Between Expert and Novice: Identity Transition from Teacher to Student as Sustainable Agentic Construction

Xing Xu, Helena Sit () and Hui Li
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Xing Xu: Department of English Studies, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing 400031, China
Helena Sit: School of Education, The University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW 2308, Australia
Hui Li: Shanghai Institute of Early Childhood Education, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-12

Abstract: Education for sustainable development in foreign language teaching and learning impacts students’ lives in their current or future endeavours. Despite a wide body of literature elucidating identity navigation of EFL teachers and international doctoral students, a relative scarcity of scholarship casts light on the in-between cohort, namely those who transit from the former to the latter. Via a holistic lens, utilising a qualitative case study based on an Australian university, this research scrutinised how a group of 10 international doctoral students who served as EFL teachers in their home countries enacted agency to navigate the identity transition. The study discusses what generally constitutes sustainable, successful language learning and teaching practices in different social, cultural, and educational contexts. The findings reveal that torn between teaching English as an expert and learning research as a novice, they negotiated the identity transition as a “doing” process subject to different positionings and structural contexts and mediated by various dynamics across a past–present–future trajectory. This study contributes to pertinent literature by shedding nuanced and holistic light on the under-researched topic of teacher-to-student identity transition. It ends with implications for attending to EFL teachers’ complex lived experiences to promote sustainable development in EFL teaching and learning.

Keywords: sustainability; English as a Foreign Language (EFL); language teacher education; language and identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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