Negotiating Tensions: A Study of Pre-service English as Foreign Language Teachers’ Sense of Identity Within Their Community of Practice

Abstract

The dynamic nature of language teacher identity requires an understanding of the processes involved in the formation of teachers’ professional identity. In the context of English as a foreign language (EFL), identity formation involves navigating dominant discourses around a hierarchical dichotomy of native and non-native speakers placing non-native teachers in a lesser category. This research presents a qualitative analysis of interview data of 4 pre-service teachers in an EFL teacher education program. Using the community of practice identity negotiation framework, the findings of this study show how pre-service teachers are negotiating practices deemed as valuable by their education program. The findings in this study suggest that EFL pre-service teachers’ processes of identity negotiation were mainly characterized by adoption and some degree of tension around ideologies privileging the NS and unmarked speech. This study contributes to the extant conversation about the problematization of the native non-native speaker dichotomy and discusses the unique affordances of Epistemic Network Analysis to examine processes of identity formation and negotiation beyond the context of language teachers.