Maria Ruohotie-Lyhty

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

ABSTRACT 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.

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 their ability to self‐reflect.

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 tripartite model to better understand different dimensions of life-course agency and its implications for language teacher education. The study has its origins in an ongoing action research project aiming at developing dialogic pedagogical practices for language and teacher education at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

Teacher agency within the Finnish CLIL context: tensions and resources

ABSTRACT 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 attention to the classroom, professional relationships and the wider sociocultural environment. Findings showed that language, classroom-related tensions and temporal, material and developmental resources were perceived as tensions limiting teacher agency. In contrast, autonomy, openness to change, teacher versatility, and collegial community were found to support teacher agency. The study concludes with practical implications for teacher education, practicing teachers and future research.

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 will be made to define the three key constructs and review developments in doing research on each in applied linguistics, or language learning and teaching, and viewing these either from the point of view of L2 learners or teachers. The chapter concludes with an overview of the chapters, making it possible to compare and contrast the studies to be reported.

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

ABSTRACT 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 increased. Understanding what emotions teachers face and how they deal with them may help practicing teachers better understand their daily work and support student teacher preparation.

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 fundamental connections. However, in applied linguistics, there have been only a few studies that have explored this interrelationship. In this chapter, we review studies about emotions and beliefs in second language teaching highlighting their main points, theoretical framework and main results. Our aim is to provide an overview of the ways in which emotions and beliefs are interconnected and how this understanding can be used to support language teacher development. We suggest implications for research on teachers’ beliefs and emotions. We conclude with guidelines for how teacher educators can work with student teachers’ beliefs and emotions.

The emotional journey of being and becoming bilingual

ABSTRACT 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 experienced as a gateway to something other, whether a new community, sport, or music. The emotional intonation of these two story types varied considerably highlighting the importance of emotion within language education.

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 and defense.

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.