“Who am I?”: an autoethnographic self-study on teacher identity and emotional labour of a volunteer teacher during COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Teachers may undergo emotional and identity dissonance during professional practice due to various personal and contextual factors. These types of dissonance may provide opportunities for teachers to address challenges, thus enabling personal transformation and professional development. Despite a surge in research interest in teacher identity and emotional labour, few studies have used an autoethnographic lens. In this autoethnographic paper, I share my lived experiences as a volunteer teacher during campus closure from March to May 2022 in Changchun, China, a COVID-19 pandemic hotspot in the aforementioned period. I conducted an exploration of my emotion management processes in negotiating conflicts between my teacher and volunteer identities and the challenges associated with online teaching and volunteering activities. Thematic analyses of my reflective journals revealed three strands of emotional/identity dissonance involved in online teaching, volunteer work and final exams. The autoethnographic vignettes include epiphanic moments highlighting the identity dissonance and adverse challenges that led to negative emotions and, in turn, emotional labour. The findings reveal how my emotional labour prompted the construction and negotiation of volunteer teacher identity. This study confirms the importance of engaging in self-reflective narration to cope with challenges and the implications of this process for teachers in emotional quandaries.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional labour
• teacher identity
• volunteer teacher
• autoethnographic self-study
• identity construction

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Ministry of Education China Humanities and Social Science Youth Project A Study on Township Secondary School English Teachers’ Emotional Labour from the Perspective of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory [22YJC740033]; Jilin Association for Higher Education A Study on Emotional Labour of College Teachers under the Pandemic [JGJX2022B23]; Social Science Research Planning Fund of the Education Department of Jilin Province A Study of the Novice Secondary School English Teachers’ Emotional Labour [JJKH20230320SK]; Jilin Jianzhu University Educational Research Project A Study of Learner Agency in College English Teaching [XJY202214].

Notes on contributors

Hanxi Li

Hanxi Li is a lecturer in the College English Teaching and Research Department, Jilin Jianzhu University. Her research concentrates on applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, especially in the areas of teacher psychology and discourse analysis.