The pedagogical and socio-affective dimensions of identity tensions and teacher agency: Case studies of university English teachers teaching online

Abstract

The unprecedented switch to online education during the Covid-19 pandemic has posed many challenges for language teachers, such as conducting authentic language interactions with reduced modalities in virtual classrooms. Language teachers, therefore, have been confronted with identity tensions of how to reposition themselves to adapt to this new teaching space. How teachers experienced and responded to these identity tensions is critically important to the success of online education, yet this issue remains underexplored. To address this gap, our case studies drew on multiple rounds of individual interviews with four university English teachers who taught online during the pandemic. Findings reveal that individual teachers experienced varying degrees of identity tensions on the pedagogical and socio-affective dimensions. To tackle these identity tensions, the teachers took wide-ranging agentic actions in pre-, in-, and/or after-class stages to maintain an identity, adopt a new identity, switch between identities, and/or redefine identities. Findings are discussed in terms of differential identity tensions brought by online teaching to individual teachers, as well as the complex interplay between identity tensions and teacher agency. The study concludes with implications for online language teaching and language teacher development.