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English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

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English for Specific Purposes


journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/esp/default.asp

Identity constructions of ESP teachers in a Chinese university


Jian (Tracy) Tao a, Xuesong (Andy) Gao b, *
a
School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, China
b
School of Education, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study draws on life-history interview data to examine the identity construction and
Available online 20 October 2017 negotiation of eight English for Specific Purposes (ESP) teachers at a Chinese university.
Informed by an adapted model of TESOL teacher identity (Pennington, 2014), the data
Keywords: analysis reveals that for the study participants becoming an ESP teacher is a complex
ESP teacher process of transforming professional practices and constructing professional identities. On
Teacher identity
the one hand, the participants felt a sense of intrinsic fulfillment through their teaching
Professional development
aimed at helping graduates acquire the ESP skills needed to support socioeconomic
development in the region. On the other hand, their construction of professional identities
is undermined by the marginalized status of ESP, as imposed by the institution. As English
language teachers are increasingly expected to equip university graduates with ESP skills
in diverse educational contexts, more attention and support are needed to facilitate ESP
teachers’ professional development and hence identity formation.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Language teachers’ professional lives and practices in tertiary contexts have been profoundly impacted by recent
educational changes worldwide. In language departments in the United States, for instance, structural changes have been
implemented to embrace language for specific purposes (LSP) (Grosse & Voght, 2012); in Europe the Bologna reforms have
focused on providing English for academic purposes (EAP) support (Fortanet-Gómez & Räisänen, 2008); and in Asia policies
have focused on the internationalization of business and education (Cheng & Anthony, 2014). These shifts in education
priorities have led to a growing body of literature that explores how English teachers respond to changing priorities in terms
of their professional development (e.g. Campion, 2016). The converging evidence from empirical studies to date indicates that
teacher identity is a central factor in adapting to changing educational environments, both for novice and experienced
teachers (Kubanyiova & Crookes, 2016). When shifts in education priorities occur, teachers may need to acquire new
knowledge, but even more important is the need for teachers to build or rebuild their identities (Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Xu,
2014). Failure to address teacher development may result in identity struggles. For example, English for specific purposes
(ESP) teachers may confront embarrassment when working with students who have more knowledge of the related subjects,
and skepticism from specialist professors who question their qualifications (Tao & Gao, 2017; Tsou & Chen, 2014). Given the
importance of these issues, this paper addresses teachers’ professional identity struggles as mediated by ongoing educational
changes in a mainland Chinese university.

* Corresponding author. F-20 Goodsell Building, School of Education, The University of New South Wales, High St, Kensington NSW 2052 Australia.
E-mail addresses: tao.jian@shufe.edu.cn (J.(Tracy) Tao), xuesong.gao@unsw.edu.au, andygohteacher@hotmail.com (X.(Andy) Gao).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2017.09.003
0889-4906/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

To explore the complex issue of ESP teachers’ professional identity struggles, here we focus on the context of China and
begin by briefly explaining the changing landscape of English teaching at the university level. The ongoing curriculum reform
of English language education in Chinese universities has taken into account the public expectation that college graduates
should be able to use English to engage in a wide range of international communication activities and in different disciplinary
areas (Cai, 2015; Wang, 2015). To meet these expectations, ESP teaching is considered as the key path (e.g. Cai, 2015), which
has in turn given rise to the further expectation that English teachers should become increasingly involved in teaching a range
of ESP subjects, even though this may require skills beyond their primary English language teaching (ELT) expertise. When
thrust into a situation for which they may lack expertise, these teachers must deal with important challenges such as
overcoming subject-matter knowledge gaps (Wu & Badger, 2009) and working with subject teachers who might have
competing pedagogical beliefs (e.g. Lo, 2014). Given limited in-service professional development opportunities, a further
challenge for English teachers compelled to teach ESP is that their qualifications to teach ESP in Chinese universities are often
questioned, especially since they generally have less subject-matter knowledge compared with subject teachers (Wang,
2010). Yet another challenge is that English teachers in Chinese universities, like their colleagues in tertiary institutions in
other contexts, also feel the pressure of finding ways to survive in a “publish or perish” academic culture (Lee, 2014). Research
output carries much weight in the career advancement of language teachers, including ESP teachers at the tertiary level. Faced
with competing obligations, these teachers can be described as “being caught in the middle” (Grosse & Voght, 2012, p. 190), as
they need to fulfill the research requirements imposed by the traditional language/linguistics departments to which they
belong, while at the same time deliver ESP courses that may be unrelated to those research activities. Further complicating
their career development is that ESP teachers have a lower status in relation to their linguistics and literature colleagues in
traditional language/linguistics faculties in Chinese universities (Wang, 2010). Taken together, the potential for identity
struggles is quite real. These struggles, however, have received limited attention in previous ESP research. The aim of this
paper, therefore, is to explore ESP teachers’ identity struggle and shed some light on the complexity of becoming an ESP
teacher in a tertiary setting (e.g. Tao & Gao, 2017; Tsou & Chen, 2014).

2. Teacher identity

The concept of teacher identity is often considered elusive, probably because of the much-debated nature of identity itself. We
embark on the challenging work of defining teacher identity by revisiting Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004), which identified
four features of teachers’ professional identity. That is, professional identity is “an ongoing process” of interpreting experiences
that connects “person and context,” consists of “sub-identities” and needs the exercise of “agency” (p.122, italics in original). These
features are consolidated in Sachs’s (2005) often-cited conceptualization of teacher identity, which is worth quoting again here:

It [teacher professional identity] provides a framework for teachers to construct their own ideas of ‘how to be’, ‘how to
act’ and ‘how to understand’ their work and their place in society. Importantly, teacher identity is not something that is
fixed nor is it imposed; rather it is negotiated through experience and the sense that is made of that experience (p. 15).

This conceptualization of teacher identity not only relates the origin of teacher identity to the relevant experience, but also
highlights its multifaceted and person-context features, which are examined and reemphasized as the central focus of teacher
identity scholarship (Beauchamp & Thomas, 2009). Language teachers were found to struggle with multiple identities when
they experience an identity shift from learner to teacher (Tsui, 2007); when they have to adopt appropriate positioning in the
face of different social agents (Whitsed & Volet, 2013); and when their gender, linguistic and sociocultural identities come into
play (Simon-Maeda, 2004). The negotiation of multiple identities often results in tension and involves the interplay between
the individual and the social (Bukor, 2015; Gu & Benson, 2015). For example, empirical studies have revealed that teacher
identities are constructed with reference to the social discourse on teachers and the teaching profession (Gu & Benson, 2015;
Simon-Maeda, 2004), the educational discourse on internationalization (Whitsed & Volet, 2013), and curricular changes, as
well as the school culture in particular institutions (Assaf, 2008; Buchanan, 2015; Flores & Day, 2006). These different levels of
context, in and outside the classroom, exert a consequential effect on teachers’ classroom instruction and professional lives
(Varghese, Morgan, Johnston, & Johnson, 2005). For instance, it is not uncommon for language teachers to take into account the
status of TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) or English language teaching (ELT) as a profession, which
then shapes their identities (Pennington, 2014). In addition, teachers were found to construct and perform identities indi-
vidually as mediated by their own schooling experiences and family influence (Bukor, 2015; Flores & Day, 2006; Gu & Benson,
2015). Although there is a general acknowledgment of the interaction between person and context, the majority of studies focus
on teachers’ instructional practices, which represent only one of the important facets of teacher identity (e.g. Assaf, 2008). By
situating ESP teachers in different layers of the context, this study attempts to unveil a more contextualized version of ESP
teachers’ professional identity construction that may be manifest in multiple sub-identities or facets of teacher identity.

3. Analytic framework

To capture the multi-faceted nature of teacher identity in shifting contexts, this study draws on an adapted model of TESOL
teacher identity (Pennington, 2014) to investigate the professional identities of ESP teachers as constructed in their
J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13 3

experiential accounts. The original model takes a frames perspective and highlights TESOL teacher identity in two frames:
practice-centered and context-centered frames (Pennington, 2014). The practice-centered frame can be deconstructed into
five sub-frames: instructional, disciplinary, professional, vocational and economic. The instructional frame reflects the “class-
room persona and the roles” that a teacher enacts during classroom instruction, including instructional “content and
methods” (Pennington, 2014, p. 20); the disciplinary frame is concerned with a teacher’s connection with a specific field,
including the field’s “knowledge and research” (p. 20); the professional frame refers to “individual teacher characteristics”
related to the knowledge, beliefs and practices of a particular field (p. 22); the vocational frame embraces the “affective
component” of teacher identity that encompasses a teacher’s “commitment and attachment” to teaching in a specific field (p.
23); finally, the economic frame addresses a teacher’s “academic and economic position” in a specific job or field (p. 24). The
five practice-centered frames of teacher identity are mediated by different frames of context, including global, local, and
sociocultural. The global frame refers to global trends, such as the spread of English as an international language, which shapes
the ELT field; the local frame refers to the context in which teachers work and live, including “departmental, institutional,
community and national contexts” (p. 26); and the sociocultural frame relates to the “linguistic, ethnic, racial and gender”
identity of a teacher, as perceived by the people with whom s/he interacts in the workplace (p. 27).
This frames model captures the multi-faceted features of ELT as well as, importantly, ESP teaching in particular, wherein
teachers are expected to assume a wider range of roles compared to their general ELT counterparts and to engage with
multiple communities of language teachers, subject teachers and professionals in related industries (Dudley-Evans & St.
Johns, 1998). As elaborated above, the model also foregrounds the mediation of different layers of the contextual condi-
tions on English language teachers’ professional practices and thus their construction of professional identities. Therefore,
drawing on Pennington (2014), we adapted the model and developed the following identity lenses to appreciate the pro-
fessional experiences of ESP teachers (Figure 1).
It should be noted that our adaptation of the model primarily focuses on contextual frames in order to fit the
contextual conditions of the study. Although the local frame has been acknowledged to have a greater effect on teacher
identity than the global frame (Pennington, 2014), the coverage of the former might be too broad to capture the influence
of different contextual forces on teachers. Informed by Layder’s (1993) research source map, we find it necessary to
delineate the local frame into the institutional and societal frame, both of which have been recognized to have conse-
quential effects on teacher identity formation (Varghese et al., 2005). In other words, the societal frame replaces the socio-
cultural frame in Pennington’s (2014) model that primarily concerns ethnolinguistic factors and has limited relevance to
our study.

Figure 1. An adapted model of frames of ESP teacher identity.


4 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

4. The study

This inquiry examined the experiential accounts of eight ESP teachers in a Chinese tertiary institution – Jinghai University
(pseudonym) – as the first research stage of an ethnographic study performed to investigate the ESP teachers’ professional
identities. The inquiry addressed the question:

How did English teachers construct their ESP teacher identities?

Life-history interviews1 were conducted in the first research stage to form the baseline data for the follow-up case studies.
Due to space limitations, here we focus on the life-history interview data as we believe that the participants’ narratives
provide rich and grounded answers to the research question proposed above.

4.1. Research context

English language courses are compulsory for all students in Chinese universities, but are offered by two departments that
target two groups of students. General English proficiency courses like College English are taught to non-English majors by
teachers in College English Departments (CED). CEDs have the mission of providing English language training and support in
Chinese universities, and may be similar to such academic units as English Language Centers or Language Centers in other
contexts. English major students take proficiency courses and specialized English courses (e.g. English linguistics and liter-
ature) in Departments of English, which are quite similar to their counterparts in other contexts (Cheng, 2016). In many
Chinese universities, the two departments often belong to the same faculty (Faculty of Foreign Languages or FFL, in this
study). Regardless of the type of course (for non-majors or majors), cohorts entering university come with higher levels of
English proficiency year on year, which has prompted English teachers and scholars to “rethink the goal of English teaching at
the tertiary level” (ibid, p. 121). At the same time, China’s expanding role in the global economic and political arena points to
an increasing demand for university graduates with composite talents (or ‘ESP skills’, be able to experience professional so-
cialization in English in the workplace) (Cheng & Wang, 2012; Zhang, 2015). It is against this backdrop that ESP courses were
introduced in 1999 to reform the College English curriculum and granted official status in the latest curriculum guidelines (Xu
& Fan, 2017). Interestingly, as College English courses for non-English major students in some Chinese universities have been
oriented to ESP, English-major programs are confronted with unexpected and serious challenges. Due to the reduced
competitiveness of English-major graduates relative to other college graduates in the job market, recent studies have noted
declining interest in choosing English as an undergraduate major (Qu, 2012). Traditional English-major programs that focus
on linguistic knowledge and competence must now also prepare graduates with knowledge in specific disciplines so that they
may be prepared to use English in particular professional contexts.
Located in a coastal city in one of the most affluent regions in China, the English-major program in the selected university
took note of the local economy, which heavily features export-related industries. In response, the program has been actively
promoting ESP to better prepare students for the local job market (i.e. to align its offerings with the social context), and was
ahead of the trend toward the integration of ESP into College English courses in other Chinese universities. For ten years, ESP
has been incorporated into the program’s core curriculum as one of the three concentrations, in parallel with literature and
linguistics (LL) and translation studies (TS), that English-major students are free to choose to obtain specialized training from
their third year onwards. The ESP Research Center (hereafter Center) was eventually established to facilitate intellectual
exchange among ESP teachers, but it lasted only two years. Despite institutional efforts to promote ESP, LL and TS remain the
mainstream interest, as reflected in the number of faculty members; 41 out of the 45 teachers in the Department of English
teach and conduct research in LL and TS. In other words, the language teachers involved in teaching business English, legal
English, and other ESP courses remain the minority, albeit central to the implementation of the curriculum reform.

4.2. Participants

The participants in this study teach ESP courses to English-major students in the selected university. They were invited to
participate in the project through a key informant in the University, and all agreed to be interviewed. As most teachers in the
English-major program, like those in many other similar programs in Chinese universities, the participants studied English
literature or linguistics at the postgraduate level, and were then certified through general teacher education before they
began teaching English. They all had limited ESP learning experience except for Zheng, which is probably common among ESP
teachers in other universities, given that master’s programs in TESOL worldwide focus on general ELT with very few offering
compulsory ESP courses (Stapleton & Shao, in press). The ESP teacher team at Jinghai University started with a few general
English teachers with work experience in international business companies. The team was expanded by recruiting language
teachers with qualifications in such subjects as business, finance and law, and also by developing current English teachers
who showed interest in ESP. For their in-service professional development, the teachers were sent to other faculties and took
related subject courses such as International Business and Management for one or two semesters before starting to teach ESP.

1
Life-history interviews focus on participants’ personal and professional history.
J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13 5

In addition to these courses, two teachers, Qian and Zhou, continued developing subject-matter knowledge after becoming an
ESP teacher. This coursework in other disciplines distinguishes the ESP teacher team from the other language teacher teams
who have less diversified backgrounds (Table 1).
All of the ESP teachers had studied in language-related undergraduate programs with the exception of Wu, who majored
in Public Finance, while three of the eight teachers did their master’s degrees in other subjects related to their current ESP
courses. All had rich teaching experience at the time of the interviews: except for Zheng, they all had taught general English
courses before starting to teach ESP 10 years ago when the ESP concentration was introduced. Five of the eight (Zhao, Qian, Li,
Zhou and Zheng) had worked in a target industry before becoming an ESP teacher, while six teachers had maintained
engagement with local companies primarily through existing University-company partnerships, in which they provided such
services as language consultation and document translation support. This high ratio of teachers with relevant work expe-
rience outside the University is quite unusual compared to literature and linguistics teachers and translation teachers in the
University and other institutions. Although one half of the participants are based in the Department of English and the other
half are affiliated with different departments, but they were all members of the ESP Center. They all teach ESP courses that
target English-major students who are in their senior years (Year 3 and 4) and aim to enhance their communicative
competence in English in different workplaces. In these ESP courses the teachers design instruction to help students acquire
subject-specific language and basic knowledge of related subjects. With these teaching objectives in mind, the ESP teachers
have the space to create their own syllabi and tailor-make teaching materials.

4.3. Data collection and analysis

Life history interviews were conducted to elicit each participant’s life story with a focus on learning, teaching, and work
experiences that have proven critical to teacher identity formation (Olsen, 2008). We adopted the life history interview
method because it allows participants to provide respective accounts of their experiences, help the researchers capture their
voices, and enhance our understanding of their professional experiences (Gao, 2008; Johnson & Golombek, 2002). The in-
terviews were guided by, but did not strictly follow, a list of open-ended questions concerning the participants’ experiences.
In the interviews, the participants were also encouraged to bring up their own topics that were relevant to identity con-
struction. All interviews were conducted in Putonghua (Standard Mandarin) – the participants’ first language – to avoid
language barriers in communication. All interviews were audio-recorded, except for one in which the participant declined to
give consent for recording. For this latter interview, the first author took notes, while for the others, she transcribed all re-
cordings verbatim, sorted the interview notes, and translated selected excerpts into English. The translated excerpts were
then checked for accuracy by the second author.
The data were analyzed in two steps. In the first, a biographic approach was adopted to gain a global understanding of each
participant’s life history (Gibbs, 2008). The benefit of taking a biographic approach is to avoid fragmentation of an individual’s
story into discrete units or codes that might fail to reveal a complete picture. By treating the text as a whole, the biographic
approach allows the unfolding of a chain of events with inherent causal relationships and an overview of each interviewee’s
professional trajectory. Each interview transcript was summarized into a mini-biography to capture the participant’s

Table 1
Biographic information of participants.

Pseudonym Educational background Position ESP courses taught Years of University affiliation Work
teaching experience
Zhao - BA in English Professor Business English 26 International Yes
- MA in English Literature communitcation
faculty
Qian - BA in English Professor Legal English, Business 19 Department of English, Yes
- MA in Applied Linguistics; MA in Law English FFL
Sun - BA in English Associate Legal English 20 College English No
- MA in English literature; MA in British Liter- professor Department, FFL
ature (abroad)
Li - BA in English Associate Business Translation, 20 Department of English, Yes
- MA in World Trade Development (abroad) professor Business English FFL
Zhou - BA in Medical English Lecturera Business writing 19 College English Yes
- MA in English Literature Department, FFL
- Subject courses on International
Business, Management
Wu - BA in Public Finance Lecturer Marketing English, 13 Department of English, No
- MA in English Finance English FFL
Zheng - BA in English Lecturer Business writing 10 Department of English, Yes
- MA in Applied Linguistics FFL
- Subject course on International Business
Wang - BA in English Lecturer Finance English 11 College English No
- MA in TESOL; MA in Finance (abroad) Department, FFL
a
A lecturer in the Chinese higher education system is equivalent to assistant professor in American universities.
6 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

professional path chronologically, which forms the baseline data for the study. With a global comprehension of the in-
terviewees’ professional trajectories, in the second step, a paradigmatic approach was used to combine top-down and
bottom-up methods for analysis and interpretation of the interview data (Erickson, 2004). Informed by the adapted model of
teacher identity, a set of working categories was created to organize the data into talk about instructional frame, disciplinary
frame, professional frame, vocational frame, and economic frame. Each transcript was read and reread to search for episodes that
fit into any of the categories. After the interview data were sifted and divided into big chunks, we applied techniques of
content analysis on the episodes within each category to identify sub-themes that emerged from the bottom (Miles &
Huberman, 1994). During the first pass, open coding was used to generate descriptive codes. The codes were then
compared across interview transcripts for secondary coding; that is, codes of a similar nature were drawn together and put
into a group to which an analytic code is given (ibid). We also invited a third person, a colleague of ours, to code a selection of
extracts. We compared and discussed his coding with ours, reaching approximately 91% inter-rater reliability.

5. Findings

The data revealed that the participants constructed their professional identities as ESP teachers through acquiring subject
knowledge via professional development activities and engagement with workplace communities such as local business
companies. Despite this common thread, the analysis generated a disjointed picture of participants’ identity development. On
the one hand, the participants expressed a sense of fulfillment as ESP teachers, as they recognized the contributions of ESP
teaching to the students’ career development. On the other hand, the uncertainty surrounding the status of ESP in the Uni-
versity’s academic hierarchy undermined the participants’ construction of professional identities as ESP teachers. To illustrate
some aspects of these complexities the five frames of their teacher identity are elaborated upon in the subsequent sections.

5.1. Instructional frame

The instructional frame primarily concerns the roles a teacher enacts during classroom instruction (Pennington, 2014). The
participants were found to attach importance to professional development activities and work experiences that inform the
development of their teaching materials and shape their teaching practices in class. Moreover, it is these particular experiences
that distinguish them from other language teachers and enable them to assert themselves as ESP teachers at the University.
The participants were not trained to adopt teaching approaches specific to ESP because ESP pedagogy coursework was not
available in their pre-teaching qualification training. Consequently, they were found to undertake professional development
activities directed at acquiring related subject knowledge to inform their classroom instruction. For example, three of the
eight ESP teachers took courses or did master’s program studies in related subject knowledge areas. They attached great
importance to the effects of these activities on their pedagogical practice and the instructional aspect of their teacher iden-
tities. Li and Zhou, both of whom had taken business-related courses in English-speaking countries, highlighted the influence
of their overseas learning experience on their teaching practices and professional personas in their business English class.

[1]
Researcher: Did your ESP teaching benefit from the master courses?
Li: The content is not necessarily helpful. The teaching approach is more important. For example, I ask students to do
research and make presentations in class. It is the students who speak in class. I do not want to do much teacher talk.
[2]
Zhou: I found that their class focuses on student participation and hands-on ability including a lot of group discussion and
projects, which inspires my teaching.

Reflecting on professional development experience, Li integrated the notion of learner autonomy into his business English
teaching and Zhou paid attention to developing the students’ hands-on skills. Both teachers drew inspiration from their
professional development experiences and oriented themselves to assume the role of facilitator in ESP teaching.
In addition to learning from coursework, the participants’ work experience constitutes another important source of
mediation to support their ESP teacher identity construction, which can be particularly manifested in the preparation of
pedagogical materials. Teachers who had worked in related businesses are able to use real cases from their own work ex-
periences to inform the teaching. For example, Qian, who worked for an international trade company for two years before
joining the faculty as an ESP teacher, stressed the importance of his work experiences in teaching as follows.

[3]
Qian: It [my ESP teaching] primarily benefits from my work experience. Practice provides first-hand information . I
processed real letters of credit from foreign countries not in textbooks. What I learned the most is from my work
experience.

Qian’s narrative indicates that his prior professional experiences became a crucial source of teacher learning that also
served as a source of authority in considering what materials to use and what content to teach. Other teachers reported a
J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13 7

similar perspective as a result of their continuous involvement in University-company partnerships, such as when helping
with business document translation. These forms of sustained engagement with the workplace allow the teachers first-hand
access to materials that are highly relevant to the real situations in which the students are expected to operate after grad-
uation. Given their high degree of authorship or ownership of teaching contents and materials, these teachers feel “more
emboldened” (Zhou) to teach ESP and to construct the instructional component of their teacher identities (Pennington, 2014).

5.2. Disciplinary frame

The disciplinary component connects teacher identity with a specific field or discipline (Pennington, 2014). The interview
data suggest that despite efforts to promote ESP teaching and learning at the University, the majority of participants failed to
develop a sense of identification with the ESP field because of the widespread perception that ESP is not recognized as an
academic discipline. The uncertainty surrounding the disciplinary status of ESP was also reinforced by the closure of the ESP
academic unit, which undermined the participants’ negotiation of professional identities as ESP teachers.
The participants were unable to define ESP as an independent academic discipline. Instead, they interpreted its disci-
plinary nature from diverse perspectives, among which the three extracts below are considered representative.

[4]
Zhao: The need of ESP is to break the metaphysical shackle in linguistics.Although ESP is considered to be a small branch
of applied linguistics, we must be aware that it is not just a supplementary, but a powerful and new force. If you say it is a
completely separate academic discipline, it is not.
[5]
Li: It [the status of ESP] is related to the disciplinary structure in China. Foreign language and literature is a first-tier
discipline that includes a few second-tier disciplines, such as linguistics, translation, and literature. Business English is
part of applied linguistics, so it can be grouped into linguistics.
[6]
Wu: In terms of its nature, ESP itself is an English course that instructs language in special areas.

Although these three teachers associate ESP with linguistics and language in some ways, their interpretations indicate
different self-positionings that are intricately related to academic status and the associated power. As a full professor, Zhao
attempted to problematize the mainstream linguistics studies and cast ESP as highly influential; Li, an associate professor,
framed his answer using normative discourse with reference to the inferior status of ESP in China’s academic hierarchy; and
the third teacher Wu, a lecturer, confined ESP to just a type of English course. These comments reflect the conflicting views
and uncertainty surrounding the disciplinary status of ESP, echoing the claim by Swales (2000) that “ESP/LSP has yet to
establish itself as either a full profession or a clear sub-discipline in the language sciences” (p.62). The uncertain status of ESP
may obscure the knowledge base of these teachers and affect the disciplinary frame of their teacher identities (Clarke, 2008;
Tsui, 2007).
The questionable status of ESP as a discipline at the University is further reflected in the lack of a supportive social and
physical environment to facilitate the participants’ identity development as ESP teachers. As the participants are dispersed
across multiple academic units, they hardly have a shared sense of belonging and often work independently. This problem of
professional isolation was addressed with the establishment of a Center, which aimed to bring ESP teachers together.
However, the Center, along with other centers, was closed after 2 years as a result of leadership change and merged into two
major research teams, the linguistics team and the translation team. As recalled by Sun, this institutional restructuring proved
hazardous to the development of ESP teacher identity.

[7]
Sun: If our ESP research center still existed, I may be very confident to tell you that I am an ESP professional. But now,
although we keep teaching ESP courses, the closure of the Center has cut off the sense of belonging.

The brief existence of the Center seems to have reinforced the uncertainty surrounding the disciplinary status of ESP and
caused the participants to feel insecure about their professional identities as ESP teachers. Important here is that the
discontinuation of the Center needs to be understood in terms of the power configuration of the faculty, where teachers of
traditional language-related courses dominate the gate-keeping positions, creating barriers for the participants to contribute
to the decision-making processes or to assert themselves as ESP teachers. In other words, the construction of the disciplinary
frame of ESP teacher identity is largely constrained by the institutional setting that has immediate effects on their profes-
sional lives on daily basis (Flores & Day, 2006; Hayes, 2008).

5.3. Professional frame

The professional frame refers to teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and practices of a specific field that develop via individual
interpretations and participation in professional activities and networks over time (Pennington, 2014). For these ESP teachers,
8 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

the professional component of the teacher identity continued to evolve as they developed their own professional practices, as
mediated by their learning and teaching experiences. At the same time, they failed to receive recognition of their workplace-
related professional expertise from the linguistics or literature colleagues in the institution.
The data revealed that the participants drew on different resources to form their individualized professional practices.
Qian, who completed a master’s program in law after he began teaching legal English, developed the habit of being “on the
alert” and regularly checking for the latest updates in international law to strongly position himself as an ESP teacher in law.

[8]
Qian: It is not enough to rely on what I learned because there are new changes. We need to be on the alert. For example, if
there are changes in international regulations or in our country’s business laws today, I need to get all the updates
tomorrow. We need this kind of awareness.

Qian’s narrative reveals that being well-informed on international law has been internalized as part of his own profes-
sional practices, which connects his identity construction with the global facet of the context (Pennington, 2014). While Qian
developed his professional practices from his master studies, Wu drew on years of teaching marketing English courses as the
source of information to adjust what and how he teaches subject knowledge in his ESP lessons.

[9]
Wu: As my teaching experience accumulates, I am more and more interested in teaching ESP courses and my improved
teaching methods are resulting in better learning outcomes. So every class obtains different inputs from me. After each
semester, I reflect and think about what to adjust next time.

The above extract suggests that interaction with changing groups of students each semester engenders reflection that
spurs continued professional development and improved pedagogic practices, such as adjusting the amount of subject-
matter knowledge needed to ensure that the course is meeting the needs of the language students. In particular, this self-
reflection practice has been routinized as part of Wu’s professional practices that contribute to constructing the profes-
sional part of his ESP teacher identity.
While developing individualized professional practices, the participants maintained minimal professional relations with
those who teach traditional language-related courses. Except for personal or administrative conversations, six of the eight
subjects reported limited intellectual exchange with literature and linguistics (LL) or Translation Studies (TS) teachers.

[10]
Zheng: (We have) little communication (with LL or TS teachers) because we are not in the same field. They probably look
down at what we ESP teachers are doing. From their perspective, ESP is such a simple thing that it does not need to be
researched. Maybe the traditional will exclude the new.
[11]
Wang: We do not have much interaction. I feel that it would be hard to talk about ESP with teachers in other areas.

Zheng and Wang provided similar answers to explain why they seldom communicate with other non-ESP colleagues. The
scarcity of intellectual exchange between ESP and other teachers may be justified by their different knowledge repertoires,
teaching focus, and research interests, but the perceived power relation between the “traditional” and the “new” cannot be
ignored, as Zheng pointed out. That is, the potential bias against ESP creates an implicit boundary between the two groups of
teachers in the faculty. Such academic politics corresponds to the situation in the language departments of American uni-
versities, where generally “established literature and linguistics faculty still do not recognize LSP as a legitimate academic
inter-discipline” (Grosse & Voght, 2012, p. 193). Trapped in the power relation, the majority of these ESP teachers find it
difficult to sustain intellectual exchanges with the other colleagues on an equal basis or to construct professional identities as
ESP teachers at the University (Pennington, 2014).

5.4. Vocational frame

The vocational frame focuses on the affective component of teacher identity, including teaching commitment and
enjoyment (Pennington, 2014). Although they felt they had been assigned a position lower than that of colleagues teaching
traditional language-related courses at the University, seven of these eight ESP teachers had quite a positive sense of teacher
identity based on the shared belief in the usefulness of ESP. A central theme of the relevant narratives revolves around the
relevance of ESP courses to students’ careers and to the public demand for graduates with ESP skills who can serve the society.

[12]
Zhao: Many of our students will find jobs related to business, because Jinghai is a harbor city. We need to connect English
knowledge with the local societal needs.
J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13 9

[13]
Zhou: Most of the students attach great importance to the course because they will be using the knowledge very soon.

The frequent references to “society” and “economy” highlight the teachers’ awareness that the local society and economy
need graduates with ESP skills as well as, corroborates the participants’ belief that ESP courses help develop graduates with
composite talents for the local export-driven economy. In this regard, the positive linkage between ESP teaching and the
societal context enables the participants to construct their identities as ESP teachers.
This sense of being valuable helps ESP teachers overcome the institutional factors that constrain the process of con-
structing teacher identities. For example, Sun, a legal English teacher, described herself as a general English teacher because of
her association with the College English Department, but she insisted on the aspiration of becoming an ESP teacher to “make
more contributions to society”, as seen below.

[14]
Sun: According to my current working status, I may position myself as an English teacher... However, in terms of my
research or career development, I wish I could become an ESP teacher, to make more contributions to society. I wish I could
use what I have learned to provide a specific service to society.

The intended “contribution” may be manifest in her provision of language consultation for local law firms in addition to
educating graduates in ESP courses at the University. Sun’s narrative thus reveals her appreciation of the connection between
ESP and society, which may mitigate the institutional constraints and sustain her dedication to teaching legal English.
Although there were exceptions like Wang, who quit teaching finance English two years ago, the participants firmly believe
that what they teach will help students’ career advancement and will contribute to the local socioeconomic development.
More importantly, this belief enables the participants to see alternative perspectives on what they teach or research that go
beyond the ideological construction of ESP at the University. These alternative perspectives have a positive effect on the
vocational component of being an ESP teacher (Pennington, 2014).

5.5. Economic frame

The economic frame relates teacher identity to the feeling of being compensated adequately in terms of both academic and
economic position in the field, indicating extrinsic and intrinsic recognition of one’s work (Pennington, 2014). Apart from the
lack of recognition for their efforts to promote ESP, the participants’ narratives suggest that their academic careers are further
undermined by the “publish or perish” academic culture of the University. Three participants (Wu, Zheng and Wang) com-
plained about the lack of quality ESP journals in China as an important factor affecting their research productivity and
promotion in the faculty. In contrast, Zhao and Qian contended that their ESP expertise would be “recognized” through
unyielding efforts, indicative of the challenges that they were fully aware of. For example, Zhao states:

[15]
Zhao: .I published five research articles in 1 year, all of which appeared in high-level journals, including education,
economics, culture and discourse studies.They will recognize you as long as you publish papers and obtain grants. In fact,
there is a lot to explore in ESP.

Zhao capitalized on the interdisciplinary nature of ESP and suggested a broader range of journals in which his business
English research may fit. Such research endeavors may inspire and result in more recognition for ESP teachers who, due to ESP
research, may be marginalized in the traditional language department, such as in Li’s case. Li had been denied promotion in
the past because the value of his business English research was not acknowledged by the promotion committee. This
disappointment could have increased his awareness of his disadvantaged position, but more importantly instead it motivated
Li to make strategic efforts towards making his ESP research “recognized”.

[16]
Li: We are at disadvantage because what we write is not recognized. Therefore, I try to approach the mainstream. I
published an article on legal discourse this January, which is at least related to translation. To ensure acceptance, I added
“writing” at the end of the article title to relate it to language pedagogy.

To continue business English teaching, Li intends to bridge his research with the mainstream areas to facilitate his career
development in an institution that historically has been dominated by linguists and literature scholars. In contrast to Li, other
members of the ESP minority in the faculty chose to withdraw from ESP research due to a perception that it would have
adverse effects on their careers. For example, Zheng claimed that as the only route to secure career promotion at the Uni-
versity, she “had no choice” but to reorient her research to focus on psycholinguistics. This decision has placed in her among
language teachers who have become “caught in the middle” between ESP teaching and mainstream language research
(Grosse & Voght, 2012, p. 190). Similarly, other participants like Zhou and Wu stepped away from ESP-related projects and
10 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

followed a strategy of disengagement to resist potential marginalization (Trent & Gao, 2009). Although dissimilar in form, this
disengagement in ESP research reveal the dilemma faced by the participants who seek promotions in a linguistics/literature-
dominated institution. This situation in which participants confront publication and promotion pressure also aligns with
Campion’s (2016) study that relates EAP teachers’ status to differing institutional expectations of their research engagement
and relevant resources to support such research activities.
Despite the obstacles to institutional promotion, the ESP teachers’ participation in serving the local community offers an
important third space for them to attain rewards and construct the economic frame of their teacher identities (Pennington,
2014). For instance, these ESP teachers can play an active role in University-company partnerships by offering customized
ESP courses to professionals from various industries. Although undertaking corporate training might constitute an additional
burden, it does generate more intrinsic rewards, as noted by Zheng.

[17]
Zheng: ESP does have a high degree and wide scope of applicability. Moreover, a large number of companies need such
training nowadays, particularly English training in a specific field. When I was training them, I could tell it. Therefore, ESP
does have great applicability, as well as research value.

As revealed in the extract above, corporate training allows ESP teachers to interact and maintain connections with industry
professionals who value and reward their ESP expertise. Corporate training provides engagement in the process of fulfilling
their social responsibilities, as well as an opportunity to transcend institutions. This then helps them realize their potential in
the broader context and attain a more positive perspective toward being an ESP teacher.

6. Discussion

The participants’ struggle for and construction of an identity presents a complex picture of the professional lives of ESP
teachers in a Chinese university and one that may very well reflect the lives of ESP teachers elsewhere. Their life-history
accounts reveal that becoming an ESP teacher not only altered their instructional practices in the classroom, but also
transformed their professional lives, as reflected in the different frames of teacher identities. On the one hand, the uncertainty
surrounding the status of ESP as a discipline prevents the participants from asserting their professional identities as ESP
teachers at institutions dominated by teachers teaching traditional language-related courses. Concomitantly, the lack of a
physical and social environment in the institution undermines the growth of a collegial community with which the teachers
can potentially identify. Moreover, the questionable disciplinary status of ESP affects the teachers’ research performance and
promotion; they thus have difficulty pursuing the professional and economic component of teacher identity at the University
where the “publish or perish” culture increasingly prevails (Lee, 2014). On the other hand, these teachers still claim to have a
positive perspective toward being an ESP teacher, which emerges from the common belief that ESP coursework prepares
students for employment and also addresses societal needs arising from the rapid development of international business,
thus providing the vocational frame of teacher identity with a societal context. This positive linkage also encourages ESP
teachers to participate in the University-company collaborations that offer a third space for them to achieve self-realization
and to construct the economic frame of their teacher identities beyond the University. Nevertheless, while the ESP teachers
expressed a sense of intrinsic fulfillment by supporting graduates’ acquisition of ESP skills needed to meet the societal needs,
their identity development is still largely constrained by the institutional facet of the context (e.g. Flores & Day, 2006).
This exploration of teacher identity construction reveals incongruent ways in which the institutional and the societal
facets mediate the different frames of ESP teacher identities. This reaffirms the notion that the sites of teacher identity
construction should not be confined to the classroom, but expanded to include “the schools, and the wider professional
communities” (Johnson, 2006, p.24). In addition to contextual mediation, the findings also suggest prior experience as an
important source of identity construction. Although some studies have focused on the influence of formal teacher education
on teacher identity construction, the participants’ experiential accounts highlight the importance of professional develop-
ment activities and engagement in workplaces in shaping their teaching persona. Especially important for their professional
development are experiences where they acquire subject matter knowledge and work experiences in relevant industries,
which inform their preparation of teaching materials and enrich their ESP teaching, both of which are closely related to the
instructional frame of teacher identities. In particular, those experiences not only facilitate teacher learning, but also further
develop into individual professional practices that distinguish ESP teachers from other language teachers, as in the case of
Qian, and contribute to their identity development in the language faculty. In view of the significance of professional
development activities and engagement with workplace, these findings echo the proposal of Campion (2016) to take a long-
term view of ESP teacher development in which “the learning never ends” (p. 67). Following Campion, we agree that more
attention must be paid to continuing teacher development that extends the process beyond language teacher education
programs and takes place throughout a teacher’s career (Hiver, 2013). This is particularly important to language teachers
whose work environment is undergoing transformation and who in response are required to teach and do research in ESP/
EAP, areas that are largely ignored in the majority of TESOL programs (Stapleton & Shao, in press).
Based on our research findings, we have further refined our initial model of teacher identity, particularly for those involved
in ESP education or other cross-disciplinary fields (see Figure 2).
J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13 11

Our findings show the incongruent ways in which the societal context and the institutional setting mediate the identity
construction of language teachers and provide empirical evidence of the importance of drawing analytical boundaries among
different layers of contextual conditions (Layder, 1993). Although institutions are embedded in the societal context and
certain institutional practices accommodate emerging societal needs (e.g. curriculum innovation), they do have self-
contained characteristics that mediate the manner in which teachers construct their identity in distinctive and significant
ways. For example, our study found that ESP teachers are evaluated on the basis of research output at the University, in line
with the mission to produce and disseminate knowledge, and this shapes how they participate and position themselves in the
workplace. ESP teachers are also social agents in the societal context (Gu & Benson, 2015; Simon-Maeda, 2004). In particular,
their prior and ongoing engagement with workplace ensures their comprehension of real societal needs that not only inform
teaching engagement but also shore up the self-perceived meaningfulness of ESP teaching, which feeds back into their
identity development.

7. Implications

The findings here highlight the complex interaction of various factors in the struggle and negotiation of ESP teacher
identity construction, which reaffirms the multifaceted nature of teacher identities (Beijaard et al., 2004). Although the
number of participants was limited and prevents broad generalizations, the findings highlight the need for increased pro-
fessional development opportunities for the growing number of language teachers who need to transform their careers to
teach ESP in other parts of Asia, to teach LSP in American universities, and to teach EAP in the Bologna-affected higher ed-
ucation sector (Cheng & Anthony, 2014; Fortanet-Gómez & Räisänen, 2008; Grosse & Voght, 2012). We believe these findings
also shed light on the means by which ESP teachers can be empowered (Tao & Gao, 2017; Tsou & Chen, 2014) as elaborated
below.
To prepare pre-service and in-service language teachers for new teaching challenges such as ESP teaching, language
teacher educators need to incorporate tools of inquiry into L2 teacher education programs so that “a teaching force of
transformative intellectuals” can be fostered with the tools to reposition themselves as ESP professionals (Johnson, 2006, p.
235). The intellectual tools of inquiry were characterized as the means to make experience educative or as resources for
teaching. As the findings have suggested the importance of professional development activities and work experience in the
language teachers’ career transformation to ESP, teacher educators need to help prospective and in-service teachers reflect on
and transform those experiences so that they can connect their ESP classroom instruction with the societal needs. They
should also learn to relate their experiences to the knowledge base of the discipline in order to deliver the content in effective
ways. Only by internalizing the methods and tools to engage in inquiry can language teachers be empowered to sustain
identity development in a shifting working environment. Also important in teacher education is for language teacher edu-
cators to encourage students to practice critical reflection. As teachers of interdisciplinary subjects like ESP are likely to be a

Figure 2. A refined model of ESP teacher identity.


12 J.(Tracy) Tao, X.(Andy) Gao / English for Specific Purposes 49 (2018) 1–13

minority in an English teaching faculty and therefore subject to academic politics in their institutional setting, critical
reflection can help them to problematize and challenge normalized assumptions, practices, and positions to argue for an
empowering identity (Simon-Maeda, 2004). Our findings suggest that seeking connections outside the University can help
teachers transcend the institutional limits and see alternative meanings of their practices. When teachers are able to find their
work meaningful, they are more likely to question the dominant discourses and “conceive of different ways of becoming and
being teachers” (Trent, 2015, p. 51). Critical reflection practice thus should become an essential element of the identity work
that has been advocated in language teacher education in general (e.g. Clarke, 2008).
Taken together our findings suggest that ESP teachers might struggle to sustain their professional identity development
without receiving support at the policy level. To facilitate their professional identity construction, it is important for
educational administrators to build an incentive system that rewards ESP teachers for the extra effort and time, particularly
for areas that require them to acquire subject knowledge and access authentic materials from workplace settings through
sustained engagement with the target discourse communities such as those in business contexts. The reward would pref-
erably come in the form of positive teacher evaluations and promotions, which would show respect for their educational
endeavors and thus contribute to the construction of a positive ESP teacher image. It would be ideal if the ESP teacher team
could be represented in some form of institutional structure, such as the erstwhile ESP Research Center at Jinghai University,
to create a supportive learning environment and facilitate the formation of a teacher community (Song & Kim, 2016). Having a
legitimate space may not only maximize opportunities for informal interaction and learning (Campion, 2016), but also create
a sense of belonging and perhaps stability in a shifting educational context.

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Dr. JIAN (Tracy) TAO is a lecturer in the School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. She has recently completed her doctoral
project on ESP teacher identity.

Dr. XUESONG (ANDY) GAO is an Associate Professor in the School of Education the University of New South Wales. He is also the editor of System. His research
focuses on learner autonomy language education policy, and language teacher education.

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