Negotiated Selves: Mapping EFL Teachers’ Personality Trajectories for Communicative Pedagogy

Speaking from an intersectional perspective, the personality of EFL instructors influences the development of personality-specific teaching styles. As such, research has explored the relationship between the personalities of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers and various teaching variables. However, the developmental aspect of EFL teachers' intra-personal negotiations has been overlooked in previous research, despite the potential that tracking teachers’ personality (re)constructions can offer a critical understanding of pre-service EFL teachers’ evolution over time into effective in-service EFL pedagogues. To address this gap, this study employed a narrative approach to gain insight into a single EFL teacher's retrospective understanding of how their personality evolved over their pre-service and in-service teaching career with the pursuit of becoming an effective communicative EFL teacher. Data was gathered through a self-reported personality document, a written narrative, and two rounds of semi-structured interviews. The data were then analyzed using qualitative data mining and coding techniques. The study found that some pre-service personality traits of EFL teachers act as obstacles to becoming effective EFL teachers. However, over about five years, cultural, pedagogical, and professional factors as some compelling drivers lead to EFL teachers' intra-personality negotiations, resulting in their gradual evolution into effective communicative pedagogues. The study also concludes that methodologically, a narrative approach to capturing the longitudinal psychosocial transformations of EFL teachers can offer valuable insights into the dynamics of EFL teacher development.