Early Career vs. Long Career Iranian EFL Teacher’s Identity Perception

Abstract

Language Teachers’ awareness of their identity can affect their professional development and efficiency. Research proves that such awareness is subject to change over time due to the institutional and dynamic educational contexts. This study aimed at investigating the perception of identity by the early career vs. long career Iranian EFL teachers. A Likert-scale questionnaire consisting of 30 items was developed and administered to 120 novice and experienced teachers to inquire about teacher identity. Factor analysis was employed to obtain six factors of interpretable structure including career identity, interactional identity, institutional identity, professional identity, situated identity, and personal identity. The most significant factor perceived by both novice teachers and experienced teachers was situated identity and the least significant was recognized to be the institutional identity. The results showed that there is a medium relationship between years of teaching experience and identity. A small relationship was also found between teachers' gender and identity.

Keywords

• experienced teacher
• gender
• novice teacher
• teacher identity