Raising awareness among the TESOL community about the professional identity tensions of women EFL teachers in Africa

Abstract

Introduction

Because of their multiple identities (mother and academic), women working in academia in sub-Saharan Africa face stereotypes that aim to confine them to domestic and administrative tasks that do not require higher cognitive skills or in-depth knowledge. In other words, gender and motherhood are seen as conditions that may decrease the performance of female academics and undermine their position as scholars (CohenMiller et al. 2022). We, the authors, refer to these stereotypes/biases as a form of symbolic violence perceived as a norm with the complicity of our society. Symbolic violence performed by male faculty members who hold a higher position due to cultural and ideological distribution of roles and power can culminate in professional tensions that cause some “motherscholars” to resign. Therefore, we adapted a poststructuralist perspective to explore our professional identity tensions in a collaborative autoethnographic study. Before introducing the theoretical background in the Methods section, we provide an overview of the work underpinning the current study.

In recent years, TESOL practitioners and educators have made major contributions to our field by critically reflecting on their own practices through narratives, biographies, and collaborative autoethnographies. These contributions, such as Canagarajah (2012), Barkhuizen (2016), Vitanova (2016), De Costa et al. (2022), and Yazan, Herrera, and Rashed (2023), used storytelling, narratives, and collaborative autoethnographies to explain how TESOL practitioners negotiated or constructed their identities to become the English teachers they had been envisioning for years. These studies also focused on the dynamic and changing nature of the TESOL practitioners’ identity and the professional tensions they faced over the course of their careers, as well as how they positioned themselves to manage these tensions to access what was valuable to them given their culture and the most significant others with whom they shared the space. In such an ever-fluctuating situation, collaborative autoethnography was seen as the best approach to explore our professional identity tensions as mothers and female academics and to raise awareness in the TESOL field of these tensions.

Along the same lines, we were confronted with the dominance and biases of our male colleagues who assume that we are not good English teachers because of our gender without knowing what it means to be a good TESOL practitioner. A good teacher, according to De Costa and Norton (2017), is the one who can adapt their teaching to their learners’ needs, learning environment, and to other factors (e.g. technological innovations) that can influence the processes of teaching and learning a foreign language in the era of globalization that has not spared any continent. In this definition, there is no mention of gender, which means that it is not an indicator of teaching excellence. To raise awareness in the TESOL field of the professional identity tensions we faced, we used collaborative autoethnographies to reflect on and understand how the professional tensions triggered by the biases of our male colleagues affected us motivationally, and how we navigated these tensions to meet our expectations as English teachers. Thus, the study tries to answer the following research questions:

1. What are the professional identity tensions that we experienced?

2. How did we invest in our profession to challenge these professional tensions and address our expectations as female English teachers?

Methods

We first present the theoretical background followed by the research setting, the participants, and the data collection methods. It is worth noting that the names used to identify the participants (Oumou, Sira, and Mounina), country (Takodi), university (Doniasso), department (Department of Knowledge), and study-abroad programmes (Africa Research) are pseudonyms to help preserve anonymity.

Theoretical background

With a poststructuralist standpoint in mind, we situated this study in language teacher identity (LTI) and professional tensions theory (e.g. Pillen et al. 2013; Kayi-Aydar 2015; Barkhuizen 2016; Varghese et al. 2016; De Costa and Norton 2017; Robertson and Yazan 2022; Yazan, Herrera, and Rashed 2023). These studies emphasized that English teachers’ multiple identities are shaped by their gender, cultural ideologies, and space. For example, Varghese et al. (2016: 552) state that ‘LTI is represented as complexly (re)constituted and (re)negotiated as teachers traverse multiple contexts, cultures, and discourses and interact with cognitive, sociocultural, and ideological forces in the TESOL field.’ Along the same lines, Robertson and Yazan (2022: 2) explain that language teacher identity ‘is the intricate interplay between both individual understandings and aspirations and social ideologies and expectations’. This was the case for us, the authors, who come from a context in which cultural ideologies relegate women to domestic and administrative (e.g. secretarial) work. In the case of academia in Takodi, administrative work that does not necessitate in-depth knowledge in a specific field is reserved for women, but we, the authors, position ourselves as mothers and female English teachers in our workplace. Thus, we want the others to identify and value us as motherscholars.

Professional identity tensions are defined by Pillen et al. (2013: 662) as ‘internal struggles between the teacher as a person and the teacher as a professional regarding an undesirable situation’. Thus, the biases of our male colleagues, an undesirable treatment that we did not expect at the beginning of our careers, affected us emotionally and triggered professional identity tensions. However, it is essential to mention that these professional tensions are not distributed evenly among women academics. They are severe or mild depending on the positioning of the women academics.

Research setting

In this section, we first describe the teaching context, and then we present our community of practice because knowing about this community will help the reader better understand our stories, which are shaped by symbolic violence (e.g. relegating women teachers to second-class workers) performed by others. Takodi is a francophone country where English is taught as a foreign language from grade seven at most public schools. At university, English is a core credit for each student regardless of their field, but it is only the medium of instruction for students whose major is English. The authors of the current study teach at the Department of Knowledge, which is composed of approximately seventy full-time faculty, including about ten female teachers.

Our community of practice is composed of the teachers of the Department of Knowledge who share a common identity: language teacher. The department is dominated by our male colleagues who use their privileges (symbolic power) to marginalize their female colleagues. Based on the ideology that women are supposed to stay at home and fulfil domestic tasks, certain male faculty members do believe that women are not as good teachers as their male colleagues because of their multiple identities (mothers and scholars), which may impede their performance as teachers. Our male colleagues consciously or unconsciously create barriers that isolate female academics. This isolation triggered our desire to become critical friends to share our stories and to forge our path to become motherscholars.

Participants

We are three TESOL practitioners who teach at the University Doniasso (Table 1). We have become critical friends to each other for more than ten years to challenge our male colleagues’ biases and construct our identities as motherscholars in a male-dominated African university.

It is important to mention that this study is part of a larger collaborative autoethnographic study approved by the ethics committee of the University Doniasso, which is the standard at this university.

Collaborative autoethnography

As Chang (2008) explains, autoethnography is a qualitative research method that offers researchers opportunities to collect data from their autobiographies, personal journals, and critical reflections to explain or understand the cultural relationship between self and others. Yazan (2019) has also argued that it is a method that gives voice to marginalized practitioners and researchers by allowing them to critically reflect on how they can challenge professional tensions to construct their identity. This was the case for us, the authors of the current study, as we believe that considering that a person is not a good language teacher or less competent because of their gender (i.e. female English teacher) is a form of undesirable treatment that can trigger professional tensions, which, if left unreconciled can lead to frustration and isolation.

In contrast to autoethnography, which focuses on one individual, collaborative autoethnography, our methodology allows two or more researchers to share their personal stories, to collect data from these autobiographies, and to interpret them to construct their identities collaboratively (Lapadat 2017; De Costa et al. 2022). Another reason for us to consider this research methodology as useful to explore our professional identity tensions is explained by the ‘principles that embody collaborative autoethnography such as criticality, self-construction, agency, self-reflection, transformation, vulnerability, and reader friendliness’ (De Costa et al. 2022: 560). Through reflection and self-criticism, we understood the professional tensions we were experiencing to forge our own identities as TESOL practitioners and motherscholars without compromising any of these privileged identities in an African-English-teaching-and-learning context. The results of this critical reflection will raise awareness among TESOL educators and practitioners of the professional identity tensions that female teachers of English from Takodi experienced. They will also explain how these women invested in their careers to access symbolic capital (capacity-building, scientific publications, titles, etc.), allowing them to position as mothers and female academics in the space that they share with male faculty members.

Findings and discussion

Our findings are presented in a multivocal manner (Lapadat 2017) with our collective comments. We present and discuss one major professional identity tension that each of us experienced and explain how we challenged it to become a full member of our community of practice despite our multiple identities (i.e. as female academics and mothers) that we want our community of practice to value. It is important to consider the identity we envision for ourselves (i.e. to become motherscholars and full members of pedagogic committees where each faculty member and their knowledge/experience is valued regardless of gender and title) to understand why we believe the biases of our male colleagues triggered professional identity tensions.

Oumou’s professional identity tension and how she navigated it

Oumou: When I joined the Department of Knowledge, I did not receive any training or orientation to smooth my transition into the professional world. In other words, I was left to strive for myself. Another situation that baffled me was the underrepresentation of women in this department (two compared to over forty men) when I arrived. My male colleagues thought that women did not belong in the academia because of their family responsibilities and limited competence to survive in a highly competitive university environment.

Professional identity tensions in the form of frustration and disappointment at not finding the community of practice that Oumou had envisioned did not trigger burnout in her. On the contrary, the treatment relegating her to an inferior position was productive because it drove her to invest in her career so that she could gain access to symbolic capital that is valued for an academic in her country and to become a full member of her envisioned community of practice regardless of the norms set by this community. This is consistent with the findings of a study by Robertson and Yazan (2022) suggesting that professional identity tensions can be productive in the sense that they can motivate language teachers to challenge norms to construct their identity. For example, Katrina, a participant in the study by Robertson and Yazan (2022), challenged the system and the professional identity tensions it involved to work on her expectations as a teacher, and then adapt them to her classroom practices.

Oumou: I applied for a postdoctoral programme called Africa Research. The programme aims to pair early-career researchers with more experienced professors so that they can conduct scientific research under the supervision of these senior professors. These experiences allowed me to become more autonomous in research and teaching in my field. Upon returning home, I created a research centre with the help of my critical friends (co-authors). Our research centre, as I have been imagining for years, brings together most of the early-career English teachers regardless of their gender and we form what I call a pedagogical committee to discuss our difficulties as teachers, or the challenges associated with the processes of teaching and learning English in Takodi. In this way, we helped our students learn English in a friendly atmosphere.

It is important to note that our community of practice established scientific publications, study-abroad programmes in inner-circle countries (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States), and highly competitive scholarships as the norms for legitimacy in our field in the academia of Takodi to purposefully isolate motherscholars. Furthermore, a study-abroad programme may involve professional identity tensions (e.g. symbolic power, struggle between NS and NNS of English) and colonizing ideologies. However, these tensions did not discourage us, the critical friends, from applying for fully funded scholarships, although we were aware of the challenges we might face due to our transnational identity. Our goal of accessing symbolic capital at all costs supported our motivation to find ways to navigate the challenges associated with study-abroad programmes and succeed in our careers. For example, after Oumou’s successful stay in an English-speaking country, her identities were no longer seen as barriers to becoming a legitimate member of her community of practice. Her current positioning supports Varghese et al.’s (2016) conclusion that a language teacher’s identity is shaped by multiple factors such as culture and ideologies, making it constantly shifting.

Mounina’s professional tension and how she navigated it

Mounina: When I came to the Department of Knowledge, some of my male colleagues spied on me while I was teaching to ensure that I was doing my job properly. This way of doing things just frustrated me because I wish they could attend my class as colleagues and then provide me with constructive feedback helping me to become a better TESOL practitioner.

Although Mounina is convinced that she is a good English teacher, her colleagues’ lack of confidence in her teaching abilities confused her and motivated her to apply for an Africa Research grant to build her capacity as a TESOL practitioner-researcher in an English-speaking country. As a result, she gained legitimacy from her male colleagues and her students.

Mounina: After my study-abroad programme as a visiting scholar of Africa Research, I initiated a mentoring programme that aims to pair students with teachers so that they can provide them with constructive feedback leading to successful English learning. Mentors come from the research centre that was created by Oumou, one of my critical friends. What I like about this mentoring programme is that it allows teachers to help their students, but also to share their academic publications with other colleagues and to receive their feedback on ongoing work. For example, we organized a few scientific meetings using English as the medium of communication in a French-speaking country.

Like Oumou, Mounina’s professional identity tension was productive because it motivated her to challenge her male colleagues’ biases and become a role model for her community of practice through her mentoring programme, which brings together the faculty members of the Department of Knowledge. Mounina’s positive professional identity transformation, although she faced many challenges in achieving it, was also observed in Yazan’s story in a study by Yazan, Herrera, and Rashed (2023) where he negotiated his professional identity tensions to teach a class as a teacher educator to K12 educators in the United States. Yazan’s transnational identity and his unfamiliarity with the US K12 system created tensions, but his feelings of being valued by his community as a teacher educator helped him navigate these tensions and successfully teach the course.

Sira’s professional tension and how she navigated it

Sira: When I resumed teaching after a parental leave, I was not given any courses. The integrated skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) that I love teaching, because I believe I can help my learners softly navigate through their language learning journey, were given to other teachers although they usually do not like teaching these courses because they think that they do not necessitate any rigorous preparation. My department assumed without asking me that I would not be performant because of my multiple identities and the responsibilities associated with them. They did not even realize that they were frustrating me by isolating me from my community of practice, which I value as an academic.

Sira’s case is contrary to that of the participants in a study by CohenMiller et al. (2022) who received institutional support, although they believed their institutions could do more to mitigate the biases they experienced, such as feelings of isolation or guilt about their multiple roles as motherscholars. For example, Sira expected her department to schedule her courses so that she would have time to care for her baby before going to school. Rather, the department neglected her identity by not giving her any courses. The frustrations of not being valued as a motherscholar triggered professional identity tensions that empowered Sira to find ways to access symbolic capital that is synonymous with symbolic power in her context, as shown in her reflective comments:

Sira: I applied for [an] Africa Research grant, which I believe could give me access to the capital and power that I needed to be valued by my community of practice and then to challenge the biases. For example, my ESOL training empowered me to consider Kumaravadivelu’s (2012) parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility while teaching. These new ways of teaching attracted my students who massively attended my courses despite my male colleagues’ prejudices. My investment in my career not only established me as a good English teacher based on the norms set by my community of practice, but I also gained my students’ confidence. They invested themselves in my courses knowing that I could satisfy their curiosity in relation to the target language community’s culture due to my multiple stays abroad as a trainee teacher and visiting professor.

The professional tensions (e.g. frustration, bias, and isolation) we experienced united us as critical friends to each other to create our safe space. We met face-to-face at least twice a month and discussed our frustrations and ways to alleviate them so that they did not turn to burnout, which could force some professional women to resign. Our imagined identities (e.g. becoming members of pedagogic committees composed of language teachers who mentor each other based on their shared areas of research or teaching interests regardless of their gender) were denied by our male colleagues who continued positioning us as home mothers, which they assumed is ideal for women because of African traditional and cultural ideologies. However, our investment in our careers helped challenge these ideologies and construct our identities as female teachers of English and mothers. This dynamic aspect of language teacher identity was also demonstrated in a study by Barkhuizen (2016) in which the pre-service teacher was positioned as a cleaner by her colleagues before she became an English teacher in a prestigious school, although she dreamt of teaching English to her community members.

Dénouement

Our collaborative autoethnography explains how we challenged the biases of our male colleagues to become English teachers and mothers. It is necessary to reveal that the professional identity tensions we faced were productive in the sense that they motivated us to become critical friends and to apply for study-abroad programmes to construct our identity as motherscholars. Notably, these tensions have been alleviated, but they are not completely over. It is worth noting that our supportive network helps us navigate the tensions and raise awareness among the next generation of TESOL faculty so that this form of symbolic violence is not perceived as the norm.

Today, we, critical friends, are members of our school pedagogic committees and we have organized scientific meetings for the foreign language teachers with English as the medium of communication. Additionally, Mounina has become the mentor for many early-career teachers, and Oumou and Sira continue enjoying teaching without being isolated. Finally, it is important to recognize that language teacher professional identity tensions have existed, do exist, and will continue to exist regardless of gender, although the case of female academics needs special attention. It is up to the TESOL field to create a ‘Me Space’ for practitioners from different contexts to share their professional tensions and how they negotiated them to navigate smoothly through their careers, as we, the authors, did.

Final version received August 2023

The authors

Kadidja Koné is an Assistant Professor of TESOL/Applied Linguistics at the Ecole Normale d’Enseignement Technique et Professionnel (Bamako, Mali). Her research focuses on language assessment, motivation, and literacy development. Her recent publications are related to L2 learners’ motivation and reading engagement.

Fatoumata Kéita, PhD in American and African Literature, teaches at the graduate programs of the University of Arts and Humanities at Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako, Mali. Her research focuses on African and American women writers. Her recent publications address gender issues.

Email: [email protected]

Binta Koita is an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Arts and Humanities (Université des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines de Bamako, Mali). Her research focuses on L2 writing and less commonly taught languages. Her recent publications are on L2 writing and its connection with learners’ culture.

Email: mailto:[email protected]

References