“My Religion Guides Me, Even as a Teacher”: Examining Religious Identities of English Language Teachers in Kuwait

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the lived experiences of three Kuwaiti women as they construct and negotiate their professional identities as Muslim English language teachers in Kuwait. Building on the paucity of research surrounding religious identity and English language teaching contexts, positioning analysis and tactics of intersubjectivity were used to examine the teachers’ oral narrative accounts, highlighting the ways in which they navigate their professional teaching contexts within the underlying local religious ideologies. Findings show that while the three English language teachers share a common nationality, faith, and gender, they each engaged in different ways with their religious identities within their professional practice. The study concludes with implications for professional development and future research directions.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• language teacher identity
• positioning analysis
• religious identity

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Gloria Park, Dr. Rachel Hall Buck, and Dr. Matthew Overstreet for taking time out of their busy schedules to provide me with constructive feedback on the first draft of my paper. I am also very grateful to the two reviewers whose comments and insights helped make this paper a much stronger piece of scholarship.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore

Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. She holds a doctoral degree in English Composition and Applied Linguistics. Prior to joining Khalifa University, Silvia was an English language instructor in Kuwait. Her areas of research include language teacher identity, L2 writing, English for academic purposes, and writing for STEM.