Changing identities: an exploration of ESL trainee teacher discourse in microteaching

Abstract

This article explores the issue of identity as revealed by the discourse of two trainee teachers’ microteaching classes which formed part of their vocational Masters programme in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. Transcripts are used to explore possible modifications in ESL trainees’ microteaching talk in comparison with their talk in a ‘real’ teaching practice classroom in Hungary to establish possible changing identities. The study uses two approaches to focus, up close, on the lesson extracts; first, an applied institutional conversation analysis approach, specifically using Walsh’s Self Evaluation of Teacher Talk framework and second, Zimmerman’s identity categories. Furthermore, the two trainees are interviewed about their perception of their possible different identities in both teaching contexts. The data indicate that microteaching teacher talk breaks away from the situated identity position of teacher-learner more often than the trainees’ talk in the real classroom and that a reversal of situated identity or transportable identity can occur instead. I argue that by encouraging trainees to use a wider range of identities in the teaching practice classroom, they will allow their learners more interactional space and more meaningful communication will take place. This study has relevance to the body of literature on the concept of teacher identity, to research on classroom interaction and teacher development and the relatively under-researched area of the microteaching classroom.

Keywords:

• microteaching
• identity
• teaching practice
• interaction

Notes

1. With an emic perspective, the analyst aims to become a ‘member’ of the interaction by taking an insider’s perspective towards the data and by attempting to see the experience through the eyes of the participants so that they are able to ‘trace how the participants analyse and interpret each other’s actions and develop a shared understanding of the progress of the interaction’ (Seedhouse 2005, 166). This differs from an etic, or outsider’s, perspective towards the data which is taken by approaches such as discourse analysis and interactional analysis.

2. It can be seen that Walsh’s framework of interactional features cannot be applied so straightforwardly to a microteaching context, especially when situated identity roles have been reversed. For example, ‘saddish …we don’t say that do we?’ would normally be classified as a display question when used by a teacher in a real context, as the teacher would know the answer. However, it becomes a referential question here as the learner, although taking on the identity of the teacher, does not know the answer. Because it is the students rather than the teacher using these features, they do not fit neatly into the SETT framework and therefore have been omitted from the summary table in appendix 4.