A Study Of Effect Factors For Professional Identity Construction Of Novice College English Teachers

Teachers’identity research has been a new and growing area in the field of applied linguistics in recent years. In the process of professional identity construction, teachers experience changes of concept, cognition and emotion and many other aspects. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate teachers’professional identity construction, but few has been on novice English teachers in the Chinese context, not to mention studies on the effect factors influencing teachers’identity construction.This study hence takes five novice College English teachers as participants and investigates the factors that influence their professional identity construction. Case study approach is adopted. Semi-structured interviews and teaching reflection journals are the main sources of data for analysis. The results indicate that the two categories of personal and contextual effect factors exert a joint influence on the identity construction of novice College English teachers. Personal factors include cognitive development, motivational development and individual differences. Contextual factors include the society, the school, the team or department, and the classroom. In addition, different effect factors were found to play different roles in teachers’identity construction. Some factors play a facilitating role, and others are inhibiting to the identity construction of novice College English teachers.This study concludes that factors influencing teachers’professional identity construction are interwoven into a complicated system and jointly play their roles in the process of teachers’identity construction. By implication, teachers’overall quality for teaching needs to be enhanced, together with healthy working conditions and a supportive social educational environment. This study finally points out its limitations and provides suggestions for future studies.