A Study On The Impact Of Key Events On The Identity Construction Of English Teachers In Senior High Schools

Teacher identity is a positive feeling and sense of belonging to individual role,professional role and social role formed in the interaction between teachers and their profession,which is the internal motivation of teacher's career development.As a part of teacher identity research,English teacher identity research has also attracted more and more attention in the field of English teaching and English teacher education.Most of the existing studies focus on the status quo,features and influencing factors of senior high school English teachers' identity,but few focus on the impact of critical incidents in the identity construction process of English teachers.As one of the influencing factors of teacher identity,the critical incidents experienced by English teachers in their daily teaching are crucial to optimizing teachers' teaching behavior and promoting teachers' professional development,so it's necessary to explore the construction of teachers' identity based on critical incidents.Based on sociocultural theory and teacher identity theory,this paper uses questionnaire and interview to collect and analyze critical incidents experienced by English teachers in their daily teaching.The purpose of this paper is to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the types of critical incidents mentioned by English teachers?(2)What's the influence of critical incidents on the identity construction of senior high school English teachers?(3)From the perspective of critical incidents,what are the factors that influence the identity construction of senior high school English teachers?The results show that:(1)The critical incidents mentioned by teachers include the critical incidents of classroom teaching,teacher growth and professional development,student management as well as critical incidents of social environment.Among them,the critical incidents mentioned most by teachers are the critical incidents of classroom teaching.(2)Critical incidents have both positive and negative impact on the identity construction of English teachers.Specifically,the critical incidents of classroom teaching,teacher growth and professional development enhance teachers' major identity;the critical incidents of student management enhance teachers' self-identity;the critical incidents of social environment have the most significant influence on teachers' situated identity,but this influence may be positive or negative.But teachers' professional identity is influenced by different types of critical incidents,and the influence is also bidirectional.(3)The factors affecting the identity construction of high school English teachers can be divided into internal and external factors.Internal factors include the professional values of English teachers,educational values,teaching experience,previous learning experience,their English language competence and family factors.The external factors mainly include important others,social status and public opinion,school management,teaching reform and evaluation of professional rank.Finally,this paper summarizes the shortcomings of the study,and tries to put forward suggestions on how to make good use of critical incidents to promote the identity construction of English teachers from the following four aspects: English teachers,English teachers' educators,senior high schools and the government.