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LTR18210.1177/1362168813505943Language Teaching ResearchXu

LANGUAGE TEACHING RESEARCH

Article

Becoming researchers: A narrative study of Chinese university EFL teachers’ research practice and their professional identity construction

Language Teaching Research 2014, Vol. 18(2) 242–259 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1362168813505943 ltr.sagepub.com

Yueting Xu

Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China

Abstract This article reports on a narrative study of university EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers’ research practices and their identity construction as researchers in China. Drawing upon data from narrative frames among 104 teachers and in-depth interviews with four teachers, the study reveals that teachers’ increased research engagement, as well as mixed attitudes towards and external drives for research, are mediated by their mixed contexts of supporting policies and practical constraints. It also recounts four scenarios of teachers’ identity construction as researchers and explores the reasons why their identities as researchers are more or less fragmented at different times, which may be attributed to academic competence signaled by research interests and publications, institutional and peer support in the workplace, and the professional life cycles in which they are involved. It concludes with implications for promoting research and teachers’ becoming researchers as paths for empowerment and professional excellence through joint efforts from university administrators, mentors, teacher educators and teachers.

Keywords Identity construction, narrative study, research practice, university EFL teachers

I Introduction Since China reopened its doors to the world in the late 1970s, the public has shown unwavering enthusiasm for English learning (Gao, Barkhuizen, & Chow, 2011). English Corresponding author: Yueting Xu, School of English and Education, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Higher Education Mega City, Guangzhou 510006, China. Email: [email protected]

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language at the tertiary level is widely accepted not only as an essential skill, but also a prerequisite for graduation and a gateway to better job opportunities. Such increased expectations for English learning have brought with them higher standards for university professionals of English as a foreign language (EFL). With the promulgation of College English curriculum requirements (Ministry of Education, 2007) and National mediumand long-term framework for educational reform and development from 2010 to 2020 (Ministry of Education, 2010, abbreviated as Framework below), university EFL teachers have been required to adapt themselves to a wide range of teaching reforms and to conduct research to improve their pedagogical practices. One fundamental argument underpinning this requirement is that teachers’ research engagement, as well as their pedagogical decisions informed by research, will benefit both their teaching and their students’ learning (Hargreaves, 1999). Accordingly, most universities in China have placed stringent requirements for publications by teachers (Wang & Han, 2011). This is a very challenging obligation to the English teaching profession, which has a weak research tradition when compared to other disciplines in the social sciences (Dai, 2009). Thus, research practice has become something of a ‘bottleneck’ (Wang & Han, 2011, p. 44) for many EFL teachers’ professional development, as their career progression is influenced by their research productivity (Borg & Liu, 2013). This study is, in part, an attempt to address the tension between the high expectations for EFL teachers’ research practice and the dim reality of the existing situation. However, understanding the status quo is only the first step. To fully understand the complexities of EFL teachers’ research practices, it is essential to examine how they ‘form a sense of themselves – identities – in relation to ways of inhabiting roles, positions, and cultural imaginaries that matter to them’ (Holland & Lachicotte, 2007, p. 103). This article, therefore, intends to make connections between the facts of teachers’ research practice and their discursive positioning as researchers. Specifically, the article aims to answer the following two questions: 1. What is the status quo of Chinese university English teachers’ research practice? 2. How do teachers construct their identities as researchers and what factors shape their identity construction? Although these questions have specific relevance to the context being studied here, they are also of value to the field of language teaching in general, particularly in an age when teachers are expected to become researchers. These questions should also be of interest to those who would like to promote the formation of this identity among teachers.

II Literature review 1 Language teachers’ research practice Although research practice may seem self-explanatory, it is used here as an umbrella term that includes teachers’ research engagement, attitudes, motivations, perceptions and the contexts in which their research is situated. Research, for the purpose of this study, means

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not only action research, but also research into specific areas and academic research in general. The relevant research that informed this study includes two types of literature. The first are those that conceptualize, advocate or criticize teacher research (Borg, 2010; Zeichner, 2003), which can be described as a way of promoting social change, making collaborative enquiries within the community, and developing teachers’ practical knowledge (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999). These claimed benefits, however, remain unconfirmed by strong empirical evidence and thus raise some serious doubts (Darling-Hammond, Hammerness, Grossman, Rust, & Shulman, 2005). One major criticism is its simplistic assumption of a positive correlation between teachers’ research engagement and their teaching practice (Hammersley, 2004). Such doubt only increases when a closer examination of teacher research shows that its authors are mostly university professors or PhD candidates (Kieley & Davis, 2010). This leads to concerns about teachers’ actual involvement in research, which requires empirical evidence of their research practice. The other source of literature is an increasing body of work that has investigated language teachers’ research activities, their perceptions of research, and their understanding of their institutional research culture (Allison & Carey, 2007; Barkhuizen, 2009; Borg, 2007, 2009; Borg & Liu, 2013; Gao et al., 2011). Findings include a moderate level of research engagement, a technical view of research, and contextual and personal constraints on research practice. These studies have provided evidence-based answers to the questions concerning ‘what’ language teachers’ research engagement is and ‘why’ they are not more research-engaged. Oddly though, most of them seem to have overlooked the issue of how teachers position themselves as researchers, which leads to teacher identity research.

2 Language teachers’ professional identity The concept of identity has been widely discussed in general education in recent decades (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004; Connelly & Clandinin, 1999). Evolving from structuralism to constructivism, identity is now generally accepted as situated and multidimensional, involving negotiation between the individual and socio-cultural contexts (Beijaard et al., 2004). Professional identity as ‘a continuing site of struggle’ (MacLure, 1993, p. 312) has become an important means of understanding what it means to be a teacher in changing contexts (Day, 2011). Compared to the fruitful research in education, interest in teacher identity in TESOL is fairly recent (Liu & Y. Xu, 2011; Norton & Early, 2011; Tsui, 2007). A review of the literature shows that three main themes have been widely discussed. The first is the relationship between teachers’ linguistic positions and professional identity. These studies explore how the dichotomy of native-speakers (NS) / non-native-speakers (NNS) has saddled NNS teachers with feelings of inferiority, thus prompting them to question their competence as legitimate language education professionals (Jenkins, 2005; Park, 2012; Pavlenko, 2003). The second theme explores conflicts between social and professional identities (Motha, 2006; Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnston, 2005) and posits that teachers’ professional identities have been undermined by their gender, race and ethnicity. These studies champion a holistic, dynamic view of understanding how the negotiations between teachers and the wider socio-cultural contexts have shaped their professional identity.

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Conscious of the socio-cultural impacts, the third theme explores how teacher identity is mediated in educational reforms (Liu & Y. Xu, 2011; Tsui, 2007). Drawing upon the community of practice theory (Wenger, 1998), these studies situate identity in an immediate work unit and highlight the need for teachers to reconstruct their identity to cope with new challenges of competing pedagogies in the workplace. Apart from the three main themes, another issue remaining unresolved is the relationship among the multiple dimensions of teacher identity. The central controversy is whether these ‘sub-identities’ (Mishler, 1999, p. 8) are in competition or can be harmonized and balanced (Beijaard et al., 2004). In TESOL, Jurasaite-Harbison and Rex’s study (2005) examined how a teacher took on a researcher’s identity through research participation, while Norton and Early (2011) took a close look at their own experiences and illuminated the ways which researcher identity is negotiated in language teaching research. Following this line of inquiry, the present study attempts to gain an in-depth understanding of Chinese university EFL teachers’ identity construction as researchers.

III Methodology 1 A narrative study Since the early 1970s, social sciences have embraced a ‘narrative turn’ (Riessman, 2008, p. 14). In TESOL, the past decade has witnessed a surge in empirical narrative research (Barkhuizen, 2009; Johnson & Golombek, 2002; Tsui, 2007; Y. Xu & Liu, 2009). One area where the resurrection of interest in narrative is particularly evident is in relation to identity (S. Xu & Connelly, 2009). Teacher identity, in particular, is ‘stories to live by’ (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999, p. 4). These studies support my choice of using a narrative approach to explore teachers’ research practice and identity. Both surveys of narrative frames and individual in-depth interviews were used in this study. They were not viewed as separate parts but as complements to one another. The use of narrative frames was intended to collect a small corpus of narratives so that broader generalizations could be made. The interviews, then, helped reduce the risk of ‘eliciting a set of factual statements’ (Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008, p. 383) brought about by the narrative frames, and gain ‘discursive constructions’ (Pavlenko, 2002, p. 216) essential to narrative research.

2 Survey of narrative frames According to Barkhuizen and Wette (2008), narrative frames provide teachers with guidance and support in both the structure and content of narratives. Thus, I designed a template of frames that consists of 14 statement starters intended to guide teachers to reflect on their research practice in coherent narratives (Appendix 1). The frames cover five broad themes: 1. demographic information; 2. institutional requirements and policies; 3. engagement with research (reading) and in research (doing);

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4. motivations for and attitudes towards research; and 5. perceived challenges and solutions. The selection of these five themes was based on the contemporary situation of Chinese university EFL teachers’ research practices (Dai, 2009; Wang & Han, 2011), relevant literature concerning teacher research engagement (Borg, 2009; Borg & Liu, 2013; Gao et al, 2011), and an earlier pilot study with 10 teachers and three researchers. An invitation email was sent to EFL teachers working at four universities in China. With the teachers’ consent, a total of 120 copies of the survey were sent out. Altogether, 104 teachers completed the survey, with a return rate of 86.7%. The analysis of narrative frames followed the steps of qualitative content analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994): themes were coded and categorized, relations between themes and categories were identified, and interpretations of their interrelations were made.

3 Individual interviews The interviews were conducted with four teachers from University A. They were among the participants of the narrative frames, and purposefully selected to allow for ‘maximum variation’ (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 28) of genders, professional life phases, and reported research experiences. I did not choose teachers from each of the four universities for two reasons. First, the four teachers from University A were my colleagues with whom I have long established trust and rapport. This relationship ensures high quality data in which the participants’ stories were told with fidelity (Riessman, 2008). Second, as a narrative understanding of teachers’ identity requires the researcher to enter the ‘three dimensional life space’ (S. Xu & Connelly, 2009, p. 223) of the participants, multiple institutional contexts may have become problematic when attempting to understand and interpret them. In the interviews, the participants were first asked to elaborate on their written narratives and later invited to talk over questions concerning their research ‘history’, current research practices and the process by which they tried to construct their identities as researchers (Appendix 2). The interviews were conducted in Chinese and lasted on average for 60–90 minutes. All interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated into English by the researcher. The translated transcripts were then sent back to the participants to check for any inaccuracies or alterations. After the interview transcriptions were returned with feedback, they were subject to a process of qualitative content analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994), which produced 108 codes in open coding and three broader themes in axial coding. Moreover, the teachers’ narratives were rewritten as coherent and condensed stories, which were later sent back to the teachers to verify authenticity and give their consent for use. The teachers wrote back to provide further information or make alterations of their stories, which I then rewrote, further negotiating with them to settle on a theme that accurately described their scenarios.

4 Participants The teachers varied in gender, years of teaching (Huberman, 1989) and professional titles. Almost 84% were female and about 73% were lecturers, both of which are typical

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Xu Table 1. Institutional requirements and policies. Categories

Frequency (n = 104)

Examples from the teachers’ written response

Requirements: Publication

99

Funding

47

T4: to publish at least one paper in top journals per year T27: to publish at least one paper each year T66: to work as the principal investigator of a university-level project

Policies: Awards: One-time bonus payment

84

Honorary titles

33

Praises or acknowledgements

7

Punishment: (Non)promotion Annual evaluation Punishment not applicable

15 12 8

T28: One of my colleagues who published a paper in an international journal was awarded 10,000 yuan T101: The higher level the journal is, the more money T72: They will be awarded the title of ‘Research Activists’ T59: Productive researchers will be acknowledged by the president in the annual meeting on Teachers’ Day T90: No publication, no promotion T35: Teachers who have not published will be disqualified in the annual ‘Excellent Teachers’ evaluation T44: Currently teachers who don’t publish anything will not be punished

for university EFL teachers in China. In terms of their teaching experience, about 36.5% of them had 7–15 years, 28.9% had 4–6 years and 26.9% had 16–25 years.

IV Research practice of university English teachers Using the full dataset of 104 narrative frames, I briefly report the findings in the following two aspects: research contexts and research practice.

1 Mixed contexts: Supportive policies vs. practical constraints Table 1 presents the teachers’ narratives of institutional requirements and policies, while Table 2 summarizes their perceived challenges in research and their suggested solutions. The narratives from the two tables constitute the mixed contexts for teachers’ research practices. Although all four universities have stringent requirements for the number of publications by teachers, most of the policies seemed more rewarding than punishing. For example, the universities seem to recognize teachers’ research efforts with bonus payment, honorary titles, and acknowledgements from university leaders, which are intended to reward those who are active and productive in research, and encourage others to do the same.

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Table 2. Perceived challenges and suggested solutions. Categories

Frequency

Examples from the teachers’ written responses

Challenges: Publishing

30

Time constraint

29

A lack of resources

13

A lack of support from mentors, research teams and institutes

12

One’s own research capacity and motivation Suggested solutions: More time investment More guidance

13

T42: Few journals and too many teachers T88: Too difficult to get published. It also needs social network T70: Not enough time. Too much teaching T66: I am interrupted by childcare and housework and cannot spare time to do research T75: I don’t have access to latest international journals T93: Too difficult to get research funding T19: I have no guide in my academic journey T50: I am not in a research team from which I could seek help T61: My faculty did not provide any financial support T1: I need a tranquil mind to concentrate on research T97: Research has little to do with my teaching

Joining a research community Less teaching workload

19

T49: if I had more time to read and write T77: if I had a mentor who would teach me how to write for publication T15: if I were enrolled in a doctoral program

17

T101: if my faculty would allow me to teach less

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Nevertheless, the teachers believed that their research efforts were often compromised by many constraints, such as publishing, teaching overload, a shortage of resources, and a lack of support from mentors, as well as self-efficacy beliefs. Among them, complaints about publishing were the most common, often attributed to a disproportionate number of key language education journals compared to university EFL teachers in China and the importance of social networking in publishing. The issue seems more critical when it is related to punishment for teachers: ‘No publication, no promotion’ (Teacher 90). Interestingly, although most teachers ascribed the challenges for research practice to external conditions, they gave ‘more time investment in research’ as the major solution, which seems to reflect a degree of self-attrition.

2 Research practice: More frequent engagement, extrinsic motivation and mixed attitudes Table 3 summarizes the teachers’ research practice in four sub-categories: engagement with research, engagement in research, motivations, and attitudes. It is encouraging to note that teachers’ research engagement seems more frequent, as many teachers reported that they read research ‘often’ or ‘very often’. Compared with reading research, the

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Xu Table 3. Research practice. Categories

Frequency (n = 104)

Examples from teachers’ written responses

Engagement with research (reading research): How often: Very often 17 T7: every day Often 28 T24: quite often Sometimes 39 T40: once a week Seldom 20 T55: once or twice in one semester Never 2 T99: never Engagement with research (reading research): Causes: Shortage of time 71 T12: I have no time, because teaching and preparation for teaching take up most of my time T23: Not enough time, too much housework T34: lack of time because I am a program director Lack of interest or 24 T56: I don’t want to get promotion. I don’t need motivation to read research T73: It is boring. I have many other interesting thing s to do in my life T88: Too much plagiarism in the academy. I don’t see any value reading it Limited access to 9 T44: I don’t live on campus, and have limited resources access to international journals Engagement in research (doing research): How often: (Very) often 23 T71: frequently T33: every week Sometimes 55 T92: only during summer vacations Seldom/never 25 T6: I don’t do research Engagement in research (doing research): Motivations: Promotion or graduation 70 T87: promotion T72: my PhD dissertation Professional 16 T61: my further development development T3: improving my teaching Personal interest 15 T7: myself, as it is part of my life Engagement in research (doing research): Attitudes: Passive 37 T5: I was not born for research, so I have to cultivate my research interest T24: If not for promotion, I would not do research Willing to do it but 33 T79: I would like to do research if I didn’t need unable to do it to worry about life T35: Strong in will but weak in power Serious 12 T93: very serious Interested 10 T21: If life continues, my inquiries won’t stop Not interested 8 T103: Not interested in it at all

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teachers’ engagement in doing research is less frequent, with three main reasons given: lack of time, interest and motivation. The motivations for doing research, however, tend to be more extrinsic than intrinsic; the majority reported doing research for promotion or graduation, while few do it to improve teaching or out of personal interest. In relation to this extrinsic motivation, their attitudes towards research reveal a kind of passiveness, as Teacher 24 reported: ‘If not for promotion, I would not do research.’ It is also noteworthy that many teachers seem to feel powerless due to practical constraints on research, summarizing their attitudes as ‘strong in will but weak in power’.

V Professional identity construction as researchers: Four scenarios Min, Dan, Jenny and Peter (pseudonyms) all work in the English department of University A. Below are four scenarios, each portraying their discursive positioning as researchers.

Scenario 1: A struggling periphery research practitioner Min was a lecturer in his early thirties with six years’ teaching experience. His written responses revealed that he had undergone many struggles in research that, in turn, triggered more thoughts about what constituted an EFL professional. Min was shy when we first talked, but he laughed at himself several times for his zigzagging academic career. I was not interested in research in my first two years of teaching. I was then obsessed with teaching. I used to spend a lot of time preparing for teaching and compiling textbooks. Things changed when some confusion arose in my classroom. I turned to research for an answer. I then started to read research. After reading, I strongly felt that as a university teacher I needed to do research. Research would help me find out who I am.

After realizing the importance of research, Min started his journey of ‘self-exploration’ by looking for his research focus. He found it a difficult and slow process, during which his mind wandered. When I decided to do research, I found it hard to start. First, I had no idea of what to start with. I read books of different kinds, and soon realized that there were too many things to read. I was exhausted by this kind of reading. I was lost, not knowing what to focus on. I then found it a waste of time and decided to do textbook compiling that I had quitted.

After re-joining the textbook compilation team, Min did not give up his pursuit of research. He kept reading research, attended lectures and conferences whenever possible, and regularly discussed research issues with his colleagues. Finally, he found a focus. My colleagues were very helpful. They gave me a lot of advice when I approached them, peers or professors. I am now focusing on vocabulary acquisition. I am lucky, although it took me three years. It was the critical point of my research life … I feel much more affirmative about my research now, knowing what to do. Without this focus, I would not think of myself as a researcher.

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Min considered interest as a critical factor for his self-positioning as a researcher. Yet to him, a researcher was more than someone with a stable research interest; a researcher should have his/her ‘representative’ publications. He became frustrated when we talked of the latter. My problem now is no publication. I used to read and do research for my own interest, but my friends and family persuaded me to do it with an instrumental purpose. My best friend, who is also a university EFL teacher, advised me to study what the journal editors wanted before my submission. I never thought of it before. Probably he was right. Publishing in an international refereed journal is difficult, but publishing at home is harder! People said co-authoring with a big potato would help, or you may need to know someone working in the editorial office. I don’t know … I really need advice from experienced researchers.

Min’s confusion over motivations for research and his frustration over difficulties in publishing have prevented him from going further in his academic journey. What he likely needed, as he had realized, was advice from mentors. He spared no effort to become a researcher, but had not yet succeeded. He was still struggling as a periphery research practitioner who yearned to be included in the academy.

Scenario 2: A self-contented established researcher Compared to Min, Dan was much luckier. What struck me most about her written response was her passion for research. With 18 years’ teaching experience, she was a very productive associate professor. When talking of her research ‘history’, she mentioned a self-positioning process similar to Min’s. I spent a lot of time searching for my research interest. I was lost after reading books and articles. I then took the advice of my dean that I should join a research group. I then joined a reading group held by Dr Lin. The discussions with my peers there inspired me a lot. After a year or so, I was enrolled as a PhD candidate. I felt much more obliged to do research.

Although joining the PhD program helped Dan identify her research interest, it was still more of an obligation than an intrinsic need for her. She found it really ‘tough’ doing research. The turning point did not come until she published her first article in an international peer-refereed journal. It took me eight months to write the draft in English. I had negative experiences of submitting papers to key journals at home. The editors didn’t give me replies or comments when they rejected my papers. I decided to submit it to an international journal this time. After I submitted it, I was expecting a rejection with criticisms. To my great surprise, it was accepted with minor revisions! I was greatly motivated by this. I felt that my work had been recognized by the international academy. Since then, research has become part of my life.

Apparently, the first publication was extremely important to Dan. To her, getting published in a peer-refereed journal was a sign of being accepted by the academy. Her research has become a virtuous circle since then: the more articles published, the more

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motivated she became. When asked about the relationship between teaching and research, she gave a very thought-provoking answer. To me, teaching is bottom-up. It’s free, up to the teacher to decide what to do. That’s probably why most of us love teaching. But research is top-down. It’s compulsory. If we don’t do research, we have no chances for promotion. We do not have our own say in this matter. That’s probably why some teachers feel resentful about research. I used to think that way, but now I see it differently. Research is now what I need and enjoy; [it’s] no more a top-down package.

According to Dan, the main reason why some teachers do not favor research lies in its prescriptive nature. Usually Dan and her colleagues had no say in deciding whether they should be research-engaged or have their work published. Most of them ‘had to’ be research-engaged because their career progression was related to research productivity. Luckily, Dan took the initiative and successfully established her researcher identity with a self-contented mind.

Scenario 3: A passive would-be researcher Jenny has been a very popular teacher in her 10 years’ teaching. Her remarks that ‘I was not born for research, so I have to cultivate my interest in research’ on the narrative frames helped me to understand more of her lived experience. However, she looked very tired during the interview. She described her life as ‘overwhelming’ with three challenging roles to play: mother, teacher and PhD candidate. You see, I have to teach, attend classes in the doctoral program and take care of my daughter. I have no time for myself. I used to shop a lot, but last year I didn’t shop even once! I was overwhelmed, exhausted. In order to pass the courses, I have to read books and articles, which I didn’t do much before.

Because of her enrollment in the PhD program, Dan was allowed to teach less. She felt very grateful for this policy. I am lucky. I am allowed to teach only four hours per week this year. This policy of my university is intended to encourage teachers to pursue a higher degree. I can’t manage it without this support. My school is also humanistic. My classes are arranged on the same morning. It means that I teach only one morning per week and I could concentrate on my research in the rest of the week.

Fortunate as she was, Jenny said that she was ‘forced’ to do research simply because it was prioritized over teaching in the promotion review. It seems that there are no other ways out. Being enrolled in a PhD program is the only one. Without guidance and research team, you would be lost in your academic tour. I love teaching, and I used to think that if I teach well, I don’t need to do research. It was proved wrong. My application for promotion was turned down because I didn’t have papers published in key journals! I was upset. So even though I am not interested in doing research, I have to because I want a promotion.

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Jenny best represents those who reported their passive attitude towards research on the narrative frames. Yet, despite her extrinsic motivation and passive attitude, Jenny still dreamed of soon becoming a researcher and made every effort to cultivate her own research interests.

Scenario 4: A disheartened non-researcher Peter was among the few participants who had less than three years of teaching. His written response revealed his unhappy research experience, which he partly attributed to his current work contract and partly to the financial pressure to find an affordable apartment. When we met, he proudly told me about his being recruited by the university, which was an exception to their university policy. I was the only teacher who did not hold a PhD degree among the newly-recruited. I earned it because of my championship in the national English speaking contest and my outstanding academic performance in the MA program. I was ambitious then. I’d made up my mind to do as well in my new position.

However, Peter soon found that his work contract was different from his colleagues’. It was a temporary contract to be renewed every five years based on work evaluation, while his colleagues had ‘permanent’ ones, commonly known as an ‘iron rice bowl’. What made him feel even worse was that his university required contract teachers to publish just like others, yet placed them on different promotion tracks. I was very upset when I knew mine was a temporal contract. I don’t mind constant evaluation of my work. What I am concerned [about] is the inequality brought by this difference. Payment, medical care and insurance, etc. I was more upset when I was told that I cannot apply to be an associate professor because I was placed in the ‘new system’ of work contract. I don’t know whether it is true, but it discouraged me a lot.

Because of his position as a new, non-tenured teacher, research became a risky activity. He was not sure whether it was worthwhile and didn’t dare to invest much time and effort, as he had to teach more hours to save money for an apartment. Thus, he gave all his attention to classroom teaching and alienated himself from research. I enjoy teaching a lot. What I say and do in the classroom will have an impact on my students. I feel I am needed and it’s rewarding. I won’t be as important in research. Even though I publish a paper, I influence nobody. It is a waste of time doing it.

Peter represents those who have little motivation for research for different reasons. Sadly, he remained a non-researcher.

VI Discussion Overall, the results of this study show that university EFL teachers’ research practices (i.e. a higher level of research engagement, extrinsic motivation for and mixed attitudes

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towards research) are mediated by the mixed contexts of supporting policies and practical constraints. Although this finding seems encouraging when compared to prior reports of unsupportive institutions and modest levels of research engagement (Borg, 2009), it needs further investigation into what actually shapes the mixed contexts. This requires one to enter the ‘three dimensional life space’ (S. Xu & Connelly, 2009, p. 223) where teachers live and tell their stories. Situated in the macro contexts of national policies, the recent promulgation of Framework (Ministry of Education, 2010), which advocates research as one of the essential obligations for university teachers, has placed external pressure on universities. For example, those with more quality publications are likely to be evaluated by the Ministry of Education as ‘key’ universities and thus receive more funding and prestige. In the micro institutional contexts, universities usually convert the pressure from above into policies that encourage teachers to actively engage in research, but are often unprepared to provide the support and resources that teachers need, such as reduced teaching load, training workshops for publishing, and mentoring from senior researchers. However, many of these challenges remain across China, which may put the changes beyond the power of the universities. For example, teaching overload may result from increases in enrollment and large class sizes (Liao, 2004); the lack of support from senior researchers may be attributed to the paucity of doctoral programs in foreign language education (Wang & Han, 2011); the difficulty of publishing is perhaps due to the centralized power of editors of journals at home whose decision-making is complicated by local values of friendship, collegiality and politics (Shi, Wang, & Xu, 2005). Mediated by these contexts, teachers’ research practices cannot be accounted for simply in terms of their increased research engagement. Their underlying motivations and attitudes are more important. Extrinsic motivation, along with passive and powerless attitudes towards research, seems to imply teachers’ vulnerability when confronted with mixed contexts. As teachers are often subject to educational administration or policy (Kelchtermans, 2011), they seem to have little choice but to be research-engaged due to pressure from the promotion review system that prioritizes research over teaching and other responsibilities. Due to this top-down pressure, research seems to be undertaken as an isolated activity away from teachers’ daily practice. This phenomenon, though quite common across contexts (Borg, 2009), sends a misleading message to teachers, as it obviously conflicts with the potential of teacher research to inform and enrich pedagogy (Hargreaves, 1999) and undermines the assumption that teachers’ reading or doing research will have a positive impact on their teaching (Hammersley, 2004). These findings invite further inquiry into how both teachers and their teaching can benefit from their research practices. Our understanding of teachers’ research practices, however, cannot stop at discussions of their motivations and attitudes. The four scenarios reveal that the success of teachers’ identity construction as researchers largely depends on four key factors: research interests, publications, micro-academic environments, and professional life phases. Both Min’s and Dan’s narratives show that a stable research interest could be seen as an entry sign of competence as researchers, without which teachers may be unable to read and do research consistently. Although attitudinal challenges such as lack of encouragement and motivation are often cited (Allison & Carey, 2007; Borg, 2009), this finding

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highlights research interest as a professional challenge to teachers’ research engagement, which is an unexplored area in teacher research. It is likely that teachers who fail to locate their research interest will be discouraged, and therefore unable to remain consistently research-engaged. The importance of this interest entails the necessity of professional preparation in pre-service programs and sheds light on the importance of guidance from mentors and teacher educators in helping teachers orientate their research interests. The orientation of research interests, however, is only the first step to becoming a researcher. To discursively position oneself as a researcher requires publications. In this study, Dan attributed her successful self-identification to her first published article, while Min was uncertain of himself as a researcher due to his lack of publications. As Wenger notes (1998, p. 203), ‘members whose contributions are never adopted develop an identity of non-participation that progressively marginalizes them.’ Failures in publishing often lead teachers to doubt their research competence, to feel denied by the academy, and eventually to withdraw from research participation. The issue of publishing, therefore, cannot be judged simply from the conventional perspective that teachers are under pressure to publish for promotion or funding, but needs to be re-evaluated by considering its value in their identity construction as researchers. However, it would be impossible to meet the aforementioned two challenges without support from institutions and peers. The help Min received from his colleagues, the discussions Dan had with her peers, and the teaching load reduction for Jenny all highlight the impact that institutional and peer support can have on teachers’ active research engagement and academic success. Yet, no matter how powerful this impact might be, such support seems irregular and random. Only teachers who took the initiative benefited. The majority remained ‘powerless’ or confused, as shown by their written responses. Clearly, it is not enough to rely on teachers’ initiatives to seek institutional and peer support. Such support should be made a regular working mechanism where productive research-engaged teams/communities are established and members work with and for each other to explore issues of common interest (Sharp, Eames, Sanders, & Tomlinson, 2006). As the ‘three-dimensional life space’ (S. Xu & Connelly, 2009, p. 223) suggests, teachers’ identity construction is also related to ‘temporality’, the professional life phases they are in. The classification of teachers’ professional life cycles suggests that there are appropriate moments for carrying out specific tasks and qualitatively different ways of orienting one’s career at different points (Floden & Huberman, 1989). For example, Peter, at the career entry of ‘survival’ and ‘discovery’ (Huberman, 1989, p. 349), was more concerned with sustaining his job and buying an apartment. Yet these needs seem to be in conflict with the inequalities in the work contract and thwarted by the sociocultural influences of surging house prices in China. As Day (2011) asserts, teachers’ professional identities are a composite of three clusters of influences: the socio-cultural, workplace and personal. The socio-cultural and workplace influences have affected, if not necessarily determined, his commitment to research and ability to exercise his agency. It can be argued that the teachers’ identities as researchers may be more or less fragmented, depending on how they manage different influences in their professional life phases.

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VII Conclusions and implications This study has brought into focus some key findings concerning teachers’ perception of research and their research identity construction, namely, that teachers’ increased level of research engagement, varying attitudes towards research, and external drive for conducting it are mediated by mixed contexts, and their identity construction as researchers is shaped by research interests, publications, peer and institutional support, and professional life phases. Before responding to these findings with some practical suggestions, it is necessary to reiterate that this study was not intended to argue for the necessity of teachers’ research engagement, but to gain a narrative understanding of teachers’ lived experiences with research. This understanding has implications for other similar contexts where institutional expectations for teachers’ research are high, and yet are often compromised by socio-cultural, professional and personal influences. It can thus be concluded that favorable policies and institutional encouragement may not suffice for supporting university EFL teachers’ research. Rather, this goal is more likely to be achieved when: 1. Administrators show greater concern for teachers’ attitudes towards research and create a mechanism through which information about their attitudes can be collected, shared and discussed. They may also need to identify any additional support that teachers require, such as financial support and teaching workload. This measure may help teachers to minimize the tensions between work and life and keep a balance between teaching and research. 2. Senior researchers or mentors help teachers orientate their research interests and give advice on publications. They may invite the younger teachers to join their research teams where they could work with colleagues, discuss their research, and receive advice for individualizing their research plans. 3. Teacher educators become more aware of the impact of teachers’ professional life phases and provide them with diagnostic advice. For example, they may create chances for novice teachers to talk with senior teachers or researchers, whose experiences may help them meet the challenges in different life phases. 4. Teachers manage personal, workplace, and socio-cultural influences with their agency. With or without external support, teachers need to rely more on themselves to cultivate their research interest, seek professional advice and establish their own position in the academy by publishing their work. Finally, I would like to suggest that university EFL teachers’ research performance is unlikely to succeed without joint efforts from the above stakeholders of teachers’ research practice. Research should not be promoted as a prescriptive activity for teachers, but as part of a dynamic learning system in which these stakeholders negotiate and collaborate on a regular basis. Only when meaning is negotiated among the various parties involved, accompanied by the empowerment of teachers, can teachers achieve professional excellence through effective research efforts.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank all the teachers who participated in this study and Kyle McIntosh at Purdue University who helped proofread several versions of the article. I also wish to thank Prof. Yi’an Wu, Dr. Peter Gu, and the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of the article.

Funding This work was supported by Funds of Guangzhou Social Sciences (11Q21), Funds of Budding Researchers in Guangdong Province (2012WYM_0057), and Funds of National Social Sciences (12CYY026, 11BYY042).

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Appendix 1 The survey of narrative frames (translated from Chinese) 1) I am a _______ (gender) teacher working in _______ University. I have been teaching for ______ years, and I am now a(n) ___________ (professional title) in my university. The requirements of my university for my research practice are __________________ ______________________________________________________. My university or college will award or punish teachers’ research, for example ___________________ ___________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________. 2) I read research _________________ (frequency). I didn’t do it more often because ____________________________________________________________________. I _______ (frequency) do research on ______________________________. I do it mainly for _______________________________________________________. My attitudes towards research could be summarized as ____________________________ ___________________. 3) The biggest challenges confronted my research engagement is __________________ ______________________. If ________________________________, my research practice would improve.

Appendix 2 Individual interview questions 1. Can you tell me what your research interest is? 2. Can you describe a typical work day of yours? 3. What is your main motivation for research engagement? What do you think of the relationship between teaching and research? 4. When and how did you start doing research? Can you tell a story about it? 5. Are there any critical incidents or significant others that have influenced your research practice? If so, what are they? What have made you persist with or give up your research? 6. What are the attitudes of people around you towards your research practice? 7. What challenges did you confront in research? Do you consider yourself as a researcher? Why or why not? Can you tell a story of how you struggle in this process?