Identity transitions, experiences, and agency: a collaborative autoethnography of Asian international TESOL doctoral students

ABSTRACT

This research explored the identities and agency of Asian international TESOL doctoral students at a large Australian university, employing a sociocultural perspective and collaborative autoethnography with qualitative content analysis. The study revealed that these doctoral students navigated complex, co-evolving identities – including learner, early-career researcher, and academic – shaped by their prior professional and research experiences. It highlighted significant identity tensions influenced by the temporal dimensions of their experiences, where past and current identities, as well as imagined future selves, informed their academic decisions and coping strategies. This temporal interplay was conceptualised through Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie, reflecting how personal and situational factors coalesced to impact their academic trajectories. A conceptual model, informed by these findings, illustrated how identity and agency were mediated by personal experiences and situationally catalysed tensions. This study highlighted identities as significant and formative episodes in the doctoral learning experience, offering insights into the challenges and developmental trajectories of international doctoral students. It further substantiates the value of a sociocultural perspective for understanding and supporting the academic and professional growth of this cohort.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral student
• identity
• agency
• collaborative autoethnography
• sociocultural theory

Introduction

The doctoral education journey has often been reported to be filled with tensions and challenges. As pointed out by McAlpine and Amundsen (2009), the doctoral experience can be isolating and fraught with uncertainties about expectations, academic life, and value alignment within the competitive academic culture. International doctoral students (IDSs) specifically encounter the hurdle of adjusting to unfamiliar academic settings and cultural norms as they begin their PhD programmes (Laufer and Gorup 2019). IDSs thus represent a group with their own characteristics that necessitates further examination to inform doctoral education practices (Li, Jiang, and Chakma 2023).

Identity and agency play pivotal roles in shaping the academic qualities and outcomes of IDSs. Identity refers to ‘the way a person understands his or her relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, and how the person understands possibilities for the future’ (Norton 2013: 4). Green (2005) argued that doctoral education operates on a dual axis, fostering not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the cultivation of a scholarly identity. Cultural and linguistic differences have been identified as important factors in examining the development of international doctoral students’ identities and agency (Ilieva and Ravindran 2018; Soltani and Tran 2023). Given the challenges faced by IDSs during their academic journey, previous research has illuminated their agency in response to tensions and difficulties in the new environment. Doctoral student agency generally encompasses intentions, capacities, and actions taken by students to advance their professional learning, research engagement, and identity construction (e.g. Sun and Wu 2023; Xu 2023). For example, IDSs enact agency when they navigate the tensions between their personal values and the demands of the academic culture, striving to find a balance that allows them to succeed in their educational pursuits (Sun and Wu 2023).

Research has explored the identities and agency of doctoral students across various disciplines (Hoang and Pretorius 2019; Hopwood 2010a, 2010b; McAlpine 2012). While Asian IDSs navigating TESOL programmes in anglophone countries such as Australia potentially face numerous academic and cultural challenges, there remains a notable gap in research concerning their identities and agency. As Chen and Le (2021) observe, the research training experiences of IDSs in TESOL remain largely unexplored, with their voices often going unheard. Given the growing presence of Asian students in doctoral TESOL programmes in anglophone countries (Chen and Le 2021; Phakiti and Li 2011) and the challenges they encounter in new academic environments, further investigation is needed to illuminate their unique perspectives and experiences, and how these shape their identities and agency.

This study aims to address the gap discussed above by using a sociocultural perspective and a collaborative autoethnographic approach to explore the dynamic interaction between identities and agency of four Asian IDSs studying TESOL Education at a large research-intensive Australian university. It explores the major identities of the students, their role in guiding their agency, and the factors involved in this process. The key research questions this study addresses are:

1. What identities do we as Asian IDSs in a TESOL programme at a large, research-intensive Australian university possess?

2. What identity-related tensions have we encountered and how have we experienced these tensions and exercised our agency in response?

3. What are the factors that contribute to mediating the development of our identities and agency?

This study offers valuable insights into the diverse identities of Asian IDSs in TESOL and how these identities influence and are influenced by their agency for professional learning and development. Understanding this interaction between identity and agency holds significant implications for educators, institutions, and policymakers in effectively supporting Asian IDSs on their doctoral journey in anglophone countries, thereby facilitating a more successful and fulfilling academic experience.

Literature review and theoretical perspective

International doctoral students’ identity and agency

Apart from gaining knowledge, the development of academic or professional identities has been argued as being an equally important outcome that doctoral students aspire to achieve. As Cotterall (2015: 360) puts it, ‘[i]dentity lies at the heart of doctoral study’. Doctoral education is, however, fraught with tensions, conflicts and struggles (Gao 2021; Li, Jiang, and Chakma 2023). The challenges for IDSs intensify as they carry out academic writing and research in a foreign language. Previous research has reported on a wide range of challenges IDSs face, including language barriers, reacting to supervisor feedback, supervision relationships, mental health issues, and financial concerns (Gao 2021; Wang and Byram 2019).

In addition, research on the development of doctoral identities has been conducted across diverse study fields and contexts. For instance, Soong, Tran, and Pham (2015) drew on collaborative autoethnography to explore the intercultural experiences of migrant and international doctoral students. While previous studies have focused on IDSs in various fields, limited research has been conducted to examine the identities and agency of TESOL students (e.g. Ilieva and Ravindran 2018). For example, Ilieva and Ravindran (2018) explored how the agency of international students in a TESOL programme was associated with their identity and influenced by academic and professional discourses within the local context. Drawing on a sociocultural perspective, Hopwood (2010b) interviewed 33 doctoral students across four UK universities and found that social relationships acted as mediational factors in facilitating the formation and development of IDSs’ agency. These students also engaged in both individual and collective forms of agency to address tensions such as developing their personal competence and/or seeking help from others.

A sociocultural approach to understanding identity and agency

Identity and agency have been examined through various theoretical lenses in the existing literature (Sadeghi and Bahari 2022). For instance, these concepts have been explored from an ecological perspective, which considers identity in terms of the ‘conceptual self' – encompassing how individuals perceive themselves, their perceptions of how others view them, their roles, status, and self-beliefs (Edwards and Burns 2016). This perspective also underscores the role of pragmatic actions enabled by available means within the local environment in defining agency (Biesta, Priestley, and Robinson 2015). Additionally, positioning theory offers insights into the social construction of identities and worlds through discourse (Kayi-Aydar, 2015), while a post-structural approach views identity as multiple, changing, and a site of struggle within power dynamics (Norton 2013).

On the other hand, a sociocultural perspective emphasises the importance of mediation, cognitive-emotional unity, social relations, and contexts in the development of identity and agency (Hopwood 2010a, 2010b; Lasky 2005; Nguyen and Ngo 2023; Wertsch, Tulviste, and Hagstrom 1993). From a sociocultural perspective, identity development involves a dynamic interaction between sociocultural processes and personal mental functioning (Cong-Lem 2022a, 2022b; Penuel and Wertsch 1995). Tensions during the formation of identities can be productive and serve as catalysts for change and development (e.g. Nguyen and Ngo 2023). Agency from a sociocultural perspective necessitates an investigation into both agentic actions and personally constructed meanings associated with them. According to Lantolf and Pavlenko (2001: 146), agency is ‘more than performance or doing; it is intimately linked to significance’. Agentive actions are undertaken with a specific goal in mind, holding personal significance and meaning for the individuals involved (Edwards 2005).

While the aforementioned approaches address the situatedness of identity and agency, we adopt a sociocultural perspective because it provides a comprehensive framework that integrates dimensions central to the other perspectives (Nguyen and Ngo 2023). This approach not only facilitates a deeper exploration of the psychological processes and developmental trajectories unfolding among doctoral students but also effectively acknowledges the situatedness of identity and agency. Such a comprehensive framework aligns well with findings in the literature, supporting its utility in capturing the complexities of identity and agency (Golombek and Doran 2014; Nguyen and Ngo 2023).

The relationship between identity and agency is complex and mediated by various personal and environmental factors. At the individual level, whether a person exercises agency in a given situation can be mediated by how they experience and interpret the tension or situation. This intricate connection has been explored through Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie (Vygotsky 1994, 1998) in previous literature (e.g. Dang 2013; Cong-Lem et al. 2023). Perezhivanie is a crucial theoretical concept that emphasises the indivisible unity of cognition–emotion, and environment-person interactions (Lantolf and Swain 2019; Veresov 2016). It posits that the relationship between the environment and personal development is mediated, with environmental influences refracted through the individual’s understanding, interpretation, and emotional connection with the event or situation (Cong-Lem, 2022b; Vygotsky 1994; Vygotsky 1998). This understanding has implications for our study, suggesting that we need to account for identity and agency within a mediated relationship, largely informed by our cognitive and emotional experiences during our doctoral research and engagement, as well as by the resources and constraints of the local institution.

Methodology

Collaborative autoethnography

Autoethnography, according to Chang (2008), is a qualitative research method with ethnographic techniques for researchers to gain an understanding of the relationship between self and intimate others through self-reflection and self-examination of their lived experiences. Unlike solo autoethnography drawing on one individual’s narratives, memories, and reflections, collaborative autoethnography (CAE) adopts ‘a multivocal approach in which two or more researchers work together to share personal stories and interpret the pooled autoethnographic data’ (Lapadat 2017, 589), therefore ‘balance[ing] the individual narrative with the greater collective experiences’ (Blalock and Akehi 2018, 94). As insiders with relevant doctoral research training experiences, we felt naturally drawn to this method to demonstrate how, through our collaboration, we were able to collectively reflect on our multiple identities, identity (re)formation, agency, and the sociocultural resources that mediated these socially situated phenomena.

We adopted CAE because this method enabled us to explore IDSs’ lived experiences from an emic perspective and self-reflections and thus contributed to a nuanced and contextually thick description (Geertz 1973) of IDSs’ identity and agency. CAE indeed drives intentional reflections on positioning and serves as a powerful tool for exploring agency (Zhu, Kim, and Weng 2024). In addition, CAE is particularly meaningful for IDSs like us, who may not yet have an impactful voice in academia. It examines their personal troubles in connection with community issues and the community’s responses to these troubles (Denzin 2014). This examination could cultivate in IDSs a sense of empowerment and provide a means to nurture their resilience during the challenging doctoral journey (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez 2013; Roy and Uekusa 2020).

Recent research in the TESOL field has witnessed a growing adoption of CAE to explore the identities of TESOL practitioners (Yazan, Pentón Herrera, and Rashed 2023; Zhu et al., 2024). For example, Yazan, Pentón Herrera, and Rashed (2023) employed CAE to investigate identity tensions of three TESOL practitioners, the authors themselves, from Turkey, Cuba, and Egypt. They highlighted the value of CAE in ‘combining internal and community dialogues to make sense of our identities, which are situated at the nexus of the personal and the cultural’ (140). Similarly, Zhu et al. (2024) employed a CAE approach in their study and found it to be an effective tool for examining language teacher agency. This effectiveness largely stemmed from its ability to leverage teachers’ reflections, which ultimately contributed to a more rigorous research process (Zhu et al., 2024).

Participants

The participants in this study are four Asian international TESOL doctoral students at different stages of our programme, studying at a large research-intensive university in Australia. Our background information is presented in Table 1. To safeguard our identities, we have used pseudonyms: Tuan, Bing, Yan, and Dinh. This practice is in line with Lapadat’s (2017) recommendation that the use of pseudonyms in collaborative autoethnography can ‘reduce the vulnerability of researchers who disclose their experiences and can mitigate negative career consequences’ (600).

Table 1. A summary of the background of the participants.

Participants	Gender	Education	Professional Experience	Research Experience
Tuan	Male	BA in English Studies MA in TESOL (US) First-year PhD student	10 years of teaching English and training TESOL teachers at a commercial English centre in Vietnam 2 years of teaching English at university (adjunct)	Modest research experience before PhD enrollment Some publications in low-tier journals
Bing	Female	BA in TCFL MA in TESOL (Australia) Third-year PhD student	Around 1 year of casual tutoring experience in English to primary school students prior to PhD study	A small-scale study completed during the pathway unit towards PhD study
Yan	Female	BA in Management MA in TESOL (Australia) Second-year PhD student	Half a year of teaching English at a language centre in Melbourne during PhD study	A minor research project completed during a pathway course to the PhD programme
Dinh	Male	BA in English MA in TESOL (Taiwan) Fourth-year PhD student	8 years of teaching English at the university level	Extensive research and publication before PhD enrolment

Tuan is a first-year PhD student in the TESOL programme at the university. Before his doctoral matriculation, he received his MA in TESOL from a US university and returned to his country, Vietnam, to work as an English teacher and TESOL trainer at a commercial English language centre there. He served as an adjunct lecturer at a local university, specialising in teaching first-year academic writing for English-major students. He also gained some research experience, contributing to publications in low-tier journals, before starting his PhD.

Bing is in her third year of pursuing a PhD. She earned her BA in Teaching Chinese as a foreign language from a research-intensive university in Beijing, China. Afterwards, she came to an Australian university where she obtained her master’s degree in TESOL and is currently pursuing her doctoral degree. Before starting her PhD, she gained approximately one year of casual tutoring experience in elementary English teaching. Her pre-PhD research experience includes conducting a small-scale study during the pathway unit leading up to her doctoral programme.

Yan is a second-year PhD student. She obtained her BA in Management (Business administration) from a public university in Shanghai, China. Then, she came to Australia to study for an MA in TESOL at a large research-intensive university. Currently, she is continuing her academic journey with a PhD at the same university. During her time in Australia, she gained valuable experience by teaching English to adult students from diverse backgrounds at a language centre for approximately six months. Additionally, she completed a minor research project as part of her pathway course leading to the PhD programme.

Dinh is in the final year of his PhD programme. He holds a BA in Applied linguistics in Vietnam and an MA in TESOL in Taiwan. Before embarking on his PhD, he served as a lecturer at a public university in Vietnam for four years. During this time, he gained substantial research experience, presenting at international conferences and contributing to journal publications. His extensive research and publication records were established prior to enrolling in the PhD programme.

Data generation and analysis

We began our project as we all gathered at our university for our first meeting in early 2023. Reflective journals served as the main method of collecting data for our study. Our self-reflections were based on memory work, ‘a method for a group of researchers to work together collaboratively to write, share, and analyse personal narratives as data’ (Lapadat 2017: 597). This way of generating data is compatible with our autoethnographic research method which relies on personal data generated through reflections. Three questions guiding our reflections are: (1) Do you currently see yourself as a PhD student, a researcher, a scholar, an academic, or someone else? (2) In your experience, how has this identity impacted your learning and research actions? and (3) What challenges have you encountered since the beginning of your PhD studies? How have you dealt with these challenges? These questions were generated based on our review of the related literature and discussed among us for plausibility and relevance.

Each of us then had two weeks to write our individual reflections. We did not set a limit in terms of word length or format, which was to allow us to express our experiences in the most comfortable and effective ways. Altogether, our reflective journals were roughly 10,000 words long. In addition, we conducted and recorded our regular Zoom-based discussions where through collectively generated data and information and our ‘mutual scrutiny, interrogation and probing’ of one another’s reflections (Roy and Uekusa 2020, 388), we were able to achieve a more in-depth understanding of ourselves and others (Chang, Ngunjiri, and Hernandez 2013). By looking critically into our reflections and our assigned roles in knowledge production (Sawyer and Norris 2015), we engaged in dialogic tensions among our various perspectives, which ‘serve[d] to strengthen the depth of engagement, quality, and potential impact of [our collaborative] autoethnographic research’ (Guyotte and Sochacka 2016: 1). We also kept meeting memos and maintained email correspondence as additional sources for data analysis. Although we each produced a single formal reflection, the insights presented in this paper represent the culmination of an ongoing reflective process. Following individual reflections, we collectively analysed our findings and engaged in discussions, resulting in a richer understanding of the data. This aided us in triangulating various sources of our acquired data, thereby enhancing the trustworthiness and credibility of our research.

A reflexive thematic analysis approach (Braun and Clarke 2012) was utilised for data analysis. In this section, we report on the general overarching steps of our data analysis process, which was performed collectively and iteratively. We first independently read through all the reflections to familiarise ourselves with the data (i.e., our reflective journals) and then generated preliminary codes. Then, we met to discuss our initial insights and reconcile any disparities in our interpretation of the data. Throughout the process, we consistently cross-referenced our reflective journals with our Zoom meetings, memos, and email exchanges to ensure a more comprehensive identification of the preliminary codes. While these notes documented our thoughts and discussions that informed our interpretation of the findings, they are not included as the source of data reported in this paper. Figure 1 illustrates our identification of preliminary codes from one of our reflective journals.

Figure 1. Example extract of preliminary coding. Note. ID = identity; A = agency.

In the next stage, emerging themes were generated by ‘identifying aspects of data items that are interesting and may be informative’ (Braun and Clarke 2012, 1399). Specifically, the relationship between different codes were scrutinised and the codes were then combined according to their shared meanings to produce themes. These themes were constantly refined through multiple discussions among the authors. Finally, meaningful themes addressing the research questions were selected and reported as findings. Table 2 presents the themes identified.

Table 2. Themes, subthemes, and illustrative data.

Themes	Sub-themes	Data extracts
Multiple co-evolving identities	Multiple identities shaped by past learning and professional experiences and current academic requirements	a novice (Bing) a headless chicken (Yan) educators (Tuan, Dinh) someone who is just learning to swim; a baby researcher (Tuan) emerging scholar (Dinh)
	Imagined identity	independent researchers or early-career scholars (Bing) researchers/academics working in a university (Yan)
Identity tensions	Field-related identity tensions	original field identity as an applied linguist vs teacher professional development (Dinh)
	Identity tensions derived from self-awareness of existing competence	… returned to the earth from the moon! … a learner starting to get gradually engaged in doing research (Tuan)
Identities as formative experiences shaping agentive actions	Identity shaping orientation towards relying on social relationships	this self-perception has made me more like a listener and advice seeker … I have never disagreed with my supervisors … (Yan)
	Reduced identity shaped by self-awareness driving agentive actions	… read more and more literature not only about my field of research but also about my field of language teacher education (Tuan)
	Identity shaped by past experiences guiding current agentive actions	an emerging scholar … engage in various academic and research activities … (Dinh)
Agency mediated with identity	Agency guided by identities and tensions between field interests	difference between field interests … pursuing side projects (Dinh)
	Agency driven by imagination	independent researcher … trying to build social connections and participate in professional development (Bing) practice-oriented researcher … committed to professionalism in research (Tuan)
	Agency driven by social relations and interactions	… cherished all the annotations given by my supervisors and absorbed them to help me refine my draft of chapters in my thesis (Bing)
	Agency impacted by contextual factors	lack of focused doctoral courses/documents on research training (Tuan) lack of designated workspace hindering social agency (Bing, Yan)

Findings

Our data analysis identified four major themes regarding how our identities transitioned and developed across time and contexts: (1) multiple co-evolving professional identities, (2) tensions arising from mismatches between our past and current identities and previous and current research areas; (3) our identities as formative developmental experiences guiding our agency; and (4) mediational factors contributing to shaping our identity formation/development. These themes are explored below.

RQ1: multiple and co-evolving identities

The data analysis unveiled the presence of multiple identities among us that were dynamically shaped by our past learning and professional experiences, along with the current academic features and requirements of the TESOL programmes we were engaged in. Bing and Yan embarked on their TESOL doctoral studies shortly after their master’s degrees and identified themselves as learners. Although they both gradually transformed their learner identity into a researcher identity throughout their nearly two years of doctoral study, this transformation was more of a learning process than a transition to becoming independent researchers. During this transition, Bing valued the ‘dynamic process of learning’ from her ‘supervisors and other talented student colleagues’, and Yan appreciated her supervisors’ support ‘as helpful and contributing to the progress of her PhD study to a great extent’. Metaphorically, they used the image of ‘a novice’ (Bing) and ‘a headless chicken’ (Yan) to describe their identities at the present stage, while envisioning their future selves as ‘independent researchers or early-career scholars’ (Bing) and ‘researchers/academics working in a university in the future’ (Yan).

On the other hand, Tuan and Dinh shared a common identity as language educators, stemming from their prior English teaching experiences in Vietnam. However, they noticed abrupt identity re-construction as they transitioned into their doctoral programme. Initially, Tuan envisioned a smooth doctoral journey, expecting that he ‘would have a great start and would publish more and more during his PhD’ based on his academic background – participating in conferences as a presenter and reviewer, publishing papers in scholarly journals, and receiving substantial training during his master’s studies in the US. Yet, whilst navigating a researcher identity in the early stages of the PhD programme, he discovered that his credentials were not sufficient for a seamless transition to a researcher identity at the doctoral level. Rather than strongly identifying himself as a researcher, Tuan adopted a more modest stance, viewing himself as ‘someone who is just learning to swim’ and ‘a baby researcher’. This shift, he explained, allowed him to ‘feel more comfortable and open to learning’. In contrast, Dinh, who had published extensively prior to his PhD journey, viewed himself as an emerging scholar and his doctoral study as ‘an extension of [his] previous work, offering an opportunity to deepen [his] understanding and hone [his] professional skills in [his] chosen field’.

RQ1: identity-related tensions as transcending research areas, time and space

The multiple identities as discussed in the previous section, which coexisted and potentially transitioned or transformed into one another, appeared to cause tensions within the participants. For instance, with respect to research fields/areas, a notable identity tension emerged from Dinh’s data where he reportedly had to negotiate the fields of research he identified himself with. In his reflective journal, he expressed how he grappled with the tension between his ‘original field identity as an applied linguist’ and his current research topic of continuing professional development for TESOL educators, a subfield into which he was transitioning. Dinh recalled:

The field of teacher development was exciting but relatively new to me, so there were quite a lot of new things to learn. My background was in applied linguistics and language teaching rather than professional learning and development, so it did take me quite some time to familiarise myself with the field, for example, the prominent topics, scholars and literature. (Dinh)

This demonstrates that Dinh’s identities are not solely defined by his understanding of his roles but also by his associations with specific fields of study.

In the same vein, Tuan struggled to transition from a doctoral researcher identity back into a learner identity, which he perceived to be at a lower developmental level as he commenced his doctoral programme. This tension was largely caused by the mismatch between his prior working and research experience as an English teacher and TESOL trainer with extensive professional experience in the field and his perceived challenges of doctoral research. He recounted:

I’ve now returned to the earth from the moon! And I know that I’m a learner starting to get gradually engaged in doing research. Seeing myself as a learner has made me feel more comfortable. I can learn, and do research, and make mistakes, and learn again, and do it again. (Tuan)

This finding underscores the intricacy of identity transition and development among doctoral students. As illustrated above, their identities were mostly shaped by prior professional experiences and current perceptions, which did not appear to follow a linear, chronological order. The tensions in identity were underpinned by a misalignment between existing and newly forming identities during the transition into their doctoral programme.

RQ2: identities as formative experiences shaping agency

Through unpacking our data on identities, we gained insights into how they informed our experiences transitioning into the doctoral programme and shaped our agency in response. This analysis revealed the complexity of our experiences, which involved a confluence of thinking, perception, and emotions. These factors informed both the tensions we encountered and the ways we exercised our learning and research agency. Tuan, Bing, and Yan strongly viewed themselves as learners of doing TESOL research rather than as researchers. Yan’s lack of scholarly publications, for example, largely accounted for her stronger sense of herself as ‘an ordinary PhD student’ struggling with her research project although she had already accomplished her confirmation milestone.¹ As a learner, Yan appeared acquiescent, believing absolutely in her supervisors’ expertise and always accepting their advice as a valuable support for her progress and as a charger of her confidence battery:

I think this self-perception has made me more like a listener and advice seeker during my PhD in the academic community … I have never disagreed with my supervisors about any decision regarding my study … This has built my confidence and sense of security about my study a lot. (Yan)

Similarly, Bing’s perception of herself as a neophyte drove her into ‘learn[ing] from [her] supervisors and other talented student colleagues’, whose influences would, she believed, enlighten her ‘transformation from a student researcher into an independent researcher’ (Bing). Aware of her novice status, she metaphorically described herself as ‘a flower bud waiting to be irrigated’, and for it to bloom, she ‘participated in lots of workshops such as the introduction of NVivo and writing in HASS [Humanities and Social Sciences] disciplines to broaden [her] knowledge base on analytical tools and improve [her] academic writing’ (Bing).

For Tuan, his researcher identity became increasingly weaker after his candidature commencement, turning into ‘a baby researcher’, along with his cognisance of the difficulty of doing a TESOL PhD. To him, this identity made him more open to learning and propelled him into taking actions to fill his knowledge gap:

I’ve started to read more and more literature not only about my chosen research topic but also about my field of language teacher education. I also read a lot of material showing ways of doing research. (Tuan)

Dinh stood out among us. His researcher identity was much stronger than his identities as a former university lecturer and a PhD student. This was mainly due to his pre-doctoral research experience, his record of high-quality publications, and his recent progress toward completing his thesis. Although he acknowledged his past teaching experience and his need for expert advice for further improvement, these aspects did not seem to overshadow his sense of confidence and competence as an early-career researcher. His identity as an emerging scholar, as he reported, was a source of motivation for him to engage in various academic and research activities, such as continuing his doctoral research, presenting at conferences, networking with fellow scholars, and writing for publications.

Our identities, as described above, can be understood as formative experiences; they are not fixed but are developmental stages where the former can dynamically influence the latter, potentially conditioning the latter's progression. Additionally, they are formative in terms of the intensity or degree of the identity felt. Furthermore, understanding the emotional experiences associated with identity is essential to fully grasp agency in terms of choice trajectory.

RQ3: identity and agency as being dynamically influenced by individual, social and contextual factors

This theme highlights that the participants’ agency in navigating the new academic environment was mediated by various personal, social, and contextual factors. At the individual level, their professional identities and/or the tension between their past and current research activities largely informed their agentive efforts, such as seeking and engaging in various professional learning opportunities at the local institution). For instance, driven by the dissonance between his identified research areas, Dinh exercised agency by pursuing personal side projects alongside his main doctoral research. While previously engaged in research within applied linguistics, his doctoral research focus had shifted to the continuing professional development of language teachers – a related yet distinguishable area of research.

The participants’ professional agency was further found to be influenced by their imagined selves and/or career aspirations as future TESOL academics. This imagined identity played a role in motivating their actions towards their shared goal. Bing, for instance, aspired to become an independent researcher, a driving force behind her efforts to build connections with her supervisors and peers while actively participating in professional development activities. Tuan’s goal was to become a researcher ‘informed by practical problems and demands in the field’ who can ‘contribute to bridging the gap between research and practice’ (Tuan). This identity made him ‘committed to professionalism in doing research … and research integrity’ (Tuan). Yan also aspired to be an academic researcher at a university and wished to pursue a PhD by publication. This identity, however, was not strong enough to sustain her efforts; she postponed her plan due to perceived poor time management and occasional lack of motivation.

Second, at the social level, the relationship and interactions with supervisors, fellow doctoral peers, and the institution constituted another major source for developing a more mature identity as independent researchers among us. Bing attributed her academic progress and identity development, and agency growth primarily to the assistance from her supervisors and other PhD peers:

I feel like a novice in doing research and get diverse things to learn from my supervisors and other talented student colleagues. I always enjoy the dynamic process of learning from them, which could shed light on my future transformation from a “student researcher” into an “independent researcher” … Without the abundant support from my amazing supervisors … I could not be smoothly and quickly adapted into my doctoral study. (Bing)

As for Tuan, it was peer pressure that served as an important driver of his identity reconstruction as ‘a fire flyer beneath the sky full of stars’ and his agency for enhancing his research capacities: ‘their success is something that pushes me to try harder and harder’ (Tuan).

Third, contextual resources were found to influence our agency. Tuan believed that a lack of systematic, streamlined postgraduate courses and documents on building research skills (e.g. an advanced qualitative research methods unit) at the institution left him ill-equipped in advancing his doctoral research, leading to feelings of being ‘an underequipped warrior’ who had to ‘study independently’. The absence of a designated working space reportedly obstructed Bing's ability to exercise social agency in establishing ‘close friendships’ with fellow PhD students, thereby hindering the development of a sense of belonging to the local academic community.

Discussion

This study embarked on an exploration of the multifaceted and evolving identities of TESOL doctoral students, delving into the intricate ways these identities inform and are informed by their experiences and agency for learning and research. In this study, we employed a collaborative autoethnography as our methodological approach, allowing us to collectively and critically reflect on our lived experiences as Asian international TESOL doctoral students. Aligning with prior research (e.g. Hoang and Pretorius 2019; Hopwood 2010b), this study indicates that IDSs’ self-positioning amidst their TESOL doctoral novitiate appears to leverage their engagement and investment in learning and seeking opportunities for transformation. Our identities as ‘novice’ researchers and/or as ‘emerging scholars’ influenced our deliberate choices to engage in thorough literature reviews on our research topics, participate in additional research activities, and maintain academic integrity in our research to meet the academic expectations at the local institution.

Additionally, our study also underscores the potential value of identity-related tensions as a driving force for developmental agency in doctoral learning and research (Hopwood 2010a; Li, Jiang, and Chakma 2023; McAlpine, Jazvac-Martek, and Hopwood 2009; Towers 2022). The findings in this research corroborate Xu et al.’s (2022) assertion that IDSs’ negotiation of identity tensions is ‘a “doing” process subject to different positionings and structural contexts and mediated by various dynamics across a past-present-future trajectory’ (1). Similar findings on the tensions among temporal identities were also reported in Choi et al.’s (2021) study where doctoral students reportedly faced the tensions between past and emerging identities, between their ‘antecedent professional identities and their identity as doctoral students and emerging scholars’ (108).

Our findings further emphasise the role of experiences in mediating the relationship between identity and agency (see Figure 2). Notably, prior research and publication successes have contributed to shaping both our current identities and the tensions we encountered. The present experience of the situation, including how we understand our roles and potential for development, has significantly influenced our agency in doctoral learning and research activities. This study defined experience through the lens of perezhivanie (Vygotsky 1994). To our knowledge, this is the first application of this concept to illuminate the interplay between identities, experiences, and agency among TESOL doctoral students. Our findings highlights the value of perezhivanie as a powerful theoretical lens to explore the intricate dynamics among these phenomena.

Figure 2. A conceptual model of the interrelationships among identity, experience and agency.

Prospectively, our actions were informed or guided by our imagined ‘more developed’ identities (e.g. a competent/independent TESOL researcher and academic). For instance, Yan's imagined identity as a university researcher led her to aspire to a publication-based PhD. This study reinforces Wenger’s (1999) notion that imagination plays a key role in identity (re)construction. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of tracing identity and agency development across temporal dimensions.

Our research delves into the nuanced ways in which culture and academic context uniquely shape the identities and agency of Asian TESOL doctoral students. To our knowledge, this study is the first to comprehensively explore the interplay of identity, agency, and experience among Asian doctoral students within the Australian TESOL context, providing an in-depth understanding that has not been previously charted in existing research. We found that our Asian educational heritage, which often promotes a hierarchical dynamic between teachers and students, influenced our interactions with supervisors. Typically, we approached these relationships with a degree of deference, viewing supervisors as authoritative figures whose feedback was not to be questioned but embraced – a pattern potentially rooted in Asian cultural norms of respect and conformity (Chan 2019). Yet, we also discovered that the Australian academic environment – its social dynamics and the resources it provides – was pivotal in shaping our developmental trajectories. This observation aligns with findings from Choi, Bouwma-Gearhart, and Ermis (2021), Li, Jiang, and Chakma (2023), and Wang and Parr (2021), which underscore the significant role of peer networks, supervisory relationships, and institutional support systems in shaping the professional identities of TESOL doctoral students.

Interactions within our academic community served as a crucible for learning, allowing us to assimilate support in ways that bolster our evolving identities as student researchers. These engagements also help us cultivate our future professional selves, such as becoming independent researchers or academics. Moreover, our findings underscore the impact of administrative decisions, such as the allocation of workspaces, on doctoral students’ sense of belonging and integration into their academic community. Thus, our study contributes to the discourse on identity and agency by showcasing how the interplay between cultural background and institutional setting generates unique experiences for Asian TESOL doctoral students – experiences that are marked by a blend of cultural respect for authority and the adaptive use of available academic resources.

Figure 2 presents a conceptual model of the relationships among identity, experience, and agency as informed by empirical findings and grounded in sociocultural theory. The model situates context – including social relations and available resources within local institutions – at its core, signifying the pivotal role of the environment in shaping developmental trajectories (Vygotsky, 1998; Veresov 2016). The significance of context is also crucial in delineating the potential of doctoral student agency (McAlpine and Amundsen 2009). The dotted line signifies the indirect yet influential relationship between identity and agency, mediated by experience (i.e. perezhivanie). Perezhivanie acts as a prism or mechanism through which identity-related tensions are interpreted and emotionally processed in varied ways by individuals (Dang 2013; Vygotsky 1994). It embodies a synthesis of personal attributes and environmental factors specific to the situation, necessitating an examination of the salient characteristics of the individual at the time of data collection (Cong-Lem, 2022b; Vygotsky 1994). In this study, for instance, the predominant personal characteristics, such as prior work and research experiences and Asian cultural backgrounds, were key underpinnings of our identities and agency in responding to tensions, as evidenced by the findings. Although identities and experiences are depicted in singular forms, they often encompass multiple identities and a series of experiences in practice. The conceptual model in Figure 2 serves as a theoretical framework to investigate the dynamic interplay among identity, experience, and agency, taking into account both the environmental and individual characteristics at play.

Our study has important implications for supporting IDSs in developing their identities and agency as they transition into their doctoral education programme. Firstly, it underscores the necessity for stakeholders (e.g. supervisors, the faculty/institution, and IDSs per se) to recognise the complexity and dynamics of IDSs’ identity formation, particularly during the transition stage. They should take agentive actions to address these tensions productively, thereby facilitating their identity development as scholars. IDSs can possess multiple identities, but prior and current ones may come into conflict and need to be constructively supported and remedied. One way to support these doctoral students’ transition into a new learning environment is to make them aware of such identity tensions and the fact that their ‘own agentive involvement,’ such as effort and commitment, plays a pivotal role in building their desired scholarly identity (Teeuwsen, Ratković, and Tilley 2014, 692). Critical reflections should be promoted as a key practice to help IDSs understand their identities and identity tensions, as well as to gather insights for fostering ongoing agency. Godskesen and Kobayashi (2016) found in their study that reflections afforded the participating doctoral students an opportunity to ‘share otherwise sensitive matters, reveal doubts and show weaknesses, … helped them improve their sense of progress, prompted new reflections, and constructively changed their behaviour’ (159).

Secondly, IDSs at different stages may need different types of support. Therefore, relevant stakeholders, particularly supervisors and faculty, could consider helping doctoral students develop relevant knowledge, skills, and experience that align with their perceived professional identities and desired academic careers. A doctoral student with a strong interest in publishing may require a more intensive and personalised type of support compared to those needing to build foundational knowledge about research. For instance, in the case of Dinh, who viewed himself as an early-career scholar rather than a student, he might need custom-tailored guidance on planning and writing for publications as well as opportunities to engage in collaborative research.

Lastly, Asian IDSs’ sense of belonging to the local academic community should be fostered by the institution. This can be achieved by creating opportunties for social interactions and organising events where they can share and learn from other academics and peers (Curtin, Stewart, and Ostrove 2013; Zhang, Li, and Unger 2022).

Conclusion

This collaborative autoethnography delved into the experiences of Asian international doctoral students in a TESOL programme at a research-intensive Australian university, uncovering the multifaceted interplay between their identities and agency. Our findings illustrate that these identities – shaped by past professional roles and current academic challenges – were not isolated but deeply interconnected through the doctoral students’ ongoing academic and social experiences. The study particularly emphasised the role these experiences in mediating the relationship between identities and the agency these students exercise to navigate their doctoral journey. The concept of perezhivanie served as an underlying theme, helping to frame how these experiences influenced the students’ sense of self and capability in overcoming academic obstacles and seizing opportunities for growth. Our research contributes to a deeper understanding of the dynamic and evolving nature of identity and agency within higher education. It suggests that academic institutions should consider these fluid identity dynamics when designing support systems for IDSs. By fostering an environment that recognises and nurtures the diverse experiences and backgrounds of IDSs, educational policies and programmes can better support their academic success and professional development.

A limitation of our study involves the two-week timeframe for data collection. However, given its reflective nature, we believe our reflections have been ongoing, and the timeframe can be considered sufficient to document key insights. Another limitation is related to the design of our study using qualitative autoethnography, which includes our own subjectivity and potential bias due to prior knowledge, backgrounds, and experiences. Our findings may not be generalisable to other IDSs across all contexts. This study thus calls for further research in various settings to explore the intricate relationship between identity and agency while examining the mediational role of emotional experiences in IDSs' transitioning into the doctoral programme with new identities and tensions. Future studies could also consider contextualised and personalised interventions to support IDSs as they transition into a new academic environment or to bolster their agentic capacity in dealing with various challenges faced at particular milestones in their doctoral journey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In most Australian universities, PhD students undergo three examinations during their candidature: confirmation, progress, and final review.