Teacher immunity in professional identity: reflection on male ielts teachers’ homosocial fabrics in 2 iranian ethnographic institutions

Fatemeh Mohammad Jafari,Alireza Ameri

doi:10.20952/revtee.v13i32.14857

Fatemeh Mohammad Jafari, Alireza Ameri

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.20952/revtee.v13i32.14857

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Abstract

As a new concept in language teacher psychology, language teacher immunity is a strong indicator of how teachers behave and respond in the face of disturbances which has a profound effect on teachers' profession. So, as it is apparent, research on language teacher immunity is in its embryonic stage and this qualitative study tried to fill the gap in the existing literature by using Retrodictive Qualitative Modeling to develop an in-depth understanding the experiences of five IELTS male teachers from two ethnographic sites. And due to research and critical studies into men and masculinity has originated as one of the most emerging areas of sociological investigation, on a macro-level of ethnography, this research study concentrated on male IELTS teachers to see the interpretations about masculinity, homosocial relations and desire to make their own professional identity and on the micro-level, the ethos varies at each institution. To achieve the research objectives and answer the questions of this ethnographic study, three data collection techniques were utilized to generate information, namely document collection, classroom observations, and interviews. The findings of this comparative ethnography revealed that in the IELTS situation, “the Visionary” and “The Spark plug” should be placed in two separate groups of immunity (productive and adaptive) to increase the categories of immunity to 5 in this context. So, by adding masculinity patterns, which changed from physicality into knowledge-discipline and socialization-patronage in this study, it was concluded that those who were in productive and adaptive immunity category were not homogeneous due to the fact that they were complicit and approached themselves to the hegemonic masculinity with slight changes that the researchers could not separate them in their immunity.

Highlights

The word “identity” is mostly defined by relating people to other members of a group and specifying their participation within that community
This study endeavored to find out the dominant type of teacher immunity, either productive or maladaptive, among IELTS teachers in two ethnographic sites and to delve into the immunization process
The immunity archetypes that the researchers used were appropriate from Hiver (2017), they found some of his theorizing on immunity insufficient to describe moderates in IELTS settings and the data that the researchers uncovered persuaded them to propose another type

Summary

Introduction

The word “identity” is mostly defined by relating people to other members of a group and specifying their participation within that community. That is why Mercer, Oberdorfer and Saleem (2016) in their book claimed that over the past half a century "learner-centered" approaches have focused on learners, their psychology, behavior, and wellbeing, but it may be time for more of a "teacher-centered" approach in the field of English as a second/foreign language teacher psychology. They expressed their concern in gaps that exist in teachers’ psychology. The concept of teacher immunity explains the processes through which teachers in general, and language teachers in particular, attempt to come up with a defense mechanism to buffer or moderate the effects of unpleasant disturbances that might threaten their motivation to teach and their professional identity (Hiver & Dornyei, 2017)

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