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& Many novice teachers experience a reality shock during the transition from teacher education programs to the first years of teaching, due to the unpredictable and dynamic nature of authentic educational contexts (Veenman, 1984, p. 143). To better understand novice teachers in transition, research on teaching English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) has explored their shifting behaviors and beliefs during the first years of teaching (Farrell, 2009). However, this line of research has rarely examined the transformation of professional identities of novice ESOL teachers in a comprehensive way that allows for a broader understanding of the reality shock from the teachers' own perspectives -how they understand their relationship to the world, how that relationship is constructed across time and space, how they understand possibilities for the future (Norton, 2000) during transition from teacher education programs to real-world teaching contexts. In order to address this gap in the literature, this article reports on a 3-year longitudinal case study of the transformation of the professional identities of four Chinese ESOL teachers during the first years of teaching in K-12

This article reports on an inquiry into a group of English language teachers' professional experiences that interpreted their motivation to teach and their shifting professional commitment with reference to representations and visions that they had and did not have about themselves in rural secondary schools in China's hinterland regions. It revealed that the association between the participants' social mobility and English competence and their visions of the 'ideal self' pushed them to join the teaching profession, which they disliked at the very start. Their subsequent association of teaching with their visions of the 'ideal self' in teaching paradoxically caused fluctuations in their commitment to teaching, as the pursuit of English competence and idealized professional roles were constrained by contextual realities. Due to the significant roles that these teachers have in improving English language education in China's hinterland areas, it has become imperative for teacher educators and educational administrators to take measures for retention of English teachers while supporting their professional development efforts.

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