Comprehension of experienced English language teachers’ professional identity and related metacognitive thinking procedures

ABSTRACT

In order to comprehend the attributes of expert teachers, the current study investigated professional identity (PI) and related metacognitive thinking procedures of experienced Korean teachers of English through a questionnaire survey and interviews. The teachers’ PIs contained pedagogic meanings that highly regarded teachers’ having language knowledge and skills, realising learner-centred practices, teaching communication skills for practicality, and developing professionalism. They relatively less valued practising teacher-led, test-preparation lessons but also using challenging tasks and creative materials and combining content, materials, and activities, which reflects their unestablished meanings of learner-centredness. Some of the interviewed teachers revealed their active performance of metacognitive monitoring and regulations of different meanings (cognitions), emotions, and actions over their pedagogical problem-solving processes for overcoming teacher-led, test-preparation lessons. Thus, experimenting with negotiated pedagogies and modifying their pedagogic meanings by learning from this, they tried to balance identity-congruent actions and verification, and reshaped their PI and related metacognitive thinking procedures; others’ pedagogic experimentations and related experiences were rejected by contextual rigidities. Comprehension of the PI and related metacognitive thinking procedures of experienced teachers provided several implications for teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Experienced teacher
• professional identity
• metacognition
• pedagogical problem-solving
• teacher education

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Insuk Han

Insuk Han studied curriculum internationalisation in higher education at Monash University, Australia and English teachers’ professional identity at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK, to draw out implications for successful curriculum reform. She is interested in comprehending teachers’ pedagogical problem-solving processes in relation to their PI and metacognition, and developing socio-culturally appropriate and context-sensitive professional standards and pedagogies.