Becoming an English teacher
How one chooses a career may not always have a straight-forward answer. Some may choose a career based on self-concept, interest, motivation, and aptitude, or by analysing available opportunities and the values attached to these. According to social cognitive career theory, variables of self-efficacy shape career aspirations and trajectories (Bandura et al., 2001). In formed beliefs, capacities, abilities and values, career-relevant interests grow, which eventually influence the selection of academic and career options (Lent et al., 1994). From the perspective of Maslow’s (1958) motivation theory, we choose careers based on our internal and external ‘needs’. Motivation theories of work (Locke & Latham, 2004) suggest that workers rationalize career decisions based on the motivational factors, drivers and triggers that shape their work roles and commitments. From these perspectives, career choice lies in the individual’s expectations for success in a profession and the value they assign to that profession (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000).
In the teacher education field to date, research concerning career choice — most of which is quantitative — has principally focused on internal and/or external motivational factors contributing to teachers’ decision making (Heinz, 2015). This research aims to establish causal relationships between factors, drivers, triggers, and decision-making. Self-beliefs, prior experiences and other socio-cultural influences may contribute to teachers’ career decisions (Heinz, 2015). Most research has been conducted via the FIT-Choice test (Richardson & Watt, 2006), underpinned by expectancy value theory to understand motivational influences which contribute to professional choice (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Motivational factors have been classified as intrinsic, altruistic and extrinsic (Heinz, 2015; Yüce et al., 2013). Intrinsic motivation involves passion for the profession, aptitude in teaching and personal fulfilment (Lovett, 2007; Manuel & Hughes, 2006; Yüce et al., 2013) . Altruistic motivation is the intention to make a difference in communities and society (Chong & Low, 2009). Extrinsic motivations include job security (Jungert et al., 2014; Lam, 2012), high salary or reliable income, and long vacations (Lai et al., 2005; Lam, 2012; Struyven et al., 2013). Other factors of relevance are prior teaching and learning experiences (Heinz, 2011, 2013), initial teacher education (Manuel & Hughes, 2006), demographic characteristics (Yüce et al., 2013), and considering teaching as a fall-back career (Cross & Ndofirepi, 2015).
However, research is yet to address broader socio-cultural constructs (Klassen et al., 2011), or to ascertain how multiple interplays of social and other material forces might affect a teacher’s professional choice dynamically across their life. Little attention has been paid to how socio-material affects play a role in the decision to become a teacher (Kövecses, 2004).
Adopting a Deleuzian frame, we argue that becoming a teacher is not only based on rationalized choices responsive to internal and external motivational factors, but also on the socio-materially produced desires that underlie these (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). English language teachers’ (ELTs) decisions are rationalized by the attunements of affective encounters — inter-subjective and inter-objective — as they spatiotemporally engage with the material–semiotic–affective stagings of events. According to Deleuze (1994), human subjectivity is better represented relationally and dynamically, as becomings (rather than beings) in continuous differentiated repetitions. Becoming is always in a process and motion, ready to take new forms anywhere and at any time.
In this paper, we examine the dynamic complexity of the factors that may shape ELT becoming (Trent, 2012). We discuss the findings of a study exploring how sixteen teachers became ELTs through various situated practices, across flows of time and relations to place. We frame the process of becoming a teacher as non-linear over an individual’s life. Motivational factors influence a teacher’s decision-making through a complex system of embodied desires in socio-material contexts: “strong melding here of personal aspiration; spiritual endeavour; social mission; intellectual pursuit; the desire for connectedness; and a belief in the power of ideas and relationships manifested in education to alter the conditions of their own and others’ lives for the better” (Manuel & Hughes, 2006, p. 20). Furthermore, we agree that motivation “in itself implies emotion” (Du Toit, 2014, p. 6). Embodied desiring refers to the body’s capacity to experience itself as always more than itself. The significance of this study is its provision of a decentred perspective on participants’ decision-making to become ELTs by considering the affective alongside the rational.
Desire and becoming
In this research, the career choices of migrant English teachers are conceptualized as a form of ‘desired becoming’ – that is, as the ‘will to power’ which is sublimated into their desires to influence and benefit others, and into a creative activity of ‘self-overcoming’ or ‘self-mastery’ (Nietzsche, 2002, 2008). In social life, power is associated with education and knowledge (Foucault, 1980), and desiring power thus can be linked with the desire to be educated (i.e., power to) and to educate others (i.e., power over). We do not use the concept of desire to problematize psychological research into teachers’ career choices. Rather, we shift the focus from pre-formed desires and the workings of reason in order to explore the socio-material and political becoming and the flows of desire that precede (and result from) the formation of subjects and objects. In this way, becoming an English language teacher can be traced historically to the flows of desire in and across socio-material assemblages.
According to Deleuze and Guattari (1983), an assemblage is a constellation of bodies and things that are coded by taking a particular form and occupying a particular territory. An assemblage connects material bodies and things on a horizontal axis, forming socio-material relations that become represented and meaningful as a social order(ing) of bodies, actions and reactions. One’s becoming implies a vertical axis of movement across assemblages, involving a ‘flight’ of desire across their territorial boundaries. A translation from the French agencement, assemblages are productive comings-together which channel affect, or the “capacity to affect or be affected” (Fox & Alldred, 2015, p. 401). Content comprises the machinic assemblage of bodies and actions, “an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 88), whereas expression is the collection assemblage of enunciation – “of acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations attributed to bodies” (p. 88). Expression within assemblages become semiotic systems or regimes of signs, whereas content becomes pragmatic systems of actions and passions (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 504).
De-centring desire from the subject, while exploring decisions to become a teacher, means attending to how desire as a life force is immanently networked with other forces that are together constitutive of the social production of that desire. According to (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983), socio-material assemblages have ‘machinic’ rather than organic relations between the constitutive elements and, hence, there is no desire without ‘desiring-machines’ and their connective desiring-production. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) differentiate in this regard between unconscious desire and preconscious social investment. While unconscious desire has to do with pre-personal creative desire, preconscious social investment is concerned with values, beliefs, and intentions.
The analysis of how socio-material assemblages may produce the desire to become an ELT responds to the differentiation between “the unconscious libidinal investment of group or desire, and the preconscious investment of class or interest” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983, p. 343). In this study, unconscious desire allows us to comprehend a free-floating desire to learn English, while preconscious social investment captures the influence of beliefs about teaching English and teaching as a career choice. The analytic also includes the affective vectors of molar and molecular lines (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988) that map the entanglement of participants’ desires in debilitating and enabling ways. Molar lines relate to the subject’s embodiment of the rigid segmentations of socio-cultural apparatuses (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988; Foucault, 2013), such as ‘native-speakerism’. Molecular lines refer to “a precise state of intermingling of bodies in a society, including all the attractions and repulsions, sympathies and antipathies, alterations, amalgamations, penetrations, and expansions that affect bodies of all kinds in their relations to one another” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988, p. 90), such as relational experiences. The functions of molecular lines can viewed as thrusting unfolding of possibilities to “become” and “becoming” against the “pre-existing, molar, arboreal” (Rogers et al., 2014, p. 22) structure that inhibits the process of becoming.
Context
Undertaken as part of a larger project, the study was designed around hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative approaches. In hermeneutic phenomenology, the researcher and participants engage with the research process intimately and deeply, but the researcher still seeks to analytically understand the multi-layered meanings of the experienced phenomena in terms of their commonality of occurrence among participants (van Manen, 1990). In this study, interpretation and the use of narratives were the core means to understand the complex patterns of the lived phenomena (Author, 2019).
Sixteen participants (see Table 1), all of whom lived in metropolitan centres in Australia at the time of data collection, participated in the study. Amongst them, four participants – Ling Ling, Becca, Quang and Raphael – had started their careers teaching English in Australia. The others began in their countries of origin. The interviews were conducted by the first author of this manuscript. Her emic (insider) view lay in her familiarity with some of the historical and current global contexts of research into English language learning and teaching, and almost ten years’ of English language teaching experience. Considering her as ‘one of them’, the participants felt comfortable in telling her their stories (see Guba & Lincoln, 1994). From the etic (outsider) perspective (Olive, 2014), however, the researcher was conscious of her beliefs and assumptions, and how they might influence the interpretation of research data.
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Hien
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Vietnam
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10
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ELCs; universities
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Janaki
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India
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8
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Primary school
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Jasha
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USSR
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7
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High school
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Jigna
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India
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4
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Polytechnic
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Laura
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Philippines
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6
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High school
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Ling-ling
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China
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1.5
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High school
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Mahati
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India
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14
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University
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Mandy
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Philippines
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6
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Language centres
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Natalie
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Bangladesh
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5
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Schools (K-12); university
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Oksana
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Russia
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12
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Universities
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Quang
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Vietnam
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2
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Tutoring centre
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Raphael
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Israel/kibbutz
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5
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Vocational institutes; community centres
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Thi
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Vietnam
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2
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Language centres
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Table 1: Participant profiles
Fifteen participants flexibly wrote narratives online over a period of one month, and then took part in one-on-one interviews (one participant was only interviewed). The narratives focused on their experiences of English learning and choosing their career. The interview prompts elicited information about their family, linguistic, cultural, educational and geographic backgrounds; their English language learning experiences; their motivations to become ELTs; and, how they obtained their first English teaching positions. In addition to the online narratives and interviews, relevant data were also collated from responses to other prompts used in the main project, such as emails. The research (project ID 19107) was approved of ethical measures by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee. Prior to signing the consent forms, all participants were informed of the voluntary nature of the research participation and their full anonymity.
A hermeneutic phenomenological approach (van Manen, 1990) was adopted to identify themes while analysing narrative data. The analysis aimed to reconstruct socio-material assemblages within which participants had interacted, based on the partcipants’ narration of their life events (Bruner, 1990). In the following sections, we present the various assemblages of desiring production which were constructed from the data.
Assemblages of desiring production
The participants had often ‘unconsciously’ internalized the desire to become proficient in English under the influence of more knowledgeable others (Vygotsky, 1978). As they initially encountered the language and then began their formal education, their embodied emotional experiences (perezhivanie) of English and English language learning worked as affective-volitional forces for them to become proficient users of the language (Vygotsky, 1934). The participants’ embodied and desired selves, shaped through these experiences, impacted their later career decisions. In what follows, we address different kinds of assemblages within which the participants operated – families, school education, culture, and higher education – and through which their desires for English were activated and mediated. They interacted with these assemblages at different times. Furthermore, the size and duration of the assemblages, and the ways in which they (re)formed participants’ desire, were quite variable.
Family assemblages
In their pre-school years, the participants’ desires for English were kindled by affective intersubjective relations and ‘cultural objects’. The roles of significant others, including parents and family members, contributed to their internalisation of a passion for the language and teaching. They were exposed to English through a wide variety of popular cultures, educational materials, and practices in family settings. These included electronic media, books, and games, replete with sensory-motor impacts. Sensual participation in activities mediated by English and associated forms of culture, perceived as seductive and experienced as pleasurable, drove them to desire English more.
Although formal language learning started for the participants in school, most were exposed to English in their early childhood. Twelve participants said that in their early childhood or primary school years they were also exposed to popular culture in English: literature, music, film, and television. Oksana recalled that her parents “listened to the Beatles songs, and since the time I was born, I was exposed to that music, and I fell in love with the language”. Similarly, Becca wrote, “I’ve been exposed to English as long as I can remember, and I’ve always liked it. I liked the way it sounded, I liked its ‘coolness’ (it was the language of movies and songs)”. As a child, Frida played English board games at home; she recalled, “I would usually play against my grandmother and my aunts, who all had a higher level of English than my 10-year-old self, so I learned to pick up new words from them.”
Family members and practices produced affective environments – ordinary affects and ways of ‘being with’ or ‘becoming with’ – that led to the participants desiring English. However, while most participants’ immediate family members explicitly and actively encouraged their education in the language, some did not. Janaki’s learning was interrupted by a forced marriage when she was in high school, and Mahati was also subjected to attempts to be forcibly married by family members during her higher education. Janaki reflected, “[i]t was after my marriage that I completed bachelor’s degree in Education and a Masters in English … through Distance Education.”
In family settings, popular media and early learning activities emotionally affected the participants, activating a passion to learn English. Their socio-culturally internalized sensory-motor experiences of cultural elements (Vygotsky, 1987b) during early childhood were later rationalized as their affective and passionate attachments to English.
School education as assemblage
Participants’ early desires for English were reinforced institutionally, resulting in strong interest and sometimes ‘love’ for the subject of English. At school, participants’ interest was intensified through interactions with curricula, pedagogies, teachers, teaching styles, and language policy – particularly, whether the medium of instruction was English. In school, they discovered new meanings associated with their developing English skills. Their desire for English constantly shifted across institutional practices and beyond, together with their emotional responses to these (van der Veer, 2012).
Participants held mixed feelings about learning English at school, particularly in relation to how the language was taught. Learning English was not always enjoyable. Jasha, who reflected that she only enjoyed it when speaking activities were included in the lessons, commented:
…it was quite boring: boring texts to read, boring lessons on grammar, no listening, and no speaking. And boring teaching! … the antiquated Prussian system …learning …supposed to be a hard job, not fun.
However, some participants enjoyed communicative elements of learning with their peers and teachers. Negative feelings shifted into positives when participants experienced alternate ways of language learning, such as through music and singing, and their sense of achievement in English learning grew.
Participants recalled feelings of pride in their language learning progress and the social recognition which accompanied their developing skills. As Jigna reflected, “my interest in English reflected in my academic achievements which further encouraged me to embrace English in my educational choices”. Feelings of self-consciousness led high-achiever Carlos to feel embarrassed about achieving consistently strong marks in all assessment, to the extent that he began to deliberately make errors. However, this feeling of embarrassment had positive connotations for Carlos, and it drove him to feel empowered about his English skills.
Positive or negative relational experiences with teachers also contributed substantially to their learning and future professional selves. Jasha nostalgically reminisced,
When I was in Year 7, I think, I volunteered to accompany a teacher to a bookshop … The Picture of Dorian Gray. I asked her whether she could get an extra book for me, and she did. I consider this the beginning of MY English. This was the first time I realized that English could be alive and beautiful, that it can express feelings and send subtle messages. To this day I don’t dare to re-read The Picture of Dorian Gray in fear that the magic will disappear. The experience is too precious to lose, even today.
An ecstatic experience for child-Jasha, going to the bookshop with her teacher was an affective moment which was beyond her rationalisation. Many years later, the joy of reading and sensing English in the book was still precious for her.
Teachers and tutors were powerful sources of inspiration and reflection of English language teaching and learning experiences for other participants. Institutional practices created affective environments in which participants’ already embodied desires for English were reinforced through collectively produced affects. These embodied language learning experiences also reveal how participants’ every-day and scientific concepts acted dialectically (Vygotsky, 1987b): for example, they could relate their everyday understandings of English (acquired through books and pop-culture) to the linguistic concepts taught in schools. The embodiment of desire and knowledge draws attention to educational institutions as assemblages that are situated in broader assemblages constituting the cultural-historical life of society. Now, we turn to cultural forces as assemblages.
Local and Global forces as assemblages
All participants storied how their desires for English language and associated cultural forces were equally fostered by the influences of cultural-historical discourses and artefacts (Vygotsky, 1980). Their desires were produced as collective affections at local and global levels. Multiple cultural-historical discourses, such as colonial history, English as a global language, and the prestige status and utility of the language generated affective intensity. For example, Jigna, who lived in post-colonial and multilingual India, narrated her relationship with English as complex and deeply rooted in her consciousness:
English comes naturally to me … It is and was the stamp of quality education … I was made aware of the archetypes of cultural-dom while trying to imbibe everything in English.
Mandy also believed that colonial histories had shaped the contemporary status of English in the Philippines. In the region, English is associated with job opportunities and income since their English-speaking workforces are employed by Business Process Outsourcings (BPOs), such as call centres. Global and neoliberal market forces are entangled with English and encounter numerous other educational, ideological and linguistic forces. For example, in Vietnam, Quang reflected on the ideology of native-speakerism and the notion of authenticity in language use, to which he was not only exposed, but in which he was also complicit:
At first, my professional self was formed by the collective view that Vietnamese teachers are inferior due to our lack of exposure to authentic English language materials and communities. I accepted that as fact and even played a role in downplaying our own values and elevating that of ‘native speakers’. While believing that the ‘native speakers’ could do a better job, I propagated the idea to my peers without questioning the validity of such claim.
Living in war zones, with trans-generational violence, may have strongly influenced Jasha and Raphael to divert their desires beyond their local contexts. Raphael, while undertaking compulsory military training and service, was eager to interact with English speaking tourists. The positive emotions generated by these interactions brought feelings of rest and diversion.
The embodied socio-historical values of English drove the participants to embrace English-learning further within complex flows of spacio-temporal relations. They conceptualized associated cultural tools (or, skills in using English) as mediational and imaginative artefacts to mobilize across spaces (Marginson & Dang, 2017).
Higher educations as assemblages
As adults, the participants became conscious of how their intellectual capacities could mediate their emotionally driven desires (Van der Veer, 1984), and that they could agentively drive their own actions and behaviours (Vygotsky, 1980). Perhaps their desires for English then coincided with those of their imminent professional selves in the broader uses and practices of English and professional education. Most consciously opted to study English and related disciplines in universities. For example, Quang rationalised that he had chosen to study teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) because he was aware of his abilities and skills in English. However, he acknowledged that his embodied desires, influenced by a significant other, were still a strong contributing factor in his career choice:
My choice was also influenced by an English teacher I had, who was caring and knowledgeable; she most certainly fit into our Vietnamese vision of a teacher: wise, strict but caring, dedicated, who gives but asks for little in return. I of course aspired to be such a teacher.
Within higher education, English became the medium through which to gain knowledge, become qualified for the teaching profession, and potentially migrate to English-speaking countries. Participants expanded their networks and opportunities, developing their English proficiency further and eventually becoming English language teachers. Some participated in cultural activities in English in and out of educational institutions; for example, Natalie entered university debate competitions, Raphael communicated with English-speaking tourists, and Carlos immersed himself in cultural inglesa.
As they became further exposed to different manifestations of the language, and their awareness of ideas around the language grew, some participants began to consider their English skills not yet advanced – or authentic – enough. In response, Becca and Jasha strove assiduously to learn what they called “real English”. In the pursuit of “real English”, Becca travelled across English speaking countries:
… my first contact with real communication in English occurred near Birmingham ... After that I spent another summer in New Jersey, USA when I was twenty-one … I think that the real break in my English studies came when I came to Australia.
Similarly, Jasha worked hard to bring her “English alive ... and so I did work hard, mostly on the appropriateness of expressions, and intonation”. She believed “there was a real English somewhere out there, and it was my job to find it”.
Desires through traits, values, attributes, and investments
Personal traits (Parsons, 1909) and values (Kassabgy et al., 2001) are argued to be major contributing factors in career decision-making across professional fields (Judge, 1994; Jugović et al., 2012). Across assemblages of desiring production, participants’ perceived attributes and interests played an important role. Frida told of her “innate and genuine sense of wanting to help others”. Frida added that she “would like to pass on what knowledge” she gained “through work/life experience” by teaching English “to those who wanted to learn it as a second language”. Becca related her own painstaking language learning and international student experiences to what her students were going through. Carlos emphasised the importance of making a difference to his students on the basis that English education could be a form of individual empowerment. Similarly, Raphael recollected,
I enjoyed helping people improve on their language … because I saw myself, still see myself as one of them, one of the migrants that have come here and found it hard. And if I made it, then I could help other people make it. So that was one of the motivations of becoming a teacher and helping people.
The participants wanted to make a difference (Lovett, 2007) in others’ lives by making use of their skills and knowledge. Their knowledge of English, personal attributes, and professional values, in congruence with professional cultures, contributed to their career choices (Judge, 1994).
Becoming and staying a teacher
Through various networking opportunities, thirteen of the participants who started teaching in their countries of origin found their first employment without difficulty. They recalled these first positions as accomplishments and described their experiences as developmental, rewarding and fulfilling. Mahati was “very well respected [as a teacher] in India and in Africa”. Similarly, Oksana reflected that “Everyone respected me for being an English teacher at the age of 21, so I stay in the profession”. Thi said that her first few days working as a teacher “changed my life forever as I felt energized working with young children and a mix of local and expatriate teachers every week”. Becca summarised:
I finally got to do something that I actually enjoy and I’m very grateful for it. Every day when I step into the classroom, I think to myself how fortunate I am to be doing something that most of the time feels more like a hobby than a job.
All participants eventually migrated to Australia and obtained ELT positions there. Different lines of ‘desired becoming’ were at play: through migration, participants desired to improve their English, undertake further studies, or teach English to others. The accumulation of the ‘affectives’, in both unconscious desires and preconscious social investments, energised them to act and become mobile.
Finding employment as an ELT was not without its challenges. For example, Quang had completed a relevant undergraduate degree in Vietnam and two post-graduate degrees in Australia, but still it took him until the second year of his second post-graduate degree to get a paid teaching job. Becca, while an international student for seven years in Sydney, had “been kind of dreaming of, for the previous three or four years, doing a master of TESOL”. Ling Ling came to Adelaide as a high school student and moved to Melbourne to complete “a secondary education and arts degree, majoring in Japanese, Chinese and English translation”. However, despite the challenging landscape of securing employment, they were still positive about developing their English and ardently pursued their careers.
Participants’ decisions to remain in teaching also involved negotiations with challenges within their educational institutions. The commodification of English and prevalent native-speakerism appeared in a few teachers’ stories. Thi commented that, in the Vietnamese English teaching context, “the preference of native speakerism is still vastly dominant, which has a profound negative impact on the non-native teacher’s self-confidence and self-esteem” (Bright, 2020). Mandy was upset when “native English speakers (without any legitimate qualifications)” were paid three times more than she was at her institution in the Philippines. While completing an MA TESOL in Sydney, Becca said
…from the very first class of my master’s degree course, I was terrified of having to teach English to an actual group of real humans … It was all about me and my own grasp of English. Is my English good enough to teach it to others? Am I qualified enough to teach it to others? What if the students see right through my feelings of inadequacy? What if they catch me off guard and I won’t be able to answer their questions?