While the past two decades have witnessed a surge of studies on the researcher identity of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academics, research on how the intertwined connections between EFL academics and the larger ecological system within an institution affect their researcher identity construction remains relatively scarce. Utilizing a…

There is an increasing number of Chinese graduate students who study in Canada and have quite different educational backgrounds. Despite a large number of studies attending to the challenges and difficulties they encountered in life and study, not much research narratively explores Chinese international students' academic adjustment experiences in…

This article explores how a group of teaching-oriented academics--College English (CE) teachers in China--negotiate their collective identity at the workplace amid research discourse. Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework focusing on the interrelationship between discourse, practice, and social networks, the study reveals the field of…

The current expansion of English language publishing by scholars from China is supported by national and university policies, including monetary and career incentives to publish in English. These incentives, which extend to work in the humanities and social sciences (HSS, the focus of this paper) as well as the sciences and technologies, are…

This paper reports on a comparative study that investigates English language teacher educators' ideal identities from the dual perspectives of language teachers and teacher educators in China. Drawing on data from focus and individual interviews, the findings of the study reveal a range of identities such as 'practical expert,' 'model' and…

This chapter examines the life, learning, and research experiences of an American scholar who immigrated to the United States from China where she received her primary and secondary school education, and taught ESL at the prestigious Chinese university from which she graduated. The scholar reflects on her stories in China and in the United States…

This study explores how a transient community of Chinese visiting scholars in the US negotiates the language norms and identity in the transnational spaces. Transient communities, being different from diasporic stable communities in terms of flexibility and fluidity of movements, are subject to continuous negotiation of social or language norms.…

The increase of international exchange in education triggers strong demand for learning English language skills in various academic disciplines among Chinese students, which brings up a wide implementation of EAP (English for academic purposes) learning in universities in China. However, the teaching and learning result do not seem to be as…

This study explores how two language teachers constructed and reconstructed their professional identities through their action research (AR) facilitated by university researchers in China. Informed by the theory of 'community of practice', the findings of the study show that AR exerted a transformative impact on the teachers' identity development.…

Drawing on narrative inquiry, the present study aims to investigate the trajectory of identity formation of EFL university teachers. Two types of data are collected. One type comes from life histories of Hyland (2014), Nunan (2011) and Widdowson (2009), and the other type comes from semi-structured interviews with three excellent university…

This study aims to re-story the provision of the context-model-based instruction in teaching EFL writing, focusing especially on students' development of the context model and learning to guide EFL writing with the context model. The research data have been collected from the audio recordings of the classroom instruction, the teacher-researcher's…

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…

This volume recognises how many researchers across the social sciences, and in comparative and international education in particular, see themselves as insiders or outsiders or, more pertinently, shifting combinations of both, in the research process. The book revisits and problematises these concepts in an era where the global mobility of…

Workplace influences on Chinese Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) academics' development as researchers were examined in two Chinese higher education institutions in this qualitative collective case study. Data sources included research documentation and interviews with 12 Chinese TEFL academics. Both institutions were keen on research…

Research engagement is an important means for teachers to develop their professional competence. This paper reports on an enquiry into the research engagement of a group of primary school English language teachers in Guangdong province on the Chinese mainland. Drawing on questionnaire data and teachers' interview narratives, the paper examines how…