A Discursive Inquiry Into The Identity Of Senior High School Pre-service English Teachers:a Critical Ethnographic Study

Pre-service English teachers’identity construction is of crucial importance in their understanding of "being a teacher" and their professional growth. According to previous research, identity construction is intimately related with discourses. Yet, domestic studies concerning the discursive construction of pre-service English teachers’ identity are rare. Under this background, the present study aims to investigate senior high school pre-service English teachers’ identity construction from a discursive perspective. Specifically, this thesis attempts to address the following three research questions:1) What are the multiple voices revealed in pre-service English teachers’life?2) How is the power enacted through various discourses?3) How is pre-service English teachers’identity discursively constructed?This ten-month ethnographic research was conducted with the participation of three pre-service English teachers in a senior high school in Zhejiang province. Narrative inquiry was utilized to collect and present the data, together with specific research instruments as school and classroom observation, autobiographical journals, semi-structured interviews as well as casual talk in the staff-office. As for the data analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis was adopted as the basic theoretical framework and theoretical perspectives from Bakhtin. Foucault and Habermas were incorporated in order to interpret and explain the data collected in present study.The study result indicates that there exist at least five discourses in pre-service English teachers’ life and talk, i.e. discourse of examination, discourse of technology-discourse of regulation, discourse of traditional Chinese culture and discourse of gender. Meanwhile, power is enacted through various discourses and pre-service English teachers are not only subject to power but also subjects exerting power. These intersecting and conflicting discourses, together with power relations, construct senior high school pre-service English teachers’bio-identity of "score producer" and "nomadic guest". Furthermore, this study reveals that pre-service English teachers’ lifeworld is colonized by instrumental rationality in senior high school. The instrumental rationality represented by examination discourse, calculative practices (exam scores) and regulations exerts great control over pre-service English teachers’ life and teaching, which leads to a loss of the authentic self and reinforces the nomadic identity in them.Finally, the present study sheds light on English education and English teacher development by calling for a space for senior high school pre-service English teachers to reinvent authentic being.