A Multiple-Case Study of English Language Teacher Identity in Vietnamese Higher Education

This research examines the ways in which English lecturers in Vietnamese higher education negotiate their professional identities within the context of personal agency, institutional frameworks, and sociocultural expectations. Using a qualitative multiple-case approach, the study explored the identity narratives of three university lecturers at various stages of their careers, employing semi-structured interviews with thematic analysis. Three significantly different identity orientations emerged in the analyses: values-driven mentor, reflective practitioner, and strategic conformity. The results show that individual identities develop through internal factors such as intrinsic motivation, pedagogical orientation, and emotional labor, and external factors that include top-down policy mandates, native-speaker ideologies, structural hierarchy, and symbolic capital connected to qualifications, internationalization, or institutional visibility. While some lecturers enact agency by way of pedagogical care, or adaptive autonomy and quiet resistance to institutional norms and policies, others act within structural constraints to meet management expectations or to gain some legitimacy through institutional hegemony. The study offers new insight into how institutional identities can construct or constrict a teacher's pedagogical and identity development, suggesting a more responsive model for professional development that acknowledges and embraces teacher voice, legitimate recognition and esteem, and reflective practice across all cumulative professional pathways. By situating local identity narratives within broader theoretical frameworks—including agency theory, the study contributes a localized, nuanced understanding of language teacher identity in non-Western higher education. It extends existing frameworks by identifying a third identity category beyond the conventional "transformative" vs. "managerial" binary: the strategic conformist—lecturers who craft identity through alignment with institutional optics rather than pedagogical substance.