A Dramatic Perezhivanie-based Analysis of EFL Teacher Identity Development: An Autoethnography

This study reports an autoethnography of how the first author grappled with her EFL teacher identity crises in her transformative periods. The sociocultural concept of dramatic perezhivanie, i.e., how one experiences a crisis through the emotion-cognition dialectic, is employed as a unit of analysis. Through thematic analysis and dramatic perezhivanie analysis of semi-structured interviews and other data including teaching portfolios, chatting records on WeChat (a local social media), emails, drafts of manuscripts, the study reveals her four individualized crises: losing teaching identity, lack of qualitative research ability, ignorance of philosophy, and the balance between teaching and research. Her negative emotions not only indicated the peak of each crisis, but also interacted with her cognition to influence her attitudes to situational features, thus leading to positive or disruptive outcomes. Interactions with different mediators expanded her ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development) to achieve her coordinated positive emotions and cognition. The study demonstrates that reflective autoethnograhic narratives within the framework of dramatic perezhivanie helps to ontologically explore and construct one EFL teacher’s authentic and whole self in a time of flux and transformation.