Unveiling the Teacher Identities of Online EFL Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

The remote education modality inherited from the global pandemic in early 2020 and the emergence of online schools worldwide led different universities in Colombia to establish pedagogical practicum online as a permanent option. These shifts impact the delivery of FL education and the positioning and self-perception of pre-service teachers as online educators in the post-pandemic landscape. Some previous research has examined how graduate and college in-service teachers developed their identities as online instructors during the global pandemic in early 2020, graduate and college in-service teachers’ construction of their transitional identities as online instructors and compared such newly-constructed roles with their already-established identities in face-to-face (f2f) scenarios; overlooking thus a complete examination of the experiences and factors that shape student-teachers online teacher identity in planned remote training settings in post-pandemic realities. This qualitative case study intended to address the research gap by unveiling the online teacher identities that 16 EFL pre-service teachers constructed throughout their online pedagogical practicum at a public university in Colombia. Data were collected employing whole-class discussions, recorded class observations, focus groups, teacher’s journals, and surveys. The results showed that the student-teachers constructed multiple online teacher identities based on their experiences as technology users and educational software course students. The pre-service teachers also drew on their recent experiences and interactions with their students and the online factors and events themselves present during the synchronous EFL classes in their pedagogical practicum. These results posed noteworthy implications for FL teacher education programs, practicum supervisors, and teacher development. The study's limitations entailed the relatively short timeframe of data collection and the selection of participants not based on a carefully designed and checked test on ICT and software-specific skills that could have played a role in the resulting online teacher identities.