Social Interaction and English Language Teacher Identity

This book explores how teacher education and professional development in English language teaching are mediated by social interaction. It shows how professional identities are established and negotiated through talk-in-interaction in different pre- and in-service ELT settings. The relationships between identity formation, knowledge construction, reflection, power and the marketization of ELT are explored in interactions among teachers, between teachers and teacher educators, and between teachers and researchers. The book draws on data (the writers have collected) in which English language teachers talk about their work using different kinds of verbal commentaries, such as interviews and narratives. The book also presents analyses of data drawn from different pre- and in-service teacher education and development settings. It includes student-teacher/trainer interaction on a pre-service ELT course, experienced teachers talking about the role of global ELT materials in their teaching, and focus-group data of teachers reflecting on their practices in a bilingual education context. These analyses exemplify the use of a range of perspectives in doing research on identity and social interaction – many of which exist in tension with one another. These include conversation analysis, discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, positioning theory and multimodal analysis. Finally the book explores the practical applications of findings on social interaction and identity in ELT teacher education and development contexts. It addresses questions such as the management of interaction and knowledge construction on pre-service courses, and the possibilities for teacher reflection in contexts where this may be limited by power differentials and institutional and commercial constraints