A retrospective narrative inquiry into ecological influences on a high school EFL teacher’s teacher-researcher identity negotiation

Teachers are ubiquitously theorized as agents of change capable of both facilitating learning and serving as educational teacher-researchers. The negotiation of teacher-researcher identity has garnered substantial scholarly attention in international discourse. In Vietnam, the majority of existing inquiries have primarily concentrated on tertiary-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers, leaving an empirical gap concerning how contextual variables affect this identity reconstruction among other teacher populations. This retrospective narrative inquiry, endeavoring to bridge this gap, explored contextual influences on a Vietnamese high school EFL female teacher’s identity negotiation through her Master’s thesis-conducting experiences. The study adapted Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Ecological Systems Theory of Human Development as its theoretical framework. Data source included a two-round semi-structured narrative-framed interview with the primary participant, triangulated by an outsider-nominated interview. The data analysis followed Clandinin and Connelly’s (1990, 2022) three-phase narrative analysis of broadening, burrowing, and storying/restorying. Findings unveiled how a four-layered ecological system, including individual, academic, institutional, and socio-cultural factors, aligning with micro-, meso-, exo-, and marco-sytem, respectively, affected such negotiation. The findings further showcased how thesis conducting acted as a catalyst for nurturing epistemological belief transformation, occupational enhancements, and multifaceted identity development as a language teacher. Implications and methodological recommendations were proposed to advise stakeholders to pedagogize their practices and inform future inquiries to expand this study’s findings.