Collaborative Complaints, Alignment, and Identity Positioning During Teacher-Mentor Post-Observation Meetings

Abstract

ABSTRACT Post-observation meetings are shown to be important contexts for language teacher identity development. Studies examining post-observation discourse have observed teachers negotiating identities as developing novices and knowledgeable experts through narrating difficult experiences, articulating pedagogical rationale, contesting colleagues’ decisions, and imagining future selves. Responding to calls to further investigate identity negotiation during post-observation meetings, this study adopted a narrative discourse analytic lens to explore how two graduate TESOL student teachers constructed identity positions through collaborative reflection about co-teaching and mentoring relationships. The findings highlight the complexity of overlapping identity positions constructed in relation to different factors within teachers’ ecologies as well as how identity is constructed both within the content of narrated small stories and through the interactional practice of storytelling. Findings are discussed in light of research on language teacher identity development, small stories in teacher education, and post-observation discourse, with implications for supporting novice language teachers through peer mentoring and collaborative reflection.