Essay On Teacher Identity

As shown in table 2, there exists a great discrepancy between student teacher self identification and Gu’s investigation on teacher identity. To explore what causes the discrepancy, we need to consider the methodology employed in the two studies. We think the discrepancy is caused by the differing methods adopted to examine teacher identity and different perspectives from which we observe teacher identity. Our classification of teacher identity is based on the data of linguistic metaphors produced by student teachers themselves while Gu’s classification is based on the data collected by observing classroom activities from the others’ perspective. The observation, obviously, failed to consider the individual teacher’s inner self, to be specific, their emotions. The discrepancy seems to

It is believed that teachers’ metaphors on their professional identity are important guides and goals of teachers’ classroom behavior, which is directly related to cultures of communication in the classroom in terms of individual subject or discipline. The ‘performer’ metaphor allows us to predict the apprentice relation between students and teachers, and what might happen in the EFL classrooms: imitating the tones and accents of speaking English, role plays, iterative practice and rehearsal of the uses of English language items, teachers’ demonstration of English pronunciation and students’ following them. In the similar thinking pattern, we can also imagine what might happen in the classrooms of ‘authority’ metaphor, ‘supplier’ metaphor, ‘guardian’ metaphor, and ‘companion’ metaphor. The numeric favor in ‘performer’ metaphor indicates that ‘performer’ metaphor is specific to EFL professional teacher identity and may also index a change of emphasis. It might be in this sense, Palmer (1998, P. 66) intelligently argues that it is the “selfhood from which good teaching comes