Metadiscourse and Identity Construction in Teaching Philosophy Statements: A Critical Case Study of Two MATESOL Students

Abstract

Drawing on Hyland's (2005) metadiscourse framework, the researchers investigated how two English as a second or foreign language instructors constructed their identity in a teaching philosophy statement written for a master's in TESOL (MATESOL) course. Analyses revealed that both instructors employed almost all metadiscourse resources in the model to construct the identity of a competent graduate student and that of a knowledgeable and reflective teacher. In addition, their identity construction reinforced the writing conventions associated with the imagined community (Norton, 2013) of graduate student teachers while also affording them the opportunity to exercise some degree of teacher agency. Findings offer insights into how linguistic resources can be mobilized to construct a strong and unique teaching philosophy statement.

Teaching Philosophy Statement for Physics Teachers: Let’s Think About

“…The teaching statement is sometimes referred to as "statement of teaching philosophy" and captures the statement's purpose of teachers in the classroom (Oxley, 2015). Overall, from 28 reviewed articles, authors find some articles using the term in philosophy of science teaching (2 studies) (Matthews, 1988;Pospiech, 2003), philosophy of physics (6 studies) (Seeger, 1960;Crowe, 1999;Noll, 2002;Scott, 2015;Rajapaksha & Hirsch, 2017;Bächtold & Munier, 2019), philosophy of science in teaching (5 studies) (Terhart, 1988;Matthews, 1990;Elkana, 2000;Teixeira et al, 2012;Henke & Höttecke, 2015), teaching philosophy (2 studies) (Kurki-Suonio, 2011;Bartholomew et al, 2012), teaching statement (1 study) (Oxley, 2015), and teaching philosophy statement (12 studies) ( Beatty et al, 2009a( Beatty et al, , 2020a( Beatty et al, , 2020bGrundman, 2006;Eierman, 2008;Kearns & Sullivan, 2011;Alexander et al, 2012;Drolet, 2013;Supasiraprapa & De Costa, 2017;Laundon et al, 2020;Merkel, 2020;Trellinger Buswell & Berdanier, 2020). The most common words mentioned by the researchers on this issue are the teaching philosophy statement (TPS).…”

“…To make TPS, teachers need to find the most appropriate word to represent who they are. Teachers also need to find insights from linguistic resources because they can mobilize to construct a powerful and unique teaching philosophy statement (Supasiraprapa & De Costa, 2017). Another consideration for designing TPS is the role of pedagogical strategies and available resources that can help teachers improve their statements (Merkel, 2020).…”

“…Therefore, the TPS can also illustrate teachers' methods, justify why they use those methods, analyze their effectiveness, and consider how they might appropriately modify those methods in future courses (Kearns & Sullivan, 2011). Then, the authors conclude that TPS is widely engaged in the educational field from many researchers (e.g., Oxley, 2015;Supasiraprapa & De Costa, 2017;Laundon et al, 2020). Unfortunately, some educators only create TPS as a normative ritual for a job interview without any theoretical foundation.…”

Conceptualizing Language Teacher Education Centered on Language Teacher Identity Development: A Competencies‐Based Approach and Practical Applications

“…In such a situation, the teacher may feel extremely frustrated and that her sense of agency as a teacher is being taken away. Supasiraprapa and De Costa (2017) share another example in their study of how two MATESOL students constructed their identities in a teaching philosophy statement assignment, in which they found that one student’s imagined identity was in conflict with the course teacher’s expectations for the assignment, to which the student responded by choosing to meet the teacher’s expectations rather than asserting her imagined identity. Such external tensions go on largely between the teacher and sources outside the teacher, but again may be more or less visible and more or less consciously acknowledged, and they represent a site of struggle in the development of the teacher’s LTI, to which the teacher may respond in various ways.…”

Using Qualitative Case Studies in Research on Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

“…This is because we have to situate our research into a particular body of literature. In applied linguistics or language teaching and learning research, for example, we may be interested in conducting research around multilingual pedagogy, English teacher education, and the debate about native versus non-native English speaker-teachers (see Abiria et al, 2013;Burri, 2017;Supasiraprapa & De Costa, 2016).…”