What Do In-Service Language Teachers‘ Promotion Discourses Reveal? Looking at Affordances and Constraints

Abstract

This article focuses on Polish in-service language teachers’ (n=48) perception of affordances and constraints communicated during a professional promotion examination for teachers. The study identified eighteen affordances and twenty constraints which were related to language (n=6), the learner (n=10), the teacher (n=6), parents (n=8) and the language teacher profession (n=9). In the light of these five concepts considered here, the most significant findings are the existence of discrepancy between English taught at school and English heard outside the classroom as well as the contextual factors which largely affect language teachers’ job (dis)satisfaction. Several ways in which these could be addressed to better conform to the current concerns are presented.