Autoethnography as a Research Methodology to Study Language Teacher Identity

Since the late 1990s, language teacher education research has focused on language teacher identity as a conceptual frame to understand language teachers’ learning, growth, and teaching experience more holistically and situated within the sociopolitical context. Scholars have used multiple qualitative research methodologies to examine language teachers’ identities in different contexts. Amongst those methodologies, case study, narrative inquiry, and ethnography stand out as the most commonly used ones. However, recently, especially since the early 2010s, an increasing number of researchers have started using autoethnography as a methodology to better understand different dimensions of language teacher identity. Autoethnography allows practitioners of language teaching, including teachers and teacher educators, to engage in a critical and self-reflexive cultural examination through the narration and analysis of their stories to understand the relationship between the self, the other, and surrounding discourses. In this chapter, I will discuss the characteristics of autoethnography as a qualitative methodology as well as the methodological affordances and challenges involved in studying language teacher identity. I will also describe my experience as a teacher educator using autoethnography to study my own teacher identity and designing critical autoethnographic narrative as an identity-oriented teacher learning activity in my teacher education practices. Lastly, I will share suggestions for colleagues who would like to use autoethnography methodologically and pedagogically in their professional lives.