Exploring Vietnamese primary school EFL teachers’ identities from a micropolitical perspective

Abstract

Teacher identity is an important concept that serves as a gateway to various aspects of teacher professionalism. A growing body of research in language education delves into the complexities of teacher identity. However, when viewed through a micropolitical lens, this crucial topic has received surprisingly little attention. This limitation hinders a deeper understanding of teachers' contextual satisfaction, well-being, and functioning. This paper reports on a qualitative study that explored how Vietnamese primary school English as a foreign language teachers construct their identities within the framework of educational micropolitics. Nine primary school English teachers took part in the study, and semi-structured interviews were used as the data collection tool. Their organizational power was investigated in relation to principals, colleagues in main subjects, students, and parents. The results reveal that in order to function as organizational individuals, the participants had to strategically perform either a main, subordinate, or extra role identity in power-related interactions with different agents.