Abstract:
Teachers’ experiences of action research (AR) as part of their professional development can have significant positive impacts on their professional identities (Goodnough, 2010, 2011). However, myriad institutional and cultural pressures can also make teacher research a challenging experience (Ellis & Loughland, 2016), affecting and sometimes limiting teachers’ identity development. It is therefore important to understand more deeply how teachers experience the processes and challenges of conducting research, and how their professional identities are transformed as a result. Metaphor analysis is a valuable but under-utilised method for exploring identity transformation (Thomas & Beauchamp, 2011), which is employed in the current study of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers’ experiences of an AR program.The longitudinal study involved six experienced in-service ESL teachers working in private or university-based English language colleges in Australia. The aim of the study was to trace the teachers’ professional identity development over 12 months as they participated in a national voluntary AR program (for nine months), disseminated their research findings and continued teaching after completion of the program. Data were collected through five in-depth interviews with each teacher as well as written reflections and observation of their AR presentations. Metaphors the teachers used to describe the different stages of the AR process were then identified and analysed, including “opening Pandora’s box”, “a bushfire” and “an energy injection”. The analysis illuminated the overwhelming nature of AR for teachers, most of whom were conducting AR for the first time and felt completely out of their depth. By the end of the program, some of the teachers had enhanced their professional identities through a re-invigoration of their teaching, and profound changes in their thinking about how to tackle everyday teaching issues. However, other teachers negotiated new researcher identities and had difficulty adjusting back to their teaching roles after experiencing AR. One teacher even described AR as "a curse": she would now always question her teaching and could not teach without use of the AR framework.Implications of the study include the need for teacher educators and managers to provide continuous support and guidance for teachers participating in an AR program, so that teachers can benefit fully from the experience, transform their professional identities and affect positive change in their institutions. It is also important for teachers’ AR to be sustained in various ways so that the benefits can be harnessed. Further studies of teachers’ research experiences employing metaphor analysis would also be valuable for the field of teacher identity.