“I am like a camel struggling in the desert”: understanding Chinese foreign language teachers’ perceived identities through metaphors

Introduction With the radical changes taking place in China’s foreign language education landscape, Chinese foreign language (CFL) teachers encounter unprecedented challenges in their professional lives. In contrast, little is known about their perceived identities. Using metaphor as a lens, this study investigates how CFL teachers metaphorically represent their identities and what factors contribute to their perceptions. Methods Data were collected from metaphor elicitation tasks, one-on-one follow-up interviews, and documents. Eighty-two teachers (19 males and 63 females) from four types of universities voluntarily participated in this study. Results Findings indicate that the elicited 91 metaphors carry positive, negative, neutral and mixed meanings. While teachers offering positive metaphors (about 56%) mainly describe themselves as guides, facilitators, nurturers, leaders, and light emitters, quite a number of teachers produce a wide range of negative metaphors (about 38.5%), which are categorized into hard workers, laborious animals, service providers, petty beings, and inanimate objects. This study identifies teachers’ personal philosophy and self-efficacy, institutional demands, socio-cultural environment, students’ attitude, disciplinary status, and faculty support as the major contributing factors that affect teachers’ identity perceptions. The findings further reveal that CFL teachers’ mixed identity perceptions are subject to the interplay of multiple factors. Implications This study has implications for policymakers and teacher educators in terms of how to improve CFL teachers’ identity perceptions amid the shifting and complex higher education landscape.