Identity and emotion of university English teachers during curriculum reform in China

Abstract

Limited attention has been given to the emotions of university English teachers in their identity constructions in the context of curriculum reform in China. Drawing upon the identity control theory (ICT), this qualitative study examines how six teachers negotiate their emotions during curriculum reform in China. Data were collected through in-depth interviews. Findings indicate that teachers experience a variety of emotions in response to the curriculum reform and that the emotions are triggered by teachers’ identity constructions. Based on the findings and ICT, this study proposes a model that delineates the interplay between self-identity, performance outcome, and teacher emotion in the context of curriculum reform. The model explicates that congruence between teachers’ self-identities and the identities imposed by the reform contributes to positive emotions and vice versa. Adding to the original ICT, this study suggests that teachers’ performance outcomes (i.e. teaching outcome and student performance) are likely to influence the (non-)verification of role performance and teacher emotion. In addition, this study reveals the factors that influence teachers’ role performances in the reform, including rapid changes in education policy, stressful teaching evaluations, the instruction of ideological and political thoughts in English courses, and teachers’ insufficient computer skills.

KEYWORDS:

• English teaching
• teacher emotion
• teacher identity
• curriculum reform
• identity control theory

The conflict of interest statement

Compliance with Ethical Standards:

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that there was no conflict of interest.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [RGC Ref No. 12607418]: [Grant Number RGC Ref No. 12607418].

Notes on contributors

Jesse W. C. Yip

Jesse W. C. Yip is currently a Lecturer of English at School of Humanities and Languages, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong. His research interests include healthcare discourse studies, identity theory in professional contexts, corpus-assisted discourse analysis and computer-mediated communication. He has published articles in journals, such as Journal of Pragmatics, Applied Linguistics Review, and Health Communication.

Jing Huang

Jing HUANG was professor in applied linguistics at a Mainland Chinese university before joining the Department of Education Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University as an assistant professor. His research is in autonomy/identity/agency in foreign language education, TESOL teacher education, narrative enquiry, and higher education. He has published extensively in both Chinese and international journals.

Mark Feng Teng

Mark Feng Teng is Assosicate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Beijing Normal University. His research interests mainly include L2 vocabulary acquisition and metacognition in L2 writing. He has published extensively in these areas, including monographs and edited books, numerous international journal papers, and book chapters. He received the 2017 Hong Kong Association for Applied Linguistics (HAAL) Best Paper Award. He serves as co-editor for the OTI section, TESL-EJ.