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Title Professional Identity Construction of Female English Teachers in Rural Khybar Pakhtunkhwa: A Narrative Inquiry

Author(s) Mehak Gul

Abstract Professional Identity Construction of Female English Teachers in Rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: A Narrative Inquiry This qualitative study inquires into the meanings female English teachers make of the professional identity they have developed under the collective impact of nativity, gender, and rural context of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Using narrative inquiry as the research method, it examines how the four participant female language teachers connect their professional identity construction with their English language teaching, and thus form their language teacher identity. The theoretical foundation of the current work is based on Barkhuizen’s (2016) conceptualization of Language Teacher Identity (LTI), while the analytical framework has been borrowed from Barkhuizen’s (2008) conception of the three-pronged conceptualization of ‘story’. The design of the current work is such that the theoretical and analytical lenses and the methodology all form a nexus whereby they have been derived from the work of the same theorist (i.e. Gary Barkhuizen) and all of them deal with the narrative investigation of language teacher identity. The findings of this study foreground the dynamic and fluid nature of LTI by emphasizing the intersection of gender, non-nativity, and the rural context. Further, the findings provide evidence of how LTI starts developing at the very onset of the teaching profession and then grows in tandem with one’s additional identities as the person goes through life. The participants’ emotional and historical attachment with English and their perceptions that English is a subject that can set them apart forms their initial LTI. Another key finding reveals how LTI is formed under the effect of social expectations of what career path a lady residing in a rural area should go for. Exploration into the third point of interest i.e. non-nativity throws light on the challenges that non-native language teachers face in a rural context as they are aggravated by the lack of support and opportunities for the female gender, but it also shows how the participants’ non-native status was not found to be a hindering factor in the participants’ LTI development. Rather, their LTI was more a product of their observance of socio-cultural ideologies about women, work, and the English language, and the limitations posed by the rural context, as well as their gendered identity.

Type Thesis/Dissertation

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2022-07-05

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