English Language Teachers' Stories Tackling a Neoliberal Machinery: A Human–Technical Dichotomy in Their Identities

Abstract Despite a large body of research upon language teachers received technical knowledge, only a few studies have accounted for their own understanding of their self‐as‐teacher since the beginning of the new millennium. The dichotomy between the technical and human dimensions that it implies for education is addressed as perpetuated by neoliberal ideologies. This article does it by studying three language educators' problematizing of top‐down identity‐shaping neoliberal tenets of quality assurance and competitiveness in the market that brought about their reflexivity upon their own identities as English language (EL) teachers. The three EL teachers' introspection and verbalization of their stories and experiences when complying with institutional demands shed light upon their counter‐discourses contesting neoliberal‐laden pervading discourses. It served to add understanding about the (re)construction of their identities in a dialogical and reflexive space created for the study. Their stories were collected through narrative interviews which were later transcribed and analyzed from a thematic and ecological framework. Findings suggest that neoliberal forces over EL teachers' agency incite their decisions and actions to tackle those certainties and uncertainties present in the human–technical dichotomy of English language teaching (ELT). Such a dichotomy leads EL teachers to deal with the myths of homogenization, idealization, and excellence typically present in foreign language schools' marketization practices.