University language teachers’ performance of authenticity through Durchsichtig and Handeln: an experience of coming out through the third space of hybridity

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study, conducted in Iran, examined English teachers’ experience of authenticity, as the performative dimension of authentication, through a conceptual framework revolving around Durchsichtig (seeing through) and Handeln (action). Data were collected via big and small stories, and were hermeneutically analysed. Authenticity was seen through acknowledging marginalising relations, which were modified through coming out and cultivating transcultural identities, whereby a possibility of a third space of hybridity, agency, and in-betweenness was created. As findings revealed, challenging essentialist large-culture blocks such as nativeness, a transcultural flow calls for a space to challenge the fixed categorisation of culture and identity in education.