore, it is concluded that how their identities are non-fixed and transformative, complex and multiple, and seemingly stable but susceptible, which reflect the complex nature of language teacher identity construction as noted in the literature.
Download or read book An Investigation of the Professional Identity of Japanese Teachers of English in Japanese Higher Education written by Diane Hawley Nagatomo and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Team Teachers in Japan written by Takaaki Hiratsuka and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-14 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides insights into the professional and personal lives of local language teachers and foreign language teachers who conduct team-taught lessons together. It does this by using the Japanese context as an illustrative example. It re-explores in this context the professional experiences and personal positionings of Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) and foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs), as well as their team-teaching practices in Japan. This edited book is innovative in that 14 original empirical studies offer a comprehensive overview of the day-to-day professional experiences and realities of these team teachers in Japan, with its focus on their cognitive, ideological, and affective components. This is a multifaceted exploration into team teachers in their gestalt—who they are to themselves and in relation to their students, colleagues, community members, and crucially to their teaching partners. This book, therefore, offers several empirical and practical applications for future endeavors involving team teachers and those who engage with them—including their key stakeholders, such as researchers on them, their teacher educators, local boards of education, governments, and language learners from around the world.
Download or read book Language Teacher Identity Tensions written by Zia Tajeddin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addressing the critical issue of teacher identity tensions, this edited volume looks at the tensions between teachers’ instructional beliefs, values, and priorities, and the contextual constraints and requirements. It examines how teachers deal with these tensions to avoid demotivation and burnout, which play a significant role in identity construction. Tensions are inseparable from growth and transformation but have the potential to disrupt teacher identity construction. Therefore, continual efforts to resolve tensions in teaching are inevitable. The process of resolution or reconciliation might be extended, and teachers could need support in that process to minimize the possible negative impacts on their identities. This process can simultaneously generate positive outcomes for teachers’ growth and learning. Therefore, how teachers perceive, respond to, and grapple with tensions are critical experiences that offer windows into the complexities of teacher identity negotiation. The volume paints a picture of the personal, professional, and political dimensions of teacher identity tensions in various international contexts. The chapters draw on empirical studies with clear pedagogical implications to illustrate what identity tensions language teachers face in and outside the classroom during their career trajectory, how language teachers cope with identity tensions in their professional life, and how teacher educators can integrate identity tensions into teacher learning activities. This book is beneficial for students and lecturers in applied linguistics, educational linguistics, and educational psychology. It will also be helpful of interest to teacher educators, teacher education researchers, teacher supervisors, and MA and doctoral students interested in research on language teacher identity.
Download or read book Exploring the Construal of Membership in English Language Teachers Associations written by Stuart David Warrington and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Professional Identity Formation written by Zhaoyang Amanda Liu and published by Open Dissertation Press. This book was released on 2017-01-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation, "Professional Identity Formation: a Case Study of Three English Teachers in Mainland China" by Zhaoyang, Amanda, Liu, 刘朝阳, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Recent studies reveal that language teacher identity makes the difference in classroom teaching and has increasingly become a valuable focus in the field of language teaching research. However, a review of the research literature shows that there have been limited studies about the professional identity formation and even fewer studies involving teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the context of mainland China. English language teaching (ELT) has increasingly gained attention in mainland China, with the curriculum reforms, which promoted communicative language teaching (CLT) and later task-based approach (TBA), have been initiated since 1970s, yet the professional identities of English teachers acting as the key players of the curriculum reforms have not been given due attention. This is particularly true for those teachers in the Northwestern Hinterland areas with relatively limited resources and a challenging environment. In order to fill the diverse gaps, this study provides valuable information and knowledge not only for teacher professional identity research area but also for Chinese ELT, CLT and TBA reforms, By exploring three experienced secondary EFL teachers' professional identity formation in Lanzhou city, in Gansu province, a whole heretofore unresearched area has been brought into view. With a case study approach, the study collected the teachers' personal life experiences from their childhood to current teaching experiences. By building up a theoretical framework based on the features of professional identity formation proposed by Beijaard et al. (2004), the study has examined the teachers' personal life experiences, school contexts and agency and achieved rich understandings about their professional identity formation. This study shows that the teachers' biographies, particularly their fathers and pre-service teacher education acted as important components of and exerted an enduring influence on their professional identity formation of the three teachers. Findings highlight that teachers' three levels of professional contexts had an important impact on their professional identity formation; among the three levels of contexts, the macro context of the College Entrance Examination and the meso context of school leaders were the most influential. The findings of this study extend the understanding of the complexity of teachers' professional identity formation, and shed light on how to develop a more effective professional learning mode for pre-service teachers. This study also gives a voice to life history and offers the possibility of helping pre-service teachers to effectively understand the teaching profession in new ways in the teacher education programs. DOI: 10.5353/th_b5108640 Subjects: English teachers - China - Attitudes - Case studies
Download or read book Understanding Japanese University English Teachers Experiences as Collaborative Leaders written by Soyhan Egitim and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In traditional Japanese educational settings, teachers are viewed as the ultimate authority in their classrooms. This top-down leadership perception results in teacher-controlled instruction in Japanese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) class settings. Previous studies suggest that teacher-controlled instruction is not conducive to fostering competent English speakers. Thus, this study attempts to investigate Japanese university EFL teachers' leadership identity and its impact on their pedagogical and classroom management strategies. The study was guided by the central research question: How do Japanese university EFL teachers who identify as collaborative leaders describe their teaching and classroom management strategies? In order to understand the lived experiences of the participants, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eleven university professors in Japan. Since the study explores the influence of the participants' collaborative leadership identity on their pedagogical and classroom management strategies, the theoretical framework was determined to be the collaborative leadership theory, supported by the leadership as practice (LAP) theory. The findings suggest that teachers' leadership identity is influential in their pedagogical and classroom management strategies. In particular, the pedagogical and classroom management strategies fostered from teachers' collaborative leadership identity can be effective in nurturing new learning habits in students and creating an open, democratic, participatory, and collaborative teaching and learning environment"--Author's abstract.
Download or read book Teaching English at Japanese Universities written by Paul Wadden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by leading English-language educators in Japan, this Handbook provides an in-depth guide for the new generation of teachers at Japanese universities. In clear, accessible prose, it offers practical and detailed advice on effective classroom pedagogy, student motivation, learning styles, classroom culture, national language policy, career opportunities, departmental politics, administrative mindset, and institutional identity. Its four sections—The setting, The courses, The classroom, and The workplace—examine issues faced by university language teachers as well as challenges confronted by the increasing number of scholars teaching English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) courses. Firmly grounded in contemporary teaching method and theory, the Handbook’s 23 chapters also acknowledge the influence of diverse movements such as World Englishes, global issues, gender, and positive psychology. Its three appendices contain information on organizations, books, journals, and websites particularly useful for Japanese university educators; explanation of types and rankings of schools; ways to learn more about individual institutions for job-hunting; and detailed information on the structure (and Japanese titles) of faculty and non-teaching staff at the typical university. This Handbook is an invaluable resource for anyone teaching, or aspiring to teach, at a Japanese university.
Download or read book Teacher Narratives from the Eikaiwa Classroom Moving Beyond McEnglish written by and published by Candlin & Mynard. This book was released on 2020-01-12 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teacher Narratives from the Eikaiwa Classroom: Moving Beyond “McEnglish.” Edited by Daniel Hooper and Natasha Hashimoto This book includes 16 chapters written by current and former eikaiwa (English conversation school) teachers to illustrate a complexity within the eikaiwa profession that has been thus far largely ignored. Through teacher narratives, the authors explore the unique and often problematic world of eikaiwa to present a counter narrative to what the editors regard as blanket stereotyping of a multifaceted and evolving teaching context. Eikaiwa schools are found in virtually every city and town in Japan. They provide conversation and test-preparation classes for learners of all ages. Those attending eikaiwa may be looking to prepare for an overseas holiday or work placement, achieve a required TOEIC score for their company, or simply enjoy a new hobby and socialise with people from different cultures and backgrounds. Eikaiwa teachers often need to negotiate conflicting demands from students, parents, management, and society at large. Furthermore, opportunities for professional development are scarce and research on this context is virtually non existent. Despite the massive scale of the eikaiwa industry and the varied roles that teachers are required to fulfil within it, expatriate and ELT communities have also tended to stigmatise the work of eikaiwa teachers as being simplistic and uniform. As a result, many former eikaiwa teachers choose to “forget” their eikaiwa past and the way it shaped them as professionals. This volume provides an important opportunity for eikaiwa teachers to share their stories and for the editors to present a coherent and convincing case for the value that the experiences of working in English conversation schools has for our understanding of teaching and learning languages.
Download or read book An Autoethnography of Teaching English in Japan Bridging Life and Academia written by Sanae Oda-Sheehan and published by Candlin & Mynard. This book was released on 2022-01-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on her professional and personal experiences in education as well as in business, Sanae Oda-Sheehan (PhD) came to realize that there may be several problematic gaps hindering learning effectiveness in the Japanese EFL context. In exploring possibilities to bridge those gaps, she proposes the framework called the Pedagogical Trinity: the integration of L2 pragmatics and grammar pedagogy to promote the implementation of communicative language teaching. This book shares her experiences in exploring how to bring about such integration and bridge those gaps by utilizing autoethnography Autoethnography is a burgeoning and promising approach in the qualitative research field, in which researchers use themselves as the research subject to better understand sociocultural complexities through the connectivity between self and others. By employing the autoethnographic approach and analyzing in-depth face-to-face interviews and journal entries, Oda-Sheehan reflected on her teaching practices and her own identity formation to explore the critical factors for the integrative approach. Through this life-sized portrait of the research project, she obtained interpretive insights that show how critical it is for teachers to have an awareness of their multiple identities and perspectives, long-term visions, and readiness for necessary transformation. This book meticulously crafts and demonstrates how autoethnography can be utilized as a research method to merge analytic rigor and creative dynamics. Through the connectivity in an autoethnographic orientation, readers may find themselves in the stories unfolded in the chapters and be guided to reflect on their own experiences and endeavors. In that way, what is presented in this book may become readers’ own stories, giving them the strength to go forward in life. This book can provide a platform of open dialogue to explore approaches to bridge life and academia collaboratively.
Download or read book Exploring the Complexity of Teacher Professional Identity written by Betina Hsieh and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is based on a case study of 8 beginning English teachers who participated in a collaborative inquiry group at an urban, comprehensive, high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Qualitative data (including audio-transcribed meeting data, individual interview data, and classroom observations) were collected over two school years, with a follow-up interview about teacher professional identity conducted in the school year following the dissolution of the inquiry group. The study utilizes a theoretical framework grounded in notions of agency, power and discourse as critical elements in the social construction of identity to examine how the focal teachers construct and enact a teacher professional identity in their early careers. Teacher professional identity is defined as the beliefs, values, and commitments an individual holds toward being a teacher (as distinct from another professional) and being a particular type of teacher (e.g. an urban teacher, a beginning teacher, a good teacher, an English teacher, etc.) The data indicated three types of factors that were important to focal teachers in establishing their early professional identities. The first type was individual factors such as personal experiences as students and pre-professional teaching experiences. A second group included practice-based or classroom-related factors such as subject matter, curriculum, instructional planning, and classroom based goals. Finally, the third type was connected with external discourses related to teaching and learning. These discourses came from theory, policy, contexts in which teachers were embedded and from collegial or expert models of practice. While all three types of factors were important to the focal group of teachers, individual teachers were oriented toward a particular set of factors over others in the construction of their professional identities. The orientation of teachers had consequences for their classroom practice as well as their sense of what it meant to be a teacher professional. The teacher who emphasized individual factors, constructing his teacher professional identity around a personal image of teaching, was described as an individually-oriented teacher. Teachers who emphasized classroom practice as the focal aspect of their identities were considered classroom-oriented teachers. Teachers who approached their classroom practice and professional decision making with a clear sense of external discourses related to teaching and learning and a sense that they might affect these discourses through their professional practice were called dialogically-oriented teachers. Dialogically-oriented teachers were the only group of teachers able to articulate both their classroom practice and the thinking which was underlying their choices as teachers. The collaborative inquiry group was embedded in a parent program which advocated a dialogically-oriented approach to teacher professionalism. Group meetings were structured to promote such a stance toward professional identity. The data indicated that there was a predominance of dialogically-based interactions within inquiry group meetings; however, in examining these interactions more closely, teachers' individual professional identity orientation connected closely with the focus and nature of their participation in the inquiry group. Further, although classroom-oriented and individually-oriented teachers engaged in various forms of dialogic interaction within meetings, these types of interaction did not seem characteristic of their self-descriptions of their own teacher professional identities. Implications of the study include: the importance of advocating a stance toward teaching as a profession; investing in teacher education programs which promote a dialogically-oriented stance toward teaching; exploring the expansion of university-based partnerships between the pre-service and induction phases of teacher education; promoting increased dialogue between K-12 teachers and educational researchers and encouraging a broader audience for educational research, particularly research focused on teaching and learning.
Download or read book Criticality Teacher Identity and In equity in English Language Teaching written by Bedrettin Yazan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-26 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume, envisioned through a postmodern and poststructural lens, represents an effort to destabilize the normalized “assumption” in the discursive field of English language teaching (ELT) (Pennycook, 2007), critically-oriented and otherwise, that identity, experience, privilege-marginalization, (in)equity, and interaction, can and should be apprehended and attended to via categories embedded within binaries (e.g., NS/NNS; NEST/NNEST). The volume provides space for authors and readers alike to explore fluidly critical-practical approaches to identity, experience, (in)equity, and interaction envisioned through and beyond binaries, and to examine the implications such approaches hold for attending to the contextual complexity of identity and interaction, in and beyond the classroom. The volume additionally serves to prompt criticality in ELT towards reflexivity, conceptual clarity and congruence, and dialogue.
