Abstract
While there has been a surge of studies on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ emotions and identities in research engagement, limited attention has been paid to how they integrate teacher and researcher identities and negotiate different emotions in research practice over time. Drawing on data from a variety of sources over a decade, this longitudinal self-narrative study investigated how an EFL academic (the author) negotiated and navigated conflicting identities and emotions in the process of becoming a teacher-researcher in a changing context. The findings unfolded the changes in her emotions and professional identity development over the course of her 10-year research journey, beginning as a discontented and perplexed performer with weak emotional resilience, progressing to a pressured and strenuous follower with moderate emotional resilience, and finally becoming a relentless and resolute integrator with strong emotional resilience. Her final integration of teacher and researcher identities represented her redemption on this bumpy journey. Implications for EFL teachers, school leaders, and education policymakers on how to help EFL academics integrate professional identities were also discussed.
Plain Language Summary
This longitudinal qualitative study seeks to provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamic interactions among academic identity, teacher emotions, and socio-institutional changes through the lens of emotional resilience. Through revisiting the experiences of an ordinary representative EFL academic in a non-elite public university in China’s higher education, a bottom-up examination serves as a small window for readers to understand the teaching and research practices of Chinese universities. Using data from a variety of sources over a span of a decade, this study discovered that over the course of an EFL academic’s 10-year research journey, she experienced a wide range of emotions and negotiated her professional identities, eventually identifying with the teacher-researcher role in a complex environment. An analogy to The Shawshank Redemption could metaphorically represent her dynamic emotional responses and identity development. She began her research journey as a discontented and perplexed performer with weak emotional resilience, progressed to a pressured and strenuous follower with moderate emotional resilience, and finally became a relentless and resolute integrator with strong emotional resilience. Her final integration of teacher and researcher identities represented her redemption on this bumpy journey. This study has implications for not only individual EFL teachers but also for school leaders and education policymakers interested in assisting EFL academics in becoming emotionally resilient and integrating professional identities in research practice. In future research, a co-autoethnography study could provide a more informative interpretation of EFL teachers’ research emotions and identity development.
Introduction
The prevalent practices of publish-or-perish system (Lee, 2014), new managerialism (Deem et al., 2008), and the performative culture (Perryman, 2009) in higher education have prioritized research in universities worldwide (Dai et al., 2021; Peng & Gao, 2019; Tran et al., 2017). Academics in all disciplines are expected by society and institutions to be actively and productively engaged in research (Borg & Liu, 2013; Gao & Zheng, 2020; Yang et al., 2022; Yuan, 2017). This, however, has posed a significant challenge to EFL teachers, who have been traditionally recruited as teaching-focused language instructors rather than competent researchers (Bai et al., 2014; Xu, 2020). Facing the mounting pressure to be research-productive, EFL teachers need to adopt the new role of active researchers and reconstruct their professional identities in order to survive and thrive in the changing academic context.
Against such a backdrop, increasing attention has been paid to university EFL teachers’ academic identities and emotions in research practice (e.g., Bao & Feng, 2022; Huang & Guo, 2019; Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al., 2017; Xue, 2021) since the institutional changes and demands not only cause shifts in their professional identities but also trigger their emotional fluctuations. Emotions assist people in making sense of who they are and what is going on at work (Van Veen & Sleegers, 2009). Researchers have found that EFL teachers experience a wide range of emotions toward their institutions’ demands to assume the role of researchers (Lee, 2014; Xu, 2014; Yuan et al., 2022) as well as toward the changes in institutional research policies (Huang & Guo, 2019; Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al., 2017). Moreover, academics may experience identity tensions when a misalignment between their professional identity and required performative identity occurs (Dugas et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2022). In terms of integrating conflicting professional identities, Yang et al. (2022) reported that resilience could help academics turn adversity and threat into advantage and opportunity. However, existing studies on teachers’ emotions and identities in research practice tend to explore these issues in a cross-sectional manner. Longitudinal studies on the connection between university EFL teachers’ emotions and academic identities in a dynamic manner are scant. This study aims to contribute to this underexplored relationship by offering a detailed account of how a university EFL teacher (i.e., the author) negotiated her professional identities as a teacher-researcher with emotional resilience in a changing socio-institutional context over a span of 10 years. Specifically, this study addresses two research questions:
How did the changing context interact with the university EFL teacher’s sense of identity to impact her emotionally and behaviorally in research practice?
How did the university EFL teacher negotiate her professional identities as both teacher and researcher through the lens of emotional resilience?
Literature Review
EFL Teachers’ Professional Identities in Research Practice
Understanding language teacher identity is critical because teachers’ perceptions of themselves as professionals influence their pedagogical practice and professional development choices (Kayi-Aydar, 2019; Yang et al., 2021). Given today’s publish-or-perish academic culture, the past decade has witnessed a surge in studies on EFL teachers’ research engagement and professional identities in research practice (e.g., Bao & Feng, 2022; Liu & Borg, 2014; Nakata et al., 2021; Teng, 2019; Tran et al., 2017; Xu, 2014; Yuan, 2017).
A notable example in this area is Xu’s (2014) narrative study of university EFL teachers’ researcher identity construction, which reported four scenarios: a periphery research practitioner, an established researcher, a would-be researcher, and a non-researcher in their workplace. In a similar vein, Tran et al. (2017) identified four types of English language teaching lecturers in the context of a new research policy: enthusiastic accommodators, pressured supporters, a losing-heart follower, and discontented performers. Interestingly, Yang et al. (2022) also classified four types of EFL teachers in identity negotiation in a culture of performativity: disheartened performers, miserable followers, strenuous accommodators, and fulfilled integrators. Scholars discovered that, in addition to the various identity trajectories displayed by tertiary EFL teachers, they may experience shifts in professional identities in research as well. For example, in a study using photo-narrative frames with an expatriate EFL teacher in Korea, Greenier and Moodie (2021) discovered that the expatriate EFL teacher developed a growing identity as an EFL professional, demonstrating a career trajectory transition from a private school teacher to an EFL professional and researcher at a public university. Likewise, Bao and Feng (2022) found that EFL teachers transformed from being unreconciled, passive, or invisible to agentic and confident practitioners by embracing the researcher identity in a domestic visiting program. Furthermore, when language teachers construct professional identities in research, their identities and emotions are reported to be interconnected and closely linked (Golombek & Doran, 2014; Huang & Guo, 2019), as evidenced by the adjective words used in the studies mentioned above to describe the various types of EFL teachers in research practice.
However, in the pursuit of research excellence, academics’ professional identities can become contested and fragmented (Shams, 2019), resulting in identity tensions between their teacher and researcher identities (McCune, 2021). Taking teacher identity and researcher identity as academics’ sub-identities (Trautwein, 2018), scholars believe that integrating these two sub-identities can lead to academics’ well-being and professional growth with high commitment, whereas a lack of integration triggers negative emotions and impedes professional development (Garner & Kaplan, 2019). Academics have been found to constantly negotiate their sub-identities and strive to resolve tensions between teacher and researcher identities (Shams, 2019) in contemporary higher education with new managerialism that prioritizes research over teaching (Sutton, 2017). Arvaja (2018) investigated identity tensions caused by a misalignment between institutional managerial practices and academics’ personal values, and discovered that the participant constructed a coherent and consistent dialogical self through core reflection, leading to an awareness of her core qualities as well as personal and professional well-being. Similarly, Kaasila et al. (2021) explored the fragmented professional identities of a group of academics at a research-intensive university. They discovered that a developmental project and reflexivity in teaching practicums could help these academics develop more holistic and relational teacher and researcher identities.
While these studies have provided extensive views of EFL teachers’ professional identities in research practice, the majority of their analysis is based on one-time interviews and thus can only provide snapshots of EFL teachers’ researcher identities. The dynamic process by which teachers construct and reconstruct their professional identities in changing socio-institutional contexts has received insufficient attention. Given the complexities of teachers’ professional identities (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009), studies with prolonged engagement may provide a more in-depth understanding of EFL teachers’ professional identity development in research practice, which is the objective of this study.
EFL Teachers’ Emotions in Research Practice
Emotion has long been thought to be central to teaching (Hargreaves, 1998). While closely related to teacher cognition, how teachers manage their job-related emotions influences how they perceive themselves as professionals (Lee & Yin, 2011), and teacher emotion thus has a significant impact on teachers’ professional development (Hargreaves, 2000; Yang et al., 2021).
Following this line of research, language teachers’ emotions in research practice have been a topical issue in recent years. Based on empirical studies, scholars reported the complex emotions displayed by EFL teachers in research practice, such as stress, anxiety, frustration, powerlessness, vulnerability, struggling, and mixed emotions of pride and tiredness (Lee, 2014; Xu, 2014; Yang et al., 2022; Yuan, 2017; Yuan et al., 2022). Yang et al. (2022) found that while research performers and followers were afflicted by many negative emotions such as unhappiness and helplessness, accommodators and integrators showed a mixture of both positive and negative emotions as they responded to the culture of performativity. In addition, scholars noticed that EFL teachers demonstrated a wide range of emotional responses toward changes in institutional research policies (Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al., 2017). According to Tran et al.’s (2017) study on English language teachers in Vietnam, while few academics expressed support and enthusiasm for a new institutional research policy, the majority uttered pressure and complaints about the overemphasis on research excellence in policy documents. Similarly, in Lu and Zhang’s (2021) study on the emotional responses of a group of EFL academics to China’s new research policy breaking the “Five-Only” (China’s new national research policy that seeks to replace the old quantitative evaluation system’s emphasis on academics’ papers, educational credentials, professional titles, research awards, and honorary titles [Luo, 2020]), the majority expressed dissatisfaction with the changes brought about by the new policy, whereas only a few expressed joy and welcomed the changes. Evidence from various contexts indicates that emotion is an unavoidable part of change, and negative emotions seem to be the dominant responses among EFL academics toward the research emphasis at the socio-institutional level, particularly in the reform period.
EFL academics’ emotions in research practice are inextricably linked to features of their profession, which is full of emotional labor (Sutton & Wheatley, 2003). Emotions are social and can be institutionalized within communities, and institutionalized emotions can influence people’s behaviors (Crawford, 2014). As EFL academics adapt to the contemporary higher education system, they may transform institutionally defined academic work into their daily professional practices, resulting in institutionalized emotion in research practice (Huang & Guo, 2019). Because institutionalization is a recurring theme in the movie The Shawshank Redemption (Grady & Magistrale, 2016; Hooke, 2020; Peng, 2020), an analogy of the movie may provide a fresh perspective on the development of EFL academics’ institutionalized emotion in research practice. Given that teacher emotions are complex within a sociocultural context (Gkonou & Miller, 2021), and that self-narrative research can provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of teachers’ practices (Mirhosseini, 2018), this study takes a self-narrative approach with the goal of shedding light on academics’ professional development in Chinese higher education by closely examining an EFL academic’s emotional trajectories with professional identity shifts in a changing context.
Emotional Resilience as a Lens to Investigate Connection Between Emotion and Identity
Because of its close relationship with teachers’ sense of professional identity and teacher emotions (Beltman & Poulton, 2019), resilience is adopted by this study as the lens to understand the author’s negotiation and integration of professional identities in research. Resilience, as a complex and multifaceted concept, has been traditionally defined as “a dynamic process wherein individuals display positive adaptation despite experiences of significant adversity or trauma” (Luthar & Cicchetti, 2000, p. 858). When applied to teacher education, it has been redefined as “the capacity to maintain equilibrium and a sense of commitment and agency in the everyday worlds in which teachers work” (Gu & Day, 2013, p. 26). Given that teaching is emotional work (Schutz & Zembylas, 2009; Sutton, 2004; Van Veen & Lasky, 2005), teachers’ capacity for emotional resilience plays a key role in sustaining their everyday work. Yet, as Day and Gu (2013) pointed out, teachers’ capacity for resilience is a dynamic trait that fluctuates in response to the influences of internal and external factors. For example, Day and Hong (2016) discovered that emotional resilience helped teachers from socioeconomically disadvantaged communities maintain a sense of positive professional identity and commitment, whereas emotional resilience fluctuated according to teachers’ internal personal factors and external policy in unfavorable settings. Likewise, Wilcox and Lawson (2018) found that, while emotional resilience assisted teachers in adapting to educational reforms, it varied across school contexts with different resource allocations, school leaderships, and communities of practice. Teachers’ professional identity tensions highlight the importance of emotional resilience. In a recent study, Yang et al. (2022) reported that academic identity tensions were significantly influenced by emotional resilience. Those who were able to reconcile their teacher and researcher identities displayed high levels of emotional resilience.
Based on the definitions of resilience and located in the context of the fundamental interrelation between teacher identity construction, teacher emotions, and emotion-induced actions (Her & De Costa, 2022; Kocabacs-Gedik & Ortaçtepe Hart, 2021; Zembylas, 2006), emotional resilience in this study is conceptualized as academics’ capacity to construct integrated professional identities and positively adapt to challenging circumstances despite emotional fluctuations. Given that professional identity tensions are often accompanied by negative emotions (Shams, 2019), how to regulate emotions and to hold teaching and research coherently together in a performative culture has become an urgent issue for EFL teachers, who are traditionally recruited as teaching craftsmen but now face the same research pressure as academics from other disciplines (Xue, 2021). Becoming a researcher requires EFL teachers to constantly negotiate between teacher and researcher identities while interacting with complex emotions (Garner & Kaplan, 2019). As such, emotional resilience is critical to academics’ professional development because it helps them positively adapt to changing contexts and integrate conflicting professional identities.
Methodology
A Self-Narrative Inquiry Study
This study used a self-narrative inquiry approach to investigate the author’s complex emotions and professional identities in a changing context. People tell stories about their lives and reveal their identities through narratives (Holland et al., 2001). Narrative inquiry can be an effective research tool for shedding light on the various identities and emotions that teachers develop throughout their professional lives and careers (Barkhuizen et al., 2013; Clandinin & Connelly, 2004). Furthermore, a self-study approach, being autoethnographic in nature, is a powerful tool to gain an in-depth understanding of understudied topics by accessing private and sensitive thoughts (Adams et al., 2017). Therefore, a self-narrative inquiry was adopted since it has been found to be particularly useful in better understanding various aspects of teachers’ professional identities and practices (Peercy & Sharkey, 2020).
Research Context and Participant
Since this is a self-narrative case study, it was conducted at the author’s workplace. It was also selected for two other reasons. One, it is a non-elite Chinese public university, with a middle national ranking among higher education institutions. This type of public university constitutes the majority of China’s higher education institutions (Wang, 2018). Two, due to the author’s professional relationship with this university, it was selected as the research site based on feasibility, familiarity, and accessibility (Hatch, 2002). In order to increase research productivity and promote its national ranking, this university has implemented a series of institutional reforms, such as three-year key performance appraisals, in line with the trends of new managerialism (Deem et al., 2008) and performativity and accountability (Perryman, 2009) in higher education. This university’s School of Foreign Studies employs 87 EFL teachers, whose primary responsibility is to teach compulsory and optional English courses to over 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Swept up in the institution’s research-oriented culture, the department of foreign studies has also placed a great emphasis on the faculty’s research output. As a result, EFL teachers must be engaged in both teaching and research.
The participant in this self-narrative study is the author – LH (the author’s acronym), an EFL teacher at this public university in the central south of China. Two selection criteria are met by the author based on purposive sampling (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). One, she has been a frontline EFL teacher for 13 years and has been conducting research for 10 years, enduring complex emotions and professional identity shifts throughout the long and arduous process. Two, she has successfully integrated her teacher and researcher identities with dynamic emotional resilience, in part by achieving above-average results in both teaching and research. Her teaching excellence was recognized not only by student and colleague evaluations, but also by awards in institutional, provincial, and national teaching contests; her research accomplishments were demonstrated by funded research projects she hosted, scholarly publications, and research awards. Her biographical information is presented in Table 1.
Biographical Information of the Participant.
Data Collection
Data were collected and triangulated from a variety of sources. First, journal entries of the author’s research experiences from 2011 to 2021 were used as the primary source of data, as a personal journal is an important avenue for autoethnographic narratives to reveal hidden feelings and to articulate the knowledge and interests of members of marginalized communities (Canagarajah, 2012). She detailed information on critical incidents on her research journey, as well as her feelings, thoughts, and comments on these events, in the selected journal entries related to research. Second, data were also elicited from the author’s communications with colleagues and her doctoral supervisor. During her 10-year research practice, she intermittently communicated with colleagues on social platforms for research-related information. She began her doctoral studies in 2020 and has kept in touch with her supervisor on a regular basis since then. In the selected data from her interactions with colleagues and her supervisor, she displayed a wide range of emotions induced by research activities. Third, the academic profile of the author as well as her annual performance appraisal reports from that decade were gathered. Her official records could aid in data triangulation and provide additional information. Fourth, the author’s teaching research reflection was triangulated using survey responses from her students. She conducted two rounds of surveys during the 2019 academic year to verify the outcomes of her teaching research. This is also a significant event on her research journey, which will be detailed later in the findings. In addition, not only “hard” data in digital forms, but also “soft” data, her memory, was used to obtain additional evidence when necessary (Wall, 2008). Data from these sources were triangulated to create a complete picture of the author’s research journey. The detailed information of the collected data is in Table 2.
Data Collected for the Study.
Data Analysis
Content analysis and thematic analysis were used in this study. Content analysis was used to analyze data collected from documents such as the participant’s academic profile. A qualitative, narrative approach (Riessman, 1993) was adopted in thematic data analysis of the participant’s emotions and identities in the following steps. First, the author repeatedly read and carefully coded the journal entries and communication excerpts, paying particular attention to the various emotions (e.g., discontent, anger, helplessness, unhappiness, anxiety, worry, pride, happiness) experienced by the participant in research practice and how these emotions related to different identities (e.g., a teaching-focused EFL teacher, a research-resistant teacher, a policy-complying researcher, a pressured researcher, a resolute teacher-researcher) she took up on the 10-year research journey. This process of open coding eventually resulted in three major themes that reflected her emotional identities: “a discontented and perplexed performer,”“a pressured and strenuous follower,” and “a relentless and resolute integrator.”
Following the identification of the three themes, the author then reexamined the themes by rereading the data and composing mini-stories (Clandinin & Connelly, 2004) in relation to the institutional policies involved. The narratives’ storylines were thus developed by constructing and reconstructing meanings in mini-stories with reference to the identified themes. The participant’s research journey was classified into three stages based on the emerged themes and her emotional resilience (see Table 3). The emotional resilience framework is demonstrated in the three stages of the participant’s research journey: “change-resisting journey start,” she initially resisted changes with weak emotional resilience; “policy-complying journey process,” she gradually grew accustomed to complying with institutional research policy with moderate emotional resilience; “growth-seeking journey restart,” she finally began actively seeking professional growth by integrating teacher and researcher identities with strong emotional resilience. The emotional changes of the participant at the three stages coincided with those of the characters in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Her first two stages of resistance to changes and compliance with policies parallel the characters’ feelings toward the prison, which changed from “first you hate them” to “then you get used to them.” Then, just as the protagonist escaped from the prison, her final transformation into a teacher-researcher at the last stage served as her redemption from her predicament of conducting research. Lastly, to enhance the validity of the study, another academic, a productive scholar with extensive research experience and a PhD in applied linguistics, was invited to analyze the data as well. After several rounds of discussion, we reached an agreement on the data analysis.
LH’s Professional Identities and Emotional Reactions.
Findings
The major themes concerning the author’s emotions and identities in the three stages of her 10-year research journey are presented in the following narrative. The first-person singular pronoun “I” is used to accurately express the author’s experiences of reality.
Change-Resisting Journey Start
I joined my work institution upon the completion of my MA studies in 2008. After being recruited as an EFL teacher with no review of my research competence, I was ready to settle for a steady career as an English language instructor, whose primary job was to teach students’ English language proficiency. I was assigned 12 to 16 teaching hours per week for the next 3 years. Everyone else who started at my workplace in the same year had basically the same teaching workload. We were promised that at the end of our three-year service, we would be automatically promoted to lecturers with no strings attached. Our teaching-focused department at the time only checked our teaching effects and encouraged us to strive for teaching excellence.
However, in the middle of the third year of 2011, the university suddenly changed its promotion policy, stating that all assistant lecturers must have research output, such as funded research projects and academic papers, in order to be promoted to lecturers. This policy change resulted from the institution’s desire to boost its national ranking through research output, which was also influenced by the increasingly prevailing managerial reforms with an emphasis on research excellence in higher education in China (Huang & Guo, 2019).
A Discontented and Perplexed Performer with Strong Negative Emotions and Inactive Research Engagement
This changing socio-institutional environment, with its demand for research output, had a negative impact on both my sense of identity and emotions, resulting in my inactive engagement in research practice for several years. The inclusion of research as a critical component of academics’ professional work created an identity tension between EFL academics’ traditional teacher role and the newly expected researcher role. I just could not understand why the university imposed this research requirement on us. For us EFL teachers who were solely occupied with teaching, research seemed to have little meaning in our teaching-focused discipline. My colleagues and I thus experienced intense negative emotions in response to the abrupt change in the institutional promotion system. I recall having private discussions with some of my colleagues, and we all expressed our confusion at this sudden change, as well as our dissatisfaction and complaints about the research requirement. My discontent and anger at the sudden institutional policy change were reflected in statements such as the following.
What a thunderbolt! The university abruptly informed us that we would no longer be promoted to lecturers automatically after three years. How can this happen? There was no notice before, and research was never mentioned, but now suddenly we are required to have research results! I am exhausted from teaching every day. How can I have time and energy to think about that? (Journal of May 12, 2011)
Despite my discontent and anger, I reluctantly applied for an institutional research grant for young teachers with the intention of meeting the institutional research requirements for promotion to lecturer. This was a compromise and passive move on my part, solely driven by external motivation. I still could not accept the institutional policy change on research requirements and thus made hesitant and infrequent research efforts. However, lacking systematic training on academic writing in my MA studies, I was totally clueless and helpless when it came to research grant applications. I did not even know what research topic to write about. In the absence of departmental research assistance in grant application writing, I devised my own coping strategy, which was to complete the application form entirely from the content of my MA thesis. Unfortunately, my first attempt at obtaining a research grant ended in failure. This failed attempt provoked my other negative emotions.
The results of the institutional research grant for youth came out today, and I failed. The success rate is 50 percent, and I’m on the list of those being rejected! Why? I filled in the application with the content of my MA thesis. My content is not bad, so why was I rejected? It was totally unfair! (Journal of June 25, 2011)
Apparently, I was unhappy with the outcome and thought it was unfair, but there was nothing I could do about it. To make matters worse, this incident demotivated my research investment. I was even more averse to participating in research, particularly for the reason of meeting institutional requirements.
Unable to Integrate Teacher and Researcher Identities with Weak Emotional Resilience
Admittedly, at this stage, I exhibited weak emotional resilience and let myself be engulfed in the negative emotion of powerlessness. I was unable to reconcile my teacher and researcher identities while maintaining proper emotional resilience. Holding firmly onto my teacher identity, I could not understand the meaning of research for teaching-focused academics. As academics use their capacity for emotional resilience to utilize available resources to adapt to challenging contexts (Beltman & Poulton, 2019), I, a discontented and perplexed performer at the start of my research journey, could only see myself primarily as an English language teacher and identified no resources to assist my research practice, causing difficulties in integrating my teacher and researcher identities.
The initial resistant stage lasted from 2011 to 2013, during which time I experienced not only institutional policy change in my professional life but also motherhood in my personal life. Because I was resistant to changes in institutional policy and was preoccupied with baby care, I only made sporadic research efforts with great reluctance. Even though I received the institutional research grant the second time I applied in 2012 and had since become a lecturer, I felt research was not part of my job responsibilities. With a firm grasp on my professional identity as an EFL teacher, I saw research as “something we do to get promotion, not something we do to improve teaching” (Excerpt from messages with colleagues, July 6, 2012).
Back then, at a crossroads in my life, my reaction was far from positive. I simply tried to maintain the status quo rather than take any initiatives to address the changed requirements. It was exactly like in The Shawshank Redemption. Inmates initially expressed their hatred toward the walls that held them captive. Similarly, the abrupt change in institutional policy entrapped me; I had no choice but to conduct research. Academics demonstrate resilience when they use personal and contextual resources to overcome challenges and maintain well-being (Beltman & Poulton, 2019). However, at this point, I was resistant to the research requirements, engulfed in strong negative emotions such as confusion and discontent at the unexpected policy change. I felt powerless and helpless to take on the new role of researcher, and I was unable to identify any resources to integrate teaching and research. Driven by my external motivation for meeting the newly implemented institutional policy, I was negatively adapting to the dilemma of teaching and research by engaging in intermittent research practice. My external research motivation, along with my passive attitude and negative emotions, indicate my weak emotional resilience when confronting challenging contexts.
Policy-Complying Journey Process
In 2014, I returned to work after maternity leave. The institution was placing an increasing emphasis on faculty research productivity, which reflected Chinese higher education’s research orientation. In the quest for world-class universities (Gao & Zheng, 2020), China is determined to improve higher education quality and become a key player in international academic fields through research excellence. Hence, Chinese universities have become overly preoccupied with faculty research output. My workplace was no exception.
A Pressured and Strenuous Follower with Primarily Negative Emotions and Compliant Research Engagement
With expanding expectations, the institutional research orientation has put a significant strain on EFL teachers. As the value of research output became more emphasized in institutional policies, particularly the promotion system, an increasing number of colleagues my age began to actively participate in research activities. The demanding institutional requirements and heavy peer pressure convinced me that I, too, had to take this path, whether I liked it or not. After several years of reluctantly accepting the institutional policy change, I had to consider how to advance my career by meeting the demands. This shift in my research attitude was mainly caused by the stress and anxiety I felt in the competitive institutional environment.
Other colleagues are actively applying for research grants and publishing papers, and I can’t be left behind. We all joined the school in the same year, and we are about the same age. How embarrassing it would be if they were promoted to associate professors while I was still a lecturer. I can’t be a lecturer for the rest of my life. I need to do research as well. (Journal of February 23, 2014)
Since then, I had been applying for various research grants at different levels on a regular basis, purely driven by external motivations. Whenever a notice of research grant application was released, I would apply. From 2014 to 2018, I applied for 27 research grants (data from journal) and exchanged 313 messages with the Secretary of Research at my department, seeking detailed information on grant applications and submissions (data from messages with colleagues). I was simply following the institutional research requirements without thinking about how to connect teaching and research for potential benefits. Nevertheless, my frequent participation in grant applications attracted the attention of my colleagues. “‘You’re working so hard on research these days!’ X (pseudonym) said to me when we ran into each other in the department today” (Journal of May 18, 2015). Despite others’ opinions of me as an active researcher, I knew deep down that I was simply doing all of this to meet the institutional requirements. I could not see the connection between teaching and research and I conducted research as a separate activity from my teaching practice. The isolated activity of conducting research away from teaching practice tended to occur when EFL teachers were subject to top-down mandates in a research-oriented environment (Xu, 2014). In my case, I was under pressure from institutional requirements to pursue research output without considering how to connect research to my teaching. Every time I applied, I would choose one research topic from the research grant guide and write an application on it, regardless of whether it was something I was interested in or would help my teaching.
Given that I was a novice research practitioner with insufficient research knowledge and skills, I went through a painful process of writing research grant applications and papers. Losing sleep over academic writing had become a norm for me. I once struggled with grant application writing until 3 a.m. and tossed and turned in bed, worrying about “how on earth to complete the form with high quality” (Journal of September 15, 2015). Despite my active participation, I was turned down for a number of research grants and publications. Burdened by the institution’s result-oriented research policy, such failures exacerbated my negative emotions such as anxiety, frustration, disappointment, and depression. I was used to focusing solely on teaching excellence, but failures in research grant applying and paper publishing evoked a sense of vulnerability in me, a feeling shared by EFL academics when they face rejections in scholarly publications (Yuan et al., 2022).The frequent failures made me doubt my competence.
What a bad day today! In the morning, I ran into my dean in the department, and she told me that my application for the Provincial Social Sciences Foundation was not successful. At noon, I received a rejection email for one of my manuscripts. Alas, after working hard for so long, I still have more failures than successes. Maybe I am really not cut for this. (Journal of November 4, 2015)
Driven to Take on an Imposed Researcher Identity with Moderate Emotional Resilience
Haunted by the negative emotions caused by my research incompetence and failures, this state somehow drove me to take action. I realized that I should seek assistance from other resources to improve the quality of my research grant applications and manuscripts instead of solely complaining and feeling sorry for myself. I demonstrated a moderate level of resilience by utilizing available resources, such as attending seminars organized by my department in the hopes of receiving assistance from experts to revise my applications and manuscripts. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, I attended 10 seminars or lectures on research grant applying and academic writing delivered by experts invited by my department, taking meticulous notes of the main points during these lectures (data from journal). Despite negative emotional fluctuations, my moderate emotional resilience assisted me in adapting to the challenging circumstances by taking actions and utilizing resources to some extent. My efforts finally paid off a year later. In 2016, the China Foreign Language Education Foundation funded a research project for me. In the same year, I received funding for my other research project from the Provincial Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation. The following year, one of my papers received a provincial research award, making me the first person in my department to land such an honor. The dean announced the good news to the department and personally congratulated me. Congratulations from other colleagues poured in. Bombarded with congratulatory messages, I felt “my efforts were recognized” (Journal of June 10, 2016) and “I was finally seen” (Journal of December 29, 2017).
With my piling research results, I was promoted to associate professor in 2018. I expected to be relieved of the heavy burden of research output production. Then I discovered that the institutional research requirements for teachers with senior professional titles were even more demanding. “Failure to meet institutional requirements will negatively impact our key performance appraisal” (excerpt from messages with colleagues, October 12, 2018). Driven by negative emotions, I somehow showed moderate emotional resilience by exercising agency to be actively engaged in research. However, I was so engrossed in figuring out how to meet stringent institutional requirements that having research results, such as receiving research grants, provided only occasional happiness that was quickly replaced by concerns about how to complete them. I felt trapped in a seemingly never-ending cycle of nonstop writing and applying, which not only caused me anxiety and stress but also wore me out, as evidenced by the following conversation I had with one of my colleagues.
I didn’t know I still had to do a lot of research work. I’m applying for research grants and writing papers just like before.
Yes, both the university and our department have research requirements for us, regardless of our professional titles.
But I am exhausted from all this writing and applying. When will this end?
Maybe until our retirement. (Excerpt from messages with colleagues, November 29, 2018)
In retrospect, I realized that I actually went through identity conflicts during those years. I did not develop my researcher self through intrinsic motivation; rather, I felt that my researcher role and research participation were imposed on me. This sense of being compelled to conduct research as an externally imposed activity was common among teaching-focused EFL teachers (Liu & Borg, 2014; Xu, 2014). Unable to integrate my newly developed researcher role with my teacher identity, I conducted research in a mechanical manner with moderate emotional resilience to comply with the institutional research policy, which led to numerous negative emotions. Years of practice helped me become accustomed to conducting research in accordance with institutional requirements, just as the inmates in The Shawshank Redemption grew accustomed to the walls that surrounded them. Even though my negative emotions sometimes directed my efforts to take actions that reflected my moderate capacity for resilience, passive research practice during this period prevented me from fully integrating my teacher and researcher roles.
Growth-Seeking Journey Restart
As I entered the eighth year of my research journey, I realized I had actually changed from my old self. After receiving an associate professorship and multiple research awards, I was no longer opposed to the institutional research policy; instead, I was compliant and felt a sense of achievement. I assumed that my passive adherence to institutional policy would last for a long time. Greater challenges, however, emerged around 2019 as a result of a significant change in the institutional policy. With China’s release of the new national research policy breaking the “Five-Only,” which aimed to deemphasize the sole priority placed on research and enhance the teaching quality in higher education (Fan, 2019), my university began to put quantifiable requirements on both teaching and research with the implementation of the new policy.
A Relentless and Resolute Integrator with Mainly Positive Emotions and Agentic Professional Practices
As a result of my institution’s new emphasis on both teaching and research, I began to actively take part in teaching contests in addition to my usual research practice. After winning a provincial teaching contest in 2019, my dean approached me and asked me to take over the listening course for English majors.
I’ve seen that you have made great progress in the past few years, in both research and teaching. I remember you won the institutional teaching contest last year. Now, you’ve also won the provincial teaching contest. How about taking the listening course as your next semester’s teaching focus? What do you say? (Excerpt from messages with colleagues, June 28, 2019)
I learned from a subsequent conversation with the dean that the students were highly dissatisfied with the current teaching methods in this course, which consisted of the teacher playing recordings and then checking the students’ answers. In order to improve the teaching effects, the dean placed her hope in me, in light of my previous achievements in both teaching and research. The dean’s recognition of me as an accomplished teacher and researcher filled me with pride. I saw the challenge as an opportunity to demonstrate my ability to make a difference. Yet, I was concerned about how to approach the new task effectively. Would my competence come in handy this time? Clearly, the traditional teaching methods are not working for this course. But I have no experience of teaching this course. If I changed the traditional teaching methods all together, would the students absolutely follow my instructions? And what exactly should I do to make it work? (Journal of July 1, 2019)
Then, during that summer vacation, I was accidentally inspired by a leading scholar in applied linguistics in her lecture. She reminded us that EFL teachers could actually “turn to our classroom teaching to locate research focus” (Journal of July 26, 2019). Excited by her advice, I exercised my self-agency and began to look at classroom problems in the English listening course as research. I read extensively on English listening teaching literature during the summer break, fueled by my intrinsic motivation to solve teaching problems through my research skills. I conducted a short survey adapted from my literature reading at the start of the coming semester to find out the students’ opinions on English listening and their expectations of this course. Even though I experienced some negative emotions during the process, such as difficulties in compiling the survey, I regulated them by telling myself that I was doing something meaningful that would benefit both my students and my teaching. I tailored a task-based language teaching mode with a flipped classroom and designed corresponding activities based on an analysis of the students’ needs gathered through the survey. Based on my observations throughout the semester, I concluded that the students were captivated by this teaching mode. I conducted another survey at the end of the semester out of curiosity to confirm its teaching effects. This method of instruction was indeed hugely popular among students.
This semester’s teaching mode is better than the traditional one, I’m clear of my learning purpose because I have tasks to finish. (S1, excerpt from the survey) I never thought English listening classes could be so much fun. I feel highly motivated and excited about these activities in class. (S2, excerpt from the survey) News broadcasting is my favorite part. I need to listen to English news in preparation and then present in front of the whole class. It gives me confidence in public speaking as well. (S3, excerpt from the survey)
Due to the high marks that I received in the students’ evaluation, I ranked 4th among the 87 EFL teachers at the end of the academic year 2019 (data from personal profile). Never before had a listening course teacher received such a high ranking in my department, which filled me with great pride and joy. Subsequently, I was awarded the title of “excellent” in my annual teaching evaluation and the honor of being one of the “outstanding teachers of the year” (data from performance appraisal reports). In the same year, I wrote a paper based on my teaching experience, which was also successfully published. After tasting the sweetness of research and teaching integration, I realized that research does not have to be a separate activity from teaching, and teaching is not unrelated to research either.
Strive to Integrate Teacher and Researcher Identities with Strong Emotional Resilience
In order to achieve greater integration of teaching and research, I went to pursue my doctoral studies in education to receive systematic academic training in 2020. While I was eager to acquire empirical research knowledge, I was also troubled by some unexpected challenges. One time, I confided in my supervisor that I was dissatisfied with myself as an incompetent researcher in repeatedly identifying the themes in the collected data for my dissertation. My supervisor kindly comforted me by saying, “Just keep an open mind. It’s fine. It’s an emerging process” (excerpt from messages with supervisor, August 5, 2021). My supervisor’s encouraging words gave me the confidence and courage I needed to move forward. Later that year, in October, also with my supervisor’s encouragement and support, I presented a paper based on my teaching experience at the 2021 Asia-Pacific Conference on Curriculum Studies and Instructional Designing, winning the gold medal in the poster competition. All of these reinforced my determination to pursue a career as a teacher-researcher. It has been proven that research could solve my classroom problems and that teaching could fuel my research in return.
When I turned 40, I was at a crossroads in my career again. Instead of being resistant or passive as before, I demonstrated strong emotional resilience this time by being agentic and taking initiatives to turn challenges into opportunities. I was able to connect the challenge of teaching a new course with research skills, evoking a sense of achievement as a result of transforming the challenge into an opportunity. Integrating teaching and research served as my intrinsic motivation to conduct research, sparing me a sense of weariness and a divide between teaching and research. I was aware of the dangers of harboring negative emotions and consciously regulated them, either through self-consolation by viewing problems from a different angle or by talking to my supervisor for emotional support. With my strong emotional resilience, I took the initiative to pursue a PhD in order to find a way to further integrate teaching and research. I spent many years before finally identifying with the teacher-researcher role, realizing that the integration of these two identities would determine my professional growth. Just as the protagonist in The Shawshank Redemption eventually broke free from the shackles of prison, the growth mindset of integrating teacher and researcher identities freed me from the miserable predicament of being a teaching-focused craftsman or a research-oriented academic. The final integration of teacher and researcher identities was my redemption along this bumpy and arduous research road. It dawned on me that the research journey was a marathon rather than a sprint with a finish line for a promotion in professional title. There is no sprint finish to this journey, only the accomplishment of one goal after another. As long as I remain an EFL teacher, the integration of teacher and researcher identities will play a facilitative role in my professional growth.
Discussion
Throughout the participant’s 10-year research journey, she has experienced a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative, in the three stages. In the process, she negotiated her professional identities, mainly teacher and researcher identities, and finally identified with the teacher-researcher role in a complex environment marked by institutional policy changes. This study provides additional support to the social-psychological framework that has been used in studies of teacher identity and emotion in educational reforms (Van Veen & Sleegers, 2009).
Regarding the first research question, which concerns the impact of the changing context on EFL teachers’ sense of identity and research emotions, the findings illustrate that emotions and identities are complex and dynamic in EFL teachers’ research practice, changing in response to socio-institutional demands. In this study, the EFL academic’s initial reactions to the research policy change were characterized by negative emotions such as dissatisfaction and resistance. Despite the fact that her workplace strongly encouraged teachers to become researchers, she saw herself primarily as an EFL teacher with only teaching responsibilities at the time, which resulted in her resistant attitude toward the institutional research policy. This finding confirms previous research (Shams, 2019; Tran et al., 2017; Yuan, 2017) that the discrepancy between individual teachers’ professional beliefs and policy contents is likely to result in negative emotions. The participant’s lasting resistance to the newly implemented institutional policy indicates that a changing context may evoke negative emotions among EFL academics with teaching-intensive backgrounds, as previously reported in studies on academics’ responses to institutional research policy changes (Huang & Guo, 2019; Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al., 2017). Then, in the middle of her research journey, driven by the external motivations of getting promotion and passing appraisals, the participant began to frequently engage in research to comply with the institutional policy, which led to many negative emotions since she lacked intrinsic motivations and suffered from countless frustrations in research practice. For her, the teacher and researcher identities were isolated and separated identities. This finding is in line with some prior studies (Liu & Borg, 2014; Lu & Zhang, 2021; Tran et al., 2017), which reported that teachers externally driven to do research tended to experience negative emotions and conflicting identities. However, inconsistent with some previous studies (Xu, 2014; Yang et al., 2022) which noted that academics driven solely by external motivations would eventually lose interest or incentive in research, the participant in this study continued her research journey even after being promoted to associate professor. One important reason was that, with another policy change, her institution began to prioritize both teaching and research, which supported her teaching value and facilitated her integrating teaching and research roles to some extent. She demonstrated a genuine interest in pursuing research after her promotion and saw the change in institutional policy as a new beginning in her research journey. This time, she was fueled by positive emotions with occasional negative emotions, which seemed to resonate with previous research findings that the congruence between individuals’ professional commitments and the objectives of institutional research policy could arouse positive emotions (Tran et al., 2017; Xue, 2021).
The findings also show that emotions and teacher identity development are intertwined on EFL teachers’ research journeys. At both the beginning and middle stages, the participant’s views on teaching and research clashed with the research requirements of the institutional policy that valued performative research output. In accordance with some prior studies (Dugas et al., 2020; Garner & Kaplan, 2019; McCune, 2021; Shams, 2019) on academics’ sub-identities in complex institutional contexts, this study discovered that the misalignment between the institutional policy’s focus on research output and the participant’s personal values of teaching over research led to her fragmented and contested sub-identities, which were accompanied by negative emotions and hampered her professional development throughout the first two stages of her research experiences. She was a discontented performer and a stressed-out follower at the time, full of intense negative emotions. As previously reported (Liu & Borg, 2014; Xu, 2014), as a teaching-focused university teacher, the EFL academic in this study felt doing research was imposed upon her rather than something EFL teachers needed to do. Her reluctance to embrace the researcher identity exacerbated her negative emotions associated with research, such as discontent, stress, anxiety, and vulnerability (Yuan, 2017; Yuan et al., 2022). However, in response to another institutional policy change, she experienced an identity transformation with a change in research emotions, which accords with the findings of Bao and Feng’s (2022) study on EFL teachers’ identity transformation in a changing environment. When the institutional policy began to value both teaching and research with the most recent change, the alignment between her professional values and the new context fueled her positive emotions toward research. She began to integrate the roles of teacher and researcher by reflecting on her teaching and research practices and incorporating research knowledge and skills into the teaching of a new course, rather than being a miserable follower, as previously observed in studies on the identities of EFL academics with external research motivations (Tran et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2022). As a result of her efforts in integrating teacher and researcher identities, two key sub-identities in the teaching profession (Trautwein, 2018), the participant not only solved the teaching problems in her new course, but she also sparkled with much enthusiasm, joy, and resolve, which eventually helped her become a relentless integrator on the road of research with a strong commitment to the profession.
With respect to the second research question, the findings illuminate that emotional resilience acts as a mediator in EFL teachers’ integration of teacher and researcher identities. This finding reflects that of Yang et al. (2022) who also found that emotional resilience played a critical role in academics’ convergence of the two roles. Throughout the participant’s research journey, she encountered emotional challenges and identity crises, as well as varying degrees of emotional resilience and identity integration. Her capacity for emotional resilience also fluctuated in response to the influencing internal and external factors. The changes of emotional resilience and academic identities on her research journey proved that the negotiation of academics’ sub-identities in a changing context is a dynamic and on-going process (Garner & Kaplan, 2019). With weak emotional resilience, she was a dissatisfied performer with more perplexities but little action on the institutional policy change at the start. The participant was opposed to the role of researcher and expressed intense negative emotions in response to the increased institutional research emphasis. After some time, still under pressure to conduct research, she succumbed to contextual reality and became a strenuous follower who primarily conducted research to comply with institutional policy. With moderate emotional resilience, she was able to exert agency and participate in research activities, resulting in some research output. Her increased emotional resilience further supports the notion that teachers’ resilience is a dynamic trait rather than a static one (Day & Gu, 2013). When teachers are placed in complex contexts with changing policies, particularly in unfavorable settings, emotional resilience may help them maintain professional identities and commitments (Day & Hong, 2016). In the participant’s case, her moderate emotional resilience drove her to take actions in research practice and adapt to the research-oriented institutional environment she was in. However, still directed by her negative emotions toward research, her teacher identity and researcher identity remained separate rather than integrated. Then, when her perspectives on teaching and research aligned with the institution’s new policy, she demonstrated strong emotional resilience by accepting the challenge of teaching a new course as an opportunity to apply her research knowledge and skills. She exerted her agency to reconcile the previously conflicting sub-identities of teacher and researcher roles by utilizing research resources and incorporating research into teaching. At this stage, her strong emotional resilience also allowed her to deal with emotional fluctuations in a positive way. Consequently, she was able to regulate the negative emotions that arose during the process, highlight the positive emotions, and eventually integrate her sub-identities as a resolute teacher-researcher. This finding is consistent with that of Wilcox and Lawson (2018), who discovered that emotional resilience aided teachers in adapting to changing contexts, particularly in educational reforms. In a nutshell, emotional resilience is in flux (Day & Gu, 2013) and plays a mediating role in influencing EFL teachers’ professional identity integration at various stages of their careers.
Conclusion and Implications
This self-narrative study provides a close-up investigation into an EFL academic’s emotional responses and professional identity development in research practice over a 10-year period. Notably, the research findings echo the metaphor of institutionalization in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, which metaphorically reflects the dynamic changes in the participant’s identities and emotions in a changing socio-institutional context. Given the paucity of literature on exploring English language teachers’ professional identities in research practice in a longitudinal manner, this self-narrative study contributes to the field by offering a nuanced understanding of the dynamic interactions among academic identity, teacher emotions, and socio-institutional changes through the lens of emotional resilience in a span of 10 years. Through sharing her stories from her research journey, the author’s goals are to revisit the experiences of an ordinary representative of Chinese EFL academics in a non-elite public university in a changing environment. Such a bottom-up examination can serve as a small window for people to understand the teaching and research practices of Chinese universities. Although the paper is based on the author’s personal experiences, the small dimension of an academic’s personal experiences is a facet of the bigger picture of higher education in China. The paper may contribute to the discussion on the reform of research practices in China’s higher education from the perspective of a common EFL academic, providing readers with new insights or understandings of the changing Chinese academic landscape.
This study has some practical implications regarding EFL teachers’ professional development in higher education contexts based on the research findings. First, it is important for individual EFL teachers to raise awareness of the constant pressure from personal and socio-institutional levels in terms of research engagement, prepare for recurring setbacks on the road of conducting research, and develop emotional resilience to better negotiate tensions between sub-identities in the path of career advancement while grappling with changing socio-institutional demands. One notable finding of this study is that the participant benefited from her eventual understanding of the mutually beneficial relationship between teaching and research, as well as her capacity for emotional resilience, which contributed to her teacher and researcher identity integration. EFL teachers could benefit from training programs that provide them with pedagogical and research knowledge and skills to help them balance the two sub-identities. They could also benefit from the institution’s assistance and resources for emotional resilience development programs to help them cope with identity tensions in their career paths.
Second, university administrations and management need to recognize the teaching-focused disciplinary feature of EFL teachers and provide them with support to help them strike a balance between research and teaching. The study reveals that a misalignment between institutional policy and the participant’s personal values resulted in her teaching-research divide and identity tensions, particularly at the early stage of her research experience. For traditionally teaching-focused EFL teachers (Bai et al., 2014), the institutional policy’s focus on research productivity can severely threaten their teacher identity, leading to their negative emotions toward research, as shown by the participant’s feelings that researcher identity was imposed on her. It is therefore suggested that university administrations and management should recognize EFL teachers’ classroom-based nature and encourage them to conduct action research in order to produce research output that can meet institutional research requirements while also benefiting their teaching.
Third, education policymakers should pay attention to the well-being and professional development of frontline teachers. This study found that result-oriented institutional research policies can lead to teacher and researcher identity tensions for EFL academics, stifling their professional development and triggering negative emotions. However, negative emotions embedded in identity tensions can assist in identifying areas of misalignment (Chubb et al., 2017). If identity tensions induced by institutional policy are commonly detected among academics, resulting in counterproductive effects, policymakers should interpret this as a sign of revising institutional policy rather than simply asking teachers to be emotionally resilient. For example, because the majority of EFL academics are primarily English language instructors with teaching responsibilities, when they show a strongly resistant attitude toward institutional research policy, a moderate reduction in research requirements may allow them to focus on their research skills with more time, easing the identity tensions between their teacher and researcher identities.
There are at least two limitations to this self-narrative study. First, while this self-narrative inquiry detailed the author’s research journey, a co-autoethnography could provide a more interesting and informative interpretation of EFL teachers’ identity development and emotional responses in a changing environment. Thus, future research could include a collaborative study in various contexts to examine academics’ emotional resilience. Second, the EFL academic’s trajectory in this study was an inquiry into her research experiences over the past decade. While the EFL academic received no emotional resilience training during her research journey, in-service teachers may benefit from resilience training programs to help them integrate their teacher and researcher identities. The effects of on-going resilience training programs on facilitating teachers’ sub-identity integration in dynamic socio-institutional contexts could be the focus of future research.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the article editor for their constructive and critical comments on earlier versions of this article.
Author’s Note
Hua Lu is currently a Professor at the School of Foreign Studies, Anhui Polytechnic University, China. Her research interests include English language teaching and learning, teacher identity, and language teacher education.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Philosophy and Social Science Planning Foundation of Anhui Province, China (Grant Number AHSKY2021D153).
Ethical Approval
The study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by School of Foreign Studies, Anhui Polytechnic University. The participant provided her written informed consent to participate in this study.
Data Availability Statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article could be made available from the author on reasonable request. They are not publicly available due to ethical considerations.