The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

It is not odd in rural China that a teacher has to teach more than one course. Policy like ‘The Excellent Teacher Training Program’ launched by Chinese Ministry of Education in 2014 also produces a large number of school teachers who teach more than one subject. This study, drawing on the approach of narrative inquiry, explores how a multidisciplinary teacher constructed and reconstructed her multiple identities in the first year of her teaching career. The findings of the study show that the participant constantly tried to defend and develop her triple identities as a Chinese teacher, a Social Studies teacher and also a head teacher. In the trajectory of her multiple-identity construction, individual factors such as the teacher’s past experience and belief as well as contextual factors like school administration and colleagues are found to be contributing to the multiple-identity construction of the participant. However, subject matter, in the participant’s identity construction, is not as influential as anticipated.
 

multidisciplinary teacher; multiple identities; subject matter