Probing the Sociocultural Relevance of TESOL in Three Stories of Becoming an English Teacher

Abstract

AbstractAlthough critical views of language education have redefined teacher roles, teachers' understanding of their own position within the ideological contestations surrounding language teaching is not widely investigated. This narrative study explores the perspectives of three Iranian English language teachers on the sociocultural roles and responsibilities that they may assume for themselves and examines how such perspectives are shaped. In extensive multi‐session narrative interviews, the participants shared their stories of becoming a teacher, starting from their retrospection on teacher roles during their language learning. Our narrative analysis depicts their different trajectories of shaping conceptions of language teachers' sociocultural roles in three stages: as a language learner, as a student teacher, and as a beginner teacher. On this basis, their narrative accounts of becoming English teachers appear to indicate that critical sociocultural views still play a marginal role in actual teacher preparation processes and the field needs to further embrace critical approaches to language teacher education aimed at raising English language teachers' awareness of their sociocultural responsibility. Moreover, our participants' narratives illustrate that understanding the genesis of language teachers' teaching philosophies requires a wide perspective of their long‐term background of learning (to teach) the language.