A Narrative Identity Analysis of Chronotopical Stages of EFL Iranian Teachers in Discourse Construction at Public Schools

The present study is a narrative identity analysis of chronotopical stages of EFL Iranian teachers in discourse construction at public schools. As explained by Olson (2008) 'teacher identity is a useful research frame because it treats teachers as whole persons in and across social contexts who continually reconstruct their views of themselves in relation to others, workplace characteristics, professional purposes, and cultures of teaching' (p. 5). Hence, the purpose of this research is to explore different aspects of teachers' identities by using narration as a procedural instrument and Bakhtin's theory as the theoretical framework of the study. Participants of the study are fifty male and female English language teachers aged 22 to 53 from public schools of Mashhad, Iran. The teachers' educational degree varies from Associate Degree and Bachelor of Art to Master of Art and Doctor of Philosophy. Narrative tasks and interviews are the instruments used for data collection in the present study. Through coding and line by line analysis of narratives, salient factors in determining the generic chronotopes are identified. In addition, through running Χ2, the significance levels are recognized. Diversity of these factors shows the complexity of reasons constituting discourses which affect teachers to make choices in their profession leading to the cyclic constructing and deconstructing of their identitities. Some pedagogical implications and applications are also proposed.