Imagining oneself as an English teacher

Abstract

In this paper, I tell the story of Marcela, a pre-service language teacher participating in a PIBID initiative focusing on the design and implementation of English reading activities at two state schools. I discuss the impact of this experience on her professional identity. I adopt a narrative inquiry methodology, which considers narrative as both method and way of understanding experience. Storied perspectives on identity, teacher knowledge and context inform this study. The field texts include visual narratives, drawings depicting English teaching, which are contextualised by their recorded explanations, written journals and language learning autobiography, and recorded conversations. This material was gathered over the course of an academic year. Being a PIBID scholarship holder provided Marcela with opportunities to make sense of her own biography as a language learner, think about who she wanted to become as a teacher, and negotiate her imagined professional identity. This had a profound impact on her identity as a language teacher.