‘No one would give me that job in Australia’: When professional identities intersect with how teachers look, speak, and where they come from

Nigar, NashidKostogriz, AlexGurney, LauraJanfada, Mahtab2023-11-162023-11-1620230159-6306https://hdl.handle.net/10289/16151This article investigates how non-native English-speaking teachers’ (NNESTs) professional identities can be affected by their employment experiences in Australia. Hermeneutic phenomenological narrative analyses of the written narratives of lived experiences of a group of NNESTs demonstrate how their professional identities were negatively affected by hiring discrimination, which also had psycho-emotional impacts on their professional selves. Socio-cultural representations of race, language, and other cultural attributes convergingly contributed to their unemployment despite meeting country-specific eligibility criteria to be English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. The interplay between their professional identities and socio-cultural constructs took shape in modes of power relations enmeshed in the historic processes: economic, political, and cultural, which included discourses of native-speakerism, neo-racism, post-colonialism, neoliberalism, and multiculturalism. Despite these modalities, the NNESTs furthered their hybrid professional actions, recognising the value in the global community of multiple and diverse professional experiences.application/pdfen© 2023 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License.‘No one would give me that job in Australia’: When professional identities intersect with how teachers look, speak, and where they come fromJournal Article10.1080/01596306.2023.22391821469-3739