The students were asked to keep a reflective journal and make blogs entries, written narrative interviews, regarding various issues related to their past and present learning experiences, continuous professional development, language teacher identities, teaching and learning, teaching practicum, and peer observations. The analysis of reflective journal and blog entries as well as focus group discussions showed that student teachers' professional identities are shaped by their experiences at academic, pedagogical, and personal levels. Their practical and theoretical courses at university together with teaching practicum enhanced their critical-reflective engagement, research-oriented practices, allowing them to become reflective and critical practitioners in the future.
TopIntroduction
According to Mosquera-Pérez and Losada-Rivas (2022), language teacher identity (LTI) is related to educators’ language teaching context, their practices, beliefs, and behaviours. Research on LTIs is based on psychological, sociolinguistics and philosophical theoretical perspectives (Varghese et al., 2005; Kumaravadivelu, 2012; Barkhuizen, 2016; Norton, 2017). As suggested by Freeman (1989), Crandall (2000) and Trent (2010), pre-service training is essential in terms of initial professional training, pedagogical, methodological and sociocultural experience as well as shaping of language teacher identities. It was found that continuous participation in professionalization programs brings benefit to novice teachers as they become reflective practitioners with an active role in class (Kumaravadivelu, 2003; Abednia, 2012; Kayi-Aydar, 2019).
In addition, Borg (2004) and Hayes et al. (2017) emphasized the role of teacher training programs and exposure of non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs) to critical theories in combatting the deficit discourses about nativeness and establishing of non-subordinated self-representation of NNESTs in comparison to NESTs. Apart from teacher education programs, teachers’ early learning experiences (Freeman, 1989; Borg, 2004) and overall past experiences contribute to the development of LTIs, which is not a linear process as it incorporates social, cultural, contextual, and personal dimensions. As maintained by Norton (2013: 45), LTIs include the analysis of “how a person understands his/her relationship to the world, and how that relationship is constructed across time and space.”
Previous research on Language Teacher Identities (LTIs) (Barkhuizen, 2016; De Costa & Norton, 2017; Kayi-Aydar, 2019) have examined such important issues as teachers’ beliefs and attitudes, self-perception in relation to education, pedagogy and their professional development (Morgan, 2004; Varghese et al., 2005; Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Oda, 2017). According to Clarke (2008), teachers’ professional development includes not only acquiring new knowledge and skills but also creation of teacher identity. Professional identity is built based on input processing and learning of new teaching strategies, intake and use of this knowledge in practice, output, as well as on agency and self-analysis (Varghese et al., 2016).
Various researchers such as Barcelos (2017), Golombek (2017), Kubanyiova (2017) and Yazan (2018) have examined the link between teachers’ development and their identities, emotions and cognitions as they are related to classroom management and teaching techniques as well as teacher-student interactions and students’ engagement and motivation. It is essential for teachers to understand better their current state of professional identities and their aspirations for future development and teaching practices (Barkhuizen, 2017; Matsuda, 2017; Yazan, 2018) based on their practical and theoretical knowledge, experiences, self-cognition, beliefs, conceptions and philosophies. This research seeks to contribute to the research in the field of LTI in Cyprus by reporting about the effect of academic training and teaching practicum on the professional identity trajectories of future EFL teachers in Cyprus.