Autonomy and Agency

This chapter reviews autonomy and agency as related to second language (L2) learner and teacher psychology. It discusses the significance of the two constructs in understanding the personal, yet socially mediated nature of L2 learning and teaching processes. Psychology and education seem to be the main disciplines that have influenced developments in fostering on autonomy in second language acquisition (SLA). Research on autonomy has typically been conducted on the initiative of a teacher or groups of teachers working in their specific educational contexts and with their specific groups of students. Compared to agency, autonomy has had a much longer history in SLA, and it has been researche…

Who and how? : Preservice teachers as active agents developing professional identities

Abstract This study is part of an ongoing action research project with preservice class teachers in Finland. The study aims to better understand the forms agency takes in preservice teachers' professional identity development. Through the dialogical analysis of student assignments, this study outlines how student teachers are active within their own development and the way in which experiences are drawn on as preservice teachers exert their identity-agency. The results of this study provide a relational picture of identity development highlighting the way in which identity-agency is contextualized, potentially nourished by the relationships between self and other and dependent on experience.

Mitä on kielitietoisuus ja miten se näkyy koulussa?

Kielitietoisuus on termi, joka tulee usein vastaan virallisissa opetusta koskevissa dokumenteissa ja kuvauksissa. Terminä se voi kuitenkin tuntua epämääräiseltä ja kielitietoisuuteen kasvattaminen tästä syystä hankalalta tehtävältä. Tämä artikkeli pyrkii näyttämään, mitä kielitietoisuutta tukeva toiminta luokkahuoneessa käytännössä voi olla. Artikkeli pohjautuu tanskalaiseen toimintatutkimukseen, jossa kolme opettajaa yhdessä tutkijan kanssa kehitti malleja kielitietoisen toimintakulttuurin luomiseksi koulussa. nonPeerReviewed

Struggling for a professional identity: Two newly qualified language teachers' identity narratives during the first years at work

Abstract Although teachers' first years in the profession are a widely studied field, the factors that would help to understand the difficulty or the ease with which individuals enter full time teaching and construct their professional identity are still little studied. This narrative study approaches the topic by comparing two newly qualified teachers' professional identity formation. The participants' stories display two different experience narratives: a painful and an easy beginning. The findings show the importance of the teachers' initial identities and the storytelling process to their professional identity formation. The study is part of a longitudinal research project in Finland.

Contemporary perspectives on research about emotions in language teaching

Opettajuuden reittejä : nuoren kielenopettajan koulukokemusten merkitys opettajan käyttötiedolle

Teachers’ Emotions and Beliefs in Second Language Teaching : Implications for Teacher Education

Studies on language teacher beliefs have long indicated that in order to better understand teacher beliefs, we need to look at their connections with emotions (Borg 2006). Researchers in fields such as social psychology (Frijda et al. 2000) and education (Rosiek 2003; Gill and Hardin 2014) have pointed out how emotions shape and are shaped by beliefs. These suggest also that emotions and beliefs are fundamentally interconnected in individuals’ decision-making processes, with emotions providing the necessary impetus for change and beliefs deciding the course of actions. In order to have a complete view of second language teachers’ beliefs, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of these…

Relationships of young adults with foster care backgrounds: Tensions and management strategies

Status versus nature of work : pre-service language teachers envisioning their future profession

Considering the central role of identity in understanding teacher development, this paper addresses the ways in which pre-service language teachers envision their identities as future professionals. The paper is based on a qualitative study of 61 students’ visualisations of their future work during their first semester in language teacher education. The visualisations and accompanying descriptive texts were analysed using the principles of qualitative content analysis. In the analysis, two different ways of perceiving future professions, and thereby identities as professionals, were identified. The first was a nature-oriented perspective that focused on desired characteristics of the profes…

The Book in a Nutshell

In second language (L2) learning and teaching, an emic (or insider) perspective has gained ground in the past few years. This perspective highlights the subjective nature of L2 learning: it throws light on the learner’s beliefs about the language to be learned (when compared, for example, with his or her first language (L1) or other languages he or she may know), being a learner, the learning process, and the learning contexts, all of which are charged with positive and negative experiences and loaded with personal meanings. We would argue that this is also true of aspects of teaching.

Constructing practical knowledge of teaching: eleven newly qualified language teachers' discursive agency

This paper explores the professional development of 11 newly qualified foreign language teachers. It draws on a qualitative longitudinal study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland between 2002 and 2009. The paper concentrates on the personal side of teacher development by analysing participants' discourses concerning language teaching. The study shows important differences in teachers' ways of conceptualising their environment and constructing practical knowledge on teaching. Teachers' sense of agency is identified as a major factor contributing to their professional development.

Proactive and reactive dimensions of life-course agency: mapping student teachers’ language learning experiences

Although the concept of agency has received a lot of interest in recent educational research, its significance in language learning biographies as well as contextual and relational aspects of learner agency are still little studied. This paper aims at a more thorough understanding of agency by studying student teachers’ previous language learning experiences. This paper is based on a dialogical analysis of 12 student teachers’ biographical essays describing their relationship with English as a foreign language. The participants are students in a Finnish class teacher and language teacher education programme that uses English as the primary medium of instruction. The study proposes a tripart…

Understanding Language Teacher Identities : Conceptualizations, practices and change

This chapter presents some new approaches and questions in language teacher identity research that could facilitate a better understanding of the work of language teachers, and as a consequence help teacher educators to support them in that work. Language teacher research has shown that periods of change play an important role in identity development. In the field of general teacher research, several studies have addressed the significance of transition phases and changes in curriculum for teacher identities and beliefs. However, there has been some research on the significance of teacher education and transition to full-time teaching for language teacher identity development. A more partic…

Identity, agency and community: reconsidering the pedagogic responsibilities of teacher education

This article presents a model for teacher education based on an ongoing action research project at a Finnish university. This model draws on the educational theory of Dewey and the pedagogical sensibility of Bakhtin to critically consider the concepts of teacher identity and agency and to highlight the role of community in teacher development. Our aim is to propose a model that supports the development of new directions in teacher education that would better prepare teachers to face the challenges in their future work by engaging with the educational community in the present. peerReviewed

‘I’m a foreign teacher’: legitimate positionings in the stories of a migrant teacher

This qualitative study examines one migrant teacher’s identity positions in the context of a peer mentoring group setting in Finland. Combining theories of legitimacy and teacher narratives, this study asked which positions were available and legitimate for a migrant teacher. The analysis of three of the stories the teacher (‘Ji Yoo’) shared was inspired by Barkhuizen’s three-step framework for examining positioning in teacher narratives. Findings showed that Ji Yoo’s most legitimate positions were being ‘foreign’, novice teacher, cultural broker, and expert teacher, the latter two being the least frequent and least explicit ones. The authors suggest that migrant teachers’ struggles of havi…

Identity-Agency in Progress: Teachers Authoring Their Identities

Teachers’ professional identities have been widely recognized as the key resource through which teachers make sense of their work. Despite this recognition, few studies have offered a longitudinal perspective on the processes involved in teachers’ identity development. In this chapter I will offer an advanced conceptualization of the ways in which teachers author their identity development processes. I use examples from two longitudinal research projects on pre-service and in-service teachers’ identity development to illustrate the teachers’ efforts to maintain and develop their professional identities, and identifies two agentic dynamics in professional identity development: renegotiation …

The Difficulty of Change: The Impact of Personal School Experience and Teacher Education on the Work of Beginning Language Teachers

This case‐study investigates the impact of personal school experience and initial teacher education on the work of six beginning language teachers. Insights into the thinking and acting of the subjects are gained through an interpretative analysis of their interviews. The findings indicate that one’s own school experience has an important role in constructing practical knowledge during the first years of teaching. Part of this experience is unconscious and difficult to express in words; nevertheless, it has an impact on the actions of the beginning language teacher. Furthermore, the ability of the teachers in the study to use knowledge learned during the teacher education is dependent on th…

Educational research for democracy

Repositioning teachers as assessors : Compromised aspirations and contested agency

The global trend to emphasise assessment for learning brings up the issue of repositioning teachers in assessment. The contemporary curricular policy reforms encourage teachers to take an agentic role in assessment, but multiple dimensions of the environment affect its realisation. Drawing on an ecological approach to teacher agency, this empirical study investigated how Korean secondary English teachers (KSETs) perceive and enact their own teacher agency in assessment within the ecosystem of Korean education. The dataset for the study comprises semi-structured interviews with 15 KSETs. The interview questions involved the main themes such as personal experiences over the life course regard…

Opettajuuden alkutaival: vastavalmistuneen vieraan kielen opettajan toimijuus ja ammatillinen kehittyminen

Unelmia hyvästä vuorovaikutuksesta ja resurssipulan pelkoa

Kolmen yliopiston yhteisessä tutkimushankkeessa selvitetään ruotsinopettajaksi ja kielikylpyopettajaksi opiskelevien ajatuksia tulevaisuudesta kielen ammattilaisena. nonPeerReviewed

Identity and Agency Development in a CLIL-based Teacher Education Program

A consensus exists in applied linguistics that agency and identity are key concepts in understanding teacher development. Although a large body of research has focused on studying language teacher and learner identity and agency separately, less attention has been paid to the relationship of these concepts in individual development. In this contribution, we use an ecological perspective to explore and illustrate the interplay between and development of agency and identity. The participants in the study were primary school teacher students specializing in foreign language pedagogy for younger learners and studying in a CLIL-based teacher education program. The qualitative data were collected…

Investigating the professional agency of secondary school English teachers in South Korea

This qualitative study examines the professional agency of secondary English teachers in Midwestern South Korea. Specifically, it investigates how secondary English teachers in South Korea understand their professional agency and what mediates their professional agency. The ecological approach in this study recognises that agency encompasses both individual and environmental dimensions and is formed through the constant interplay between the individual and the environment. The dataset for this study comprises 15 semi-structured interviews with secondary English teachers in South Korea. The thematic analysis highlights a significant gap between Korean English teachers’ espoused agency and re…

Language teacher identities as socio-politically situated construction : Finnish and Brazilian student teachers’ visualisations of their professional futures

The process of envisioning the future is central to teachers’ identity construction, but different environments create distinct sociocultural conditions for the process. This qualitative study drawing on visual-textual methods compares Finnish and Brazilian student teachers’ desired and feared professional futures. Two different perspectives on future identities were detected: a desire for status and a desire for meaningfulness. The results revealed the radically different social status of teaching in the two countries and the role this played in the envisioned identities. The study highlights the importance of awareness of the socio-political nature of identity construction in developing t…

Kielitietoisuutta luokkaan : kielitietoisuus hyödyttää ja syventää kielen oppimista

Kielitietoisuus on termi, joka tulee kieltenopettajalle vastaan monessa yhteydessä. Vaikka se ei ole uusi asia vaan kieltenopetuksen arkipäivää, terminä se tarjoaa kuitenkin hyvän tarkastelukulman opetuksen käytänteisiin ja painopistealueisiin. Tässä jutussa nostan esiin joitakin mahdollisia avainkäsitteitä, jotka auttavat opettajaa tarkastelemaan omaa opetustaan kielitietoisuuden näkökulmasta. Tarjoan myös joitakin käytännön esimerkkejä kielitietoisista käytänteistä ja harjoitteista. nonPeerReviewed

The emotional journey of being and becoming bilingual

This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data analysis is based on dialogical and narrative approaches. Through the analysis two key story types were named: Bilingualism as striving and Bilingualism as a gift. In the striving stories English was held up as an ideal, as a way of engaging with the wider world but moreover as a way of finding a better ‘me’. In the gift stories, English was experienc…

Coping strategies in life stories of young adults with foster care backgrounds

Tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin sijoitettuna olleiden nuorten aikuisten selviytymiskeinoja 18 yksilöhaastattelun avulla. Fenomenologisella analyysilla (IPA; Smith & Osborn, 2003. Interpretative phenomenological analysis. Teoksessa J. A. Smith (toim.), Qualitative Psychology (s. 51–80). Sage) tunnistettiin kolme pääteemaa liittyen selviytymiskeinoihin vastoinkäymisissä ja haasteissa: sisäänpäin suuntautuminen, ulospäin suuntautuminen sekä omiin elinolosuhteisiin vaikuttaminen. Lisäksi tunnistettiin keino, joka oli käytössä vain varhaisaikuisuudessa, hyväksyminen. Tulosten perusteella on tärkeää kuulla sijoitettuna olleita nuoria aikuisia koskien heidän selviytymiskeinojaan sekä lisätä sijaisperh…

Language teacher identities as socio-politically situated construction: Finnish and Brazilian student teachers’ visualisations of their professional futures

Abstract The process of envisioning the future is central to teachers’ identity construction, but different environments create distinct sociocultural conditions for the process. This qualitative study drawing on visual-textual methods compares Finnish and Brazilian student teachers’ desired and feared professional futures. Two different perspectives on future identities were detected: a desire for status and a desire for meaningfulness. The results revealed the radically different social status of teaching in the two countries and the role this played in the envisioned identities. The study highlights the importance of awareness of the socio-political nature of identity construction in dev…

Meaningful learning in teacher education

This study explores meaningful learning in the context of teacher education. The study showed the importance of course design in generating meaningful learning. Opportunities to gain strong experience are crucial to meaningful learning. Meaningful learning provides space for both positive and uncomfortable emotions. peerReviewed

Comparing and Contrasting the Studies Reported: Lessons Learnt

This volume, with its title Beliefs, Agency and Identity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching and the seven empirical studies reported in Chapters 3–9, has explored the phenomena of believing, acting, and identifying (or identity construction), and the interconnectedness of these phenomena in the learning and teaching of English or other foreign languages.

Key Issues Relevant to the Studies to Be Reported: Beliefs, Agency and Identity

As pointed out in Chapter 1, this volume is a response to the recent calls for research on learner and teacher beliefs that would be not only contextual and longitudinal, but also interconnected. In other words, beliefs should be viewed in relation to other issues that play a role in learning and teaching foreign languages. These include aspects of those involved in the processes of learning and teaching foreign languages, that is, learners and teachers — their agency and identity, for example. This chapter provides background to the seven studies that will be reported later in Chapters 3–9 by reviewing the key issues addressed: beliefs, agency and identity. In the following, an attempt wil…

Narratives in L2 Learner Identity Development

This article focuses on second or foreign language (L2) learner identity and its development as discursively constructed, and we will summarize four studies conducted on this topic. The studies were conducted in the context of L2 teacher education in Finland, and the participants were student teachers (pre-service teachers) or recently qualified teachers of English or other L2s. As data we made use of narratives in different modes (oral, written, visual). The summarizing of the studies will be followed by a joint critical discussion of the theoretical and methodological lessons learned and possible applications. peerReviewed

Teacher agency within the Finnish CLIL context : tensions and resources

Recent discussion indicates that the initial enthusiasm of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers can be undermined by the demands of foreign-language mediated education. However, there is a lack of research on the resources and tensions that respectively support or limit the professional agency of CLIL teachers. By means of semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants, this study seeks to better understand how teacher agency is experienced by CLIL teachers working in Finnish primary schools. To examine tensions and resources in CLIL teachers’ work lives, a holistic and dynamic theoretical conceptualization of teacher agency is suggested, paying particular attenti…

Mentoring of newly qualified teachers. A bilateral comparison between Germany and Finland

Mentoring stellt in der Begleitung von in den Beruf einsteigenden Lehrpersonen eine international gängige Praxis dar. Ausgehend von theoretischen und empirisch fundierten Annahmen wird in diesem Beitrag der Ansatz der practice architectures genutzt, um Formen des Mentorings in Deutschland und Finnland im Hinblick auf länderspezifische Verständnisse vom Berufseinstieg von Lehrpersonen und deren Professionalisierung zu untersuchen. (DIPF/Orig.) Internationally, mentoring is a well-recognized practice in supporting newly qualified teachers. Based on theoretical and empirical understanding, this paper compares mentoring practices in two countries: Germany and Finland. The theoretical framework …

Seeking Understanding of Foreign Language Teachers’ Shifting Emotions in Relation to Pupils

Teaching is recognised as an emotional practice. Studies have highlighted the importance of teachers’ emotional literacy in the development of pupils’ emotional skills, the central position of emotions in teachers’ ways of knowing, and in their professional development. This longitudinal study draws on a dialogic understanding of emotion to present findings from qualitative interviews with teachers. This study aims to provide further understanding in this area by offering a perspective into 7 foreign language teachers’ emotions in relation to their pupils during their first decade in the profession. The most important finding was that negative emotions decreased while the positive emotions …

Imagined Identities and Communities in the Learning Context of Finnish as a Second Language

This case study on two migrant pupils of Finnish as L2 was carried out in Finland, which lies outside the most common context of such research, i.e. ESL or EFL in an English-speaking country. The study thus attempts to address the need to expand the research contexts of L2 identity issues. Using ethnographic data collected inside and outside a preparatory language classroom, this study aims to examine how the pupils make sense of their new learning environment and how, through language learning, they construct identities. The results show that they extend their repertoire of identities and connect to a wider world of possibilities as they strive to gain greater resources in their imagined c…

CLIL teachers in Finland : The role of emotions in professional identity negotiation

Research on emotions has yielded many theoretical perspectives and many concepts. Yet, most scholars have focused on how emotions influence the transformation and maintenance of teacher identities in the field of teacher education and novice teachers, with little research being conducted on either experienced or foreign language teachers. This study explores emotions in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers’ work and their role in identity negotiation. The data is based on interviews with thirteen CLIL teachers working at six different primary schools around Finland, while the analysis draws on Meijers’ (2002) model of identity as a learning process. According to this mod…

Openness, Creativity, Collaboration and Narrativity Paving Our Road Towards Critical Multilingual Practices in the Classroom

When asked to provide this commentary for Learner Development Journal (LDJ) Issue 5, Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations, I felt privileged and intrigued. The call focusing on narrative accounts and practice-related reviews matched with my interest and needs as a university language teacher educator and researcher in applied linguistics. To me, in promoting multilingual teacher education and multilingual languages education, we need ideas and support from other members of the teacher community. This is important especially since tackling new paradigms necessitates challenging our habitual agency that often convenientl…

Teaching a skill or using a tool? : Studying Finnish EFL teachers’ beliefs about the teaching of reading and writing

How teachers construct their beliefs about foreign language (FL) teaching in shifting educational contexts is an important, yet little known area. This study addresses this issue through a discourse analysis of research interviews conducted with 16 Finnish English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers about their views of teaching reading and writing. It identifies four different subject positions: ‘unaccountable’, ‘old-time’, ‘modern’ and ‘authentic’. The study shows that the participating teachers’ beliefs are contradictory and that although the teachers are aware of more recent discourses of language teaching, they find it difficult to link these with their teaching practice. peerReviewed

Teachers’ pedagogical and relational identity negotiation in the Finnish CLIL context

Abstract This study explores the professional identity of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers in Finnish primary education. It aims at explaining how CLIL teachers negotiate their pedagogical and relational identity, and how identity agency is exercised in negotiating a more encompassing professional identity. Thematic analysis of thirteen interviews outlines the bi-directional process of identity negotiation between personal and professional resources, and social contexts at work. The results highlight a connection between professional identity and agency, and suggest that identity negotiation is a process of working and sharing with others, but also individually.

Vastavalmistuneiden kielenopettajien ammatillinen kehittyminen ja toimijuus

Tavassa ymmärtää kieli ja kielenopetus on tapahtunut huomattava teoreettinen muutos viime vuosikymmenien aikana. Käytännön kielenopetuksen muutokset kouluissa ovat kuitenkin olleet hitaita. Muutosprosessin ymmärtämisessä opettajatutkimus on keskeisessä asemassa. Vastavalmistuneiden opettajien käytännön kielenopetuksen muotoutumista ja käsityksiä kielestä oppiaineena selvitettiin Maria Ruohotie-Lyhdyn väitöstutkimuksessa 3-4 ensimmäisen työvuoden aikana. Tulokset nostavat esille opettajankoulutukseen ja kouluihin liittyviä kehittämishaasteita. nonPeerReviewed