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349
Konin Language Studies
Faculty of Philology, State University of Applied Sciences in Konin, Poland
KSJ 6 (3). 2018. 349-371
http://ksj.pwsz.konin.edu.pl
doi: 10.30438/ksj.2018.6.3.6
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity:
Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives1
Ișıl Erduyan
Boğaziçi University, İstanbul, Turkey
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0542-3788
isilerduyan@gmail.com
Dorota Werbińska
Pomeranian University, Słupsk, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1502-7199
dorota.werbinska@apsl.edu.pl
Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık
Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5008-9988
yyburcak@gmail.com
Luis Guerra
University of Evora, Evora, Portugal
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6882-3789
lspg@uevora.pt
Małgorzata Ekiert
Pomeranian University, Słupsk, Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1996-7284
malgorzta.ekiert@apsl.edu.pl
Abstract
Learners moving and learning languages across contexts have always been nat-
ural subjects of applied linguistics research. In recent years, however, teachers’
1This article is part of Erasmus+ Project titled ILTERGInternational Language Teacher Education Re-
search Group (No. KA203-035295) funded by Turkish National Agency. The study is cond ucted by Gazi
University, Boğaziçi University, Pomeranian University & University of Evora as partners of the project.
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
350
mobility across contexts and their temporary work and stay due to interna-
tionalization in education has been an equally important development. While
research on language teacher identity is now an established field of study (De
Costa & Norton, 2017), there seems to be more need for research in mobile
language teacher identity and the processes these teachers go through in
their short-term stay-abroad experiences in terms of their identity construc-
tion. In order to partially respond to this need, in this paper, we focus on the
identity construction of mobile English language teachers from 3 dissimilar
countries, Turkey (N= 4), Poland (N = 4) and Portugal (N= 2), based on indi-
vidual, semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Through narrative analyses of
these interviews, we demonstrate that mobile language teachers undergo
complex interpersonal, linguistic, and sociocultural negotiations of identity.
Keywords: mobile language teachers; language teacher identity; Poland; Tur-
key; Portugal
1. Introduction
Mobility in education has become one of the most visible effects of globalization
in recent decades. While the number of international students studying in foreign
countries is increasing steadily, many different forms of this experience have be-
come popular alongside the regular undergraduate and graduate degrees, such
as study-abroad programs, or exchange programs like Erasmus across Europe. Be-
coming equally widespread is the mobility of language teachers who experience
teaching their native languages or a non-native language abroad for limited peri-
ods of time due to various reasons, including lack of economic sustainability, per-
sonal decisions, commitments back in the home country. Due to the global role
of English today, the case of non-native English teachers who move to English-
speaking countries to teach English or their native languages is becoming increas-
ingly popular, especially among early-career teachers. Through this experience,
mobile English language teachers enhance their professional development, their
linguistic and intercultural competence, and increase their chances of better job
opportunities when they return to their home countries.
The purpose of this paper is to look into the mobile English language
teachers’ identity construction in their work – and/or study-abroad experiences.
We focus on Polish, Portuguese, and Turkish teachers who have worked in the
UK and the USA, and who all continue to teach in their home countries for the
time being. The three groups of teachers have had a range of different relations
with the English language and the experience of staying abroad for work. As EU
citizens since the mid-1980s, Portuguese teachers have enjoyed free travelling
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
351
to the UK, working there or participating in EU international cooperation pro-
grams still as pre-service teachers. By contrast, Poland has enjoyed travelling
and working abroad opportunities since it became an EU member in 2004. Be-
fore that, it had been ruled by the communist regime for almost fifty years and
suffered all that it involved. For many Polish language teachers at that time, the
knowledge of English epitomized freedom, truth, modernity, and “a window to
the world”. Turkey, meanwhile, differs from the two European countries more
critically in terms of its geographical location, religion, tradition, and socioeco-
nomic structure. Unlike the two, Turkey has been aspiring to become an EU
member in the context of its institutional history with Europe that started with
its European Council membership in 1949. Coming from a non-member country,
English teachers in Turkey still go through challenging processes if they wish to
work and stay in Europe, which does not always end in success. Recent years
have seen an upsurge of interest among English-speaking language teachers in
Turkey in scholarship programs, such as Fulbright, which send good language
teachers to American universities to teach their mother tongue and continue
their graduate studies. As Fulbright seems to be the most widespread form of
stay-abroad experience concerning early-career English teachers in Turkey, we
have chosen to incorporate them in our investigation of language teacher iden-
tity in stay-abroad contexts, whereas Polish and Portuguese participants were
teachers who had spent time living and working abroad with no institutional
support. Below, we start reporting on our study after a brief literature review.
This is followed by the discussion of our findings.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Language teacher identity
The identity turn that started to establish its place in applied linguistics more
than two decades ago is now beginning to flourish in the field of language
teacher education (e.g., Barkhuizen, 2017; De Costa & Norton, 2017; Cheung,
Said, & Park, 2015; Clarke, 2008; Kanno & Stuart, 2011; Tsui, 2007; Werbińska,
2018). Conventionally, teacher identity scholarship has focused primarily on the
distinction between professional identity and personal identity (e.g., Beijaard,
Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). In this framework, professional identity concerns pro-
fessional knowledge, development, and practice, as much as teachers’ encounters
with the school’s culture and the educational system at large. Teachers’ profes-
sional identity construction is conceptualized as a process that takes the teachers
from their “default identity” (Richards, 2006, p. 60) in which they take on pre-
determined teacher roles constructed when they were students, and transform
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
352
them. This transformation is inherently related to teacher professional develop-
ment, which is a never-ending process of learning by itself, since teachers naturally
learn through various channels including their classrooms, school communities, col-
leagues, professional development courses, seminars and workshops (Borko, 2004).
Aiming to go beyond the personal-professional dichotomy, more recent
work on language teacher identity with a post-structuralist outlook has focused
on the multiplicity, fluidity, and situationality of identities. While this multiplicity
is informed by teachers’ age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, race, class, personal
interests, and even “extra-curricular” activities (Mockler, 2011), they are in con-
stant interaction with each other (Danielewicz, 2001; Varghese, Morgan, John-
ston, & Johnson, 2005). Furthermore, this construction is influenced by the con-
ditions of the local context, and the political, social and institutional expecta-
tions (Day, Kington, Stobart, & Sammons, 2006). Teachers seem to be involved
in a continuous process of interpretation and negotiation of meanings, social
roles and positions in encountering new environments. These encounters might
contradict teachers’ backgrounds, social memberships, beliefs, emotions, values
and ideologies, knowledge, use of language, and attitudes (Miller, 2009). Be-
sides, they might be jeopardized when the teacher strictly adheres to the formal
teacher role, or the default identity, at the expense of, for example, developing
an ongoing relationship with the learners. In line with this thinking, De Costa
and Norton (2017) argue that language teaching is identity work.
2.2. Language teachers and stay-abroad experience
Against the background presented in the previous section, research focusing on
the identity construction of more mobile language teachers is still limited (e.g.,
Arber, Blackmore & Vongalis-Macrow, 2014). Mobile professionals have been
studied across many different contexts and primarily in sociological, economic,
or anthropological literature. Terms such as hyper-mobility (Frändberg & Vil-
helmson, 2003) have been coined to emphasize the short-term and frequent
nature of some forms of mobility common among educated people across the
globe. Language teachers’, particularly English teachers’, mobility is not a new
phenomenon. In applied linguistics, there has been a long tradition of focusing
on language teacher diaries (e.g., Bailey, 1990; Jarvis, 1992), yet these studies
concentrate on the process and reflection on language learning, and do not fo-
cus on teacher identity construction per se. As a similar field of study in SLA,
there has been continuous interest in study-abroad contexts, but mostly from
the perspective of students’ language learning and identity negotiations (e.g.,
Benson, Barkhuizen, Bodycott, & Brown, 2013; Du Fon & Churchill, 2006; Freed,
1995; Kinginger, 2009, 2013; Pellegrino, 2005).
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
353
For language teachers, the experience of living abroad necessitates a re-
assessment of their firm beliefs about teaching and learning (Bodycott & Walker,
2000). This is an inevitable part of professional development and identity con-
struction in certain respects. First of all, especially novice teachers go through
the entire process of adjusting to professional life in another country, which
makes their transition from student life to teacher life a more challenging pro-
cess (Dobrow & Higgins, 2005). Not only do they have to learn to move from
their default identity, but they also need to restructure themselves in a new po-
litical, social and institutional environment. As Barkhuizen (2017) underlines,
language teacher identities are negotiated over time and space, including
moves back and forth the imagined communities and classrooms, or the society.
Secondly, English teachers who stay abroad usually deal with multiple lan-
guages. As Motha, Jain, and Tecle (2012) emphasize, being transnationals, these
teachers have complex language learning histories themselves. Thus, in many
situations, they cannot fit somewhere within the native-non-native dichotomy,
which makes their stay-abroad experience even more complex. Thirdly, and es-
pecially in the case of those who teach English abroad, the presence of interna-
tional students enhances teachers’ intercultural understanding and leads to
their development of strategies in promoting intercultural learning in their class-
rooms (Volet & Ang, 1998). Many teachers of English are exposed to a wide
range of international students for the first time in their lives, which brings a
whole new set of identity negotiations to the picture. In addition, they enhance
their qualities of a flexible, lifelong learner who is able to participate in ongoing
change and who is confident in him/herself in this change (Walkington, 2005).
Hence, staying abroad is an experience which has far-reaching implications for
language teachers’ linguistic, cultural, and professional identities.
Against this background, the present study aims to problematize the no-
tion of stay-abroad identities involving language teachers from three entirely
different national backgrounds. Focusing on Turkish, Polish, and Portuguese
teachers’ interviews, we aim to illuminate the effects of this global movement
by attending to its identity dimension.
3. The study
The present investigation is one part of a larger project aimed at exploring Eng-
lish language teachers’ professional cultures. Five researchers (4 female and 1
male) across three research teams took part in this study, which was conducted
across the three respective countries. The data collection for the study spanned
the year 2017 and continued until February 2018. While Polish and Portuguese
participants were accessed through single institutions, the Turkish participants
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
354
were interviewed in two different universities located in Istanbul and Ankara.
The authors of this paper have all taken part in the interviews. All of them have
extensive teaching experience and taken part in a set of different research pro-
jects that involved one-to-one interviews. The interviews for this study were
conducted in English. Below, we provide demographic information about partic-
ipants. This is followed by detailing our data collection and analysis.
3.1. Participants
A total of ten language teachers participated in this interview study. The teach-
ers were accessed through participating researchers’ personal contacts in their
respective cities. The primary requirement for participation was a stay-abroad
experience before starting or at the early stages of career as a language teacher.
Although not planned as such, only female teachers participated in the study.
The demographic information about the participants is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1 Participant demographics
Participant
and
nationality
Stay-abroad
date/duration Stay-
abroad
country
Stay-abroad job Current position
Ada (PL) 2004-2008 UK Catering company staff,
Interpreter Primary school English teacher in Poland
Alina ( PL) 2003-2012 UK Lifeguard,
teacher of sport Lower secondary school English teacher
in Poland
Wioletta (PL) 2004-2005 UK Activity center staff Primary school English teacher in Poland
Jola (PL) 2005-2006 UK Receptionist, waitress,
teacher of English
in primary school
Upper secondary school English teacher
in Poland
Rosa (PR) 2000-2005 UK Substitute tea cher; teacher
of Spanish and Frenc h Upper secondary school English Teacher
in Portugal
Teresa (PR) 1993-2000 UK Teacher of Portuguese Primary school English teacher in Portu-
gal
Seda (TR) 2010-2011 USA Teacher of Turkish English instructor at Ankara
State University
Pelin (TR) 2009-2010 USA Teacher of Turkish English instruc tor at Ankara
State University
Aycan (TR) 2006-2009 USA Teacher of Turkish Engl ish instructor at Ista nbul
State University
Ela ( TR) 2011-2012
2012-2013 UK USA (1
term) Teacher of Turkish English inst ructor at Istanbul
State University
3.2. Data collection and analysis
The primary data collection method for this study was face-to-face, single-ses-
sion interviews conducted at the respective researchers’ offices. Researchers
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
355
met with the participants one-by-one between May 2017 and February 2018,
and conducted semi-structured interviews in English, each for the duration of
approximately an hour, and starting with the question: “Could you, please, tell
me about your experience in (…)”. The interviewers had access to a set of ques-
tions prepared beforehand (see Appendix), but the teams differed in their ap-
proaches to using these questions. While some stayed loyal to the original ques-
tion set verbatim, others had more conversation-like interviews. The interviews
were audio-recorded and transcribed by each research team. The transcriptions
of audio-recordings ranged between 5-17 single-spaced, typed pages.
We have run the entire data set through short story analysis, a form of an-
alyzing narratives proposed by Barkhuizen (2016). There has been a growing in-
terest in “small story” research in the field of applied linguistics in recent years
(e.g., Georgakopoulou, 2015; Watson, 2007). As opposed to “big stories” that are
informed by “excessive ordering” and “narrative smoothing” (Watson, 2007, p.
372), small stories focus on the quotidian, local, situational construction of iden-
tities. Inspired by this distinction, short story analysis is concerned with excerpts
from longer texts such as conversations, interviews, written narratives, and mul-
timodal digital stories (Barkhuizen, 2016, 2017), and focuses on identity construc-
tionthrough and in these narratives. In order to do so, Barkhuizen (2016) attends
to both content (i.e., the who, where, when dimensions of the story) and context
of storytelling, which he analyzes in terms of micro, meso, and macro scales.
The notion of scales as an analytical tool has been employed in quite a
few studies in applied linguistics in recent years (see Canagarajah & De Costa,
2016). While there has been a range of scales in question in these studies (e.g.,
Blommaert, 2007; Wortham, 2006), the distinction between micro and macro
scales are often emphasized, and in-between scale levels are proposed, such as
meso-level scales. Adopting the Douglas Fir Group’s (2016) perspective on
learning and identity, Barkhuizen (2016) employs these three scales, which we
also use in our analysis in this paper: The actual construction of talk that hap-
pens within the micro scale; the institutional scale such as duration of a semes-
ter, which takes place within the meso scale; and the social patterns that are
constructed through much longer durations that we analyze as macro-scales.
A scalar approach as such provides a systematic analysis to the relation-
ship between content and context that Barkhuizen (2016) refers to, which we
find congruent with our purposes in this study. In content terms, our analyses
are informed by the content of the interviews, which made way for our three
major themes to emerge (i.e., personal, linguistic, and social factors) and our
three sets of research questions to assume their final shape. While our starting
point was to probe into factors that influence stay-abroad experiences, and the
way these factors contribute to identity construction, we have specified these
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
356
questions in line with the content that emerged in our data. As for the context,
we present our findings in an effort to show the interrelatedness of three major
scales in the construction of narratives. Although we do not employ a close lin-
guistic analysis of these findings, we demonstrate how these scales are in play
in the construction of identities, following Barkhuizen (2016, 2017). Against this
background, three sets of questions guided the study:
(1) What are the personal and interpersonal factors that impact language
teachers’ stay abroad experiences? How do these factors contribute to
their identity construction?
(2) What are the linguistic/language-related factors that impact language
teachers’ stay abroad experiences? How do these factors contribute to
their identity construction?
(3) What are the sociocultural factors that impact language teachers’ stay abroad
experiences? How do these factors contribute to their identity construction?
3.3. Findings
3.3.1. Personal factors
An important life change like moving to another country surfaced in the teachers’
narratives as a complex web of short stories. While all three groups refer to a
range of challenges they faced throughout this experience, we have identified dif-
ferences between the Portuguese and Polish teachers’ narratives on the one
hand, and the Turkish teachers’ on the other. Overall, the “EU group” initially
opted to stay abroad for better job circumstances and left their country without
detailed planning. They also emphasize the “adventure” quality of staying abroad
in these accounts. As highly-skilled immigrants with higher education, their expe-
rience is quite different from those working in the lower ends of the labor market.
However, it also meant that both Portuguese teachers and Polish teachers had to
create the idea of going to the UK individually, and find themselves jobs either
before or as soon as they arrive there. This personal endeavor occupies a lot of
place in the narratives, as it directly relates to teachers’ biographies.
The Polish participant Wioletta, for instance, recounts that Poland becom-
ing an EU member the year she obtained her Master’s in Polish Philology meant
free travel and job opportunities for people like her. She framed going to the UK
as a matter of personal decision stemming from her interest in the country. Her
choice of moving to the UK, as she expresses it, indicates how much she is aware
of her own power in making this important life change. The Portuguese partici-
pants shared similar accounts when it comes to their initial decisions to move
to the UK. Rosa explains this with a useful analogy:
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
357
Rosa: I found myself, having finished my degree, not being able to find a job in Por-
tugal. And I’ve always had the “let’s get out of here” bug, so I just packed and went
to London, hoping to find a job as a kitchen assistant, a waitress, whatever.
Although the “bug” that Rosa talks about marks the adventure quality of
moving to the UK for these women, they also recount the personal responsibil-
ity, which they felt as English teachers:
Ada: I was already working as an English teacher in a primary school in Poland (…)
Children often asked me: “Have you ever been there?” “Have you ever seen Lon-
don?” and I always had to answer: “No, I haven’t been there”. So I just felt I was not
very credible as a teacher.
Both choice and the feeling of responsibility to speak better English point
to personal factors behind identity construction. While these are constructed at
the micro scale in the interviews, they are also informed by macro scale cultural
habits like moving to another country for language improvement.
As much as the initial incentive to go to the UK, living and working there
has contributed to the teachers’ identity construction and showed up in their
narratives as such. Ada, for instance, emphasizes that her work experience in
Manchester helped her become a more confident English teacher, because she
now has “so much to say” about England, and so much to share with her stu-
dents. Working in different jobs while in Manchester “gave her so much experi-
ence to talk about”, as she puts it. She describes the change as follows:
Ada: I feel much more confident speaking English and it’s very natural for me now because
before I went to England I didn’t feel natural at all. It didn’t feel natural for me as it is now.
In her accounts, Ada draws on an effort to construct a new identity for
herself: that of a credible teacher who speaks and acts naturally in English. Her
individual efforts align with her rationale to go to England. Doing so, she again
draws on macro-scale discourses of achievement and combines them with the
meso-scale realities of her job at school.
Portuguese teachers’ narratives, on the other hand, mostly bear a positive
tone as far as personal choice and identity construction; however, they also
draw on difficulties they faced, such as classroom management issues. Rosa, for
instance, recounts the student behavior that she came across in England as “re-
ally a shock”, and what she needed to adapt to the most. Teresa, meanwhile,
accepts that she had “some difficulty adapting to the school and the English
environment” in her first year. Both of these teachers frame these challenges as
personal identity struggles.
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
358
These trajectories make the EU teachers’ stories slightly different from the
Turkish teachers, mainly because the latter group all went to the US as Fulbright
scholars, and taught Turkish at the university level. Therefore, the personal
choice and struggle accounts that characterize European teachers’ going to the
UK do not show up in the Turkish teachers’ narratives in the same manner. Still,
in contrast to Ada’s or Rosa’s experience, Pelin recalls her staying in the US as
by and large dramatic, and describes her initial reaction to it as a culture shock.
Yet, she believes, in the end, that this experience has enhanced her individual
development. In a quite striking metaphor, she expresses her development as
aging five years in one. This kind of self-reflection at the personal level is not
foregrounded in the other participants’ narratives. Doing so, Pelin draws heavily
on macro-scale discourses, and how they affected her at the micro scale.
For Seda, another Turkish participant from Ankara, staying abroad was a
challenge in terms of issues such as time difference, being away from family,
having to share housing with people from other cultures, and finding friends.
Like Pelin, Seda also thinks finding friends in the US was difficult because her
friends had busy schedules, which stopped her from socializing with them. Still,
she managed to maintain tolerant relationships with them, and improved her-
self as an independent person, who had enhanced her travelling and organiza-
tion skills as well as her coping with cultural differences. Similar to Seda’s situa-
tion, Aycan did not try to make any friends in her first year, either. Different from
the experience of Polish and Portuguese teachers, the Turkish teachers seemed
to consider their stay-abroad experience as temporary, and therefore did not
make any attempts to look for native friends. Yet, when Aycan decided to extend
her stay to continue with Master’s studies, she started turning to people around
her, including her Turkish peers, American friends, international friends, and
some professors. She summarizes her feelings in the following way:
Aycan: There were times I cried a lot called my family and other than that financial
reasons. I felt very lonely there and I felt, I don’t know, I felt like no one could help
me there if I had a problem, so, from time to time I called them.
This kind of loneliness does not appear in the other participants’ personal
narratives. While Aycan made these life choices on a daily basis, she also draws
on macro-scale cultural habits of avoiding friends in an entirely new place, being
family-bound, and focusing on the short-termness of the stay rather than enjoy-
ing it. This perspective is actually enhanced further later in the interview, when
Aycan recounts her experience as “feeling like a foreigner” in the US:
Aycan: I felt like a foreign there I never felt like it was my home and then, great coun-
try great people great place to live but it never felt like home and I was very happy
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
359
to be there but if I were to go bac k there again if I were to live there I still wouldn’t want
to live there I am, in spite of everything in our country, can you imagine? [giggles]
Ela’s narratives differ from the other Turkish participants in that she had
already been teaching English in Turkey before she went to the UK, and then to
the USA for one semester. Returning to student life was an enjoyable experience
for her. Yet, like the other Turkish participants, Ela complained about not being
able to make friends with British students. She also remembers how her inter-
national friends were saying the same thing about British natives. Meanwhile,
like Aycan, she also stated that she chose not to make friends with Americans,
as her stay would be short, but she could have well socialized if she wanted to.
All in all, Turkish participants’ short stories of personal issues that affect
their stay-abroad experiences are marked by more emotional tones, with em-
phases on loneliness, making friends, feeling like strangers. This stands in oppo-
sition to Poles’ focus on struggle, and the Portuguese’ emphasis on the pleasure
quality of their stay-abroad experiences. These differences in the construction
of narratives as such seem to stem from differences in cultural habits and pat-
terns that are developed across macro scales.
3.3.2. Language-related factors
The ten participants in this study come from a variety of linguistic and educa-
tional backgrounds. In the first place, their native languages and the languages
they have taught abroad show differences. While only one Polish teacher taught
English in the UK, all of the Turkish group taught Turkish in the USA. Meanwhile,
one of the two Portuguese teachers taught Spanish, French, and other subjects,
and the other teacher taught only Portuguese in the UK. These differences were
reflected in the teachers’ statements of rationale to go abroad. In the accounts
of the Turkish teachers, improving English did not show up as the most im-
portant reason to go. Rather, the Turkish teachers, all Fulbright scholars,
achieved this scholarship with their high level of English among other things. By
contrast, improving their English stood out as the most important reason to go
to the UK in the Polish and Portuguese teachers’ narratives. Alina, for instance,
who had to pass the English examinations in six months, recounts the pressure
this put on her, and the strategies she and her partner developed to improve
their English, such as befriending native speakers, regular reading of English
newspapers, and avoiding watching Polish television. Similarly ambitious ac-
counts were given by Wioletta, who mentions her special effort not to live or
work with other Poles. Meanwhile, Jola seems to be the most ambitious when
it comes to improving her English:
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
360
Jola: I rented a room in the Irish girl’s house and there were only French people or
Irish people (…) and that was something deliberate that I did. And I wanted to use as
much English as possible and I also told everybody at the beginning to correct me. I
told them that I wouldn't be offended by this, but quite the opposite. Well, I can’t
think of any other methods of learning English.
Unlike the Turkish teachers, Polish teachers were not affiliated with any
institutions to improve their English, so they were aware at the outset that their
language improvement depended solely on their individual efforts. For some,
like Ada, these efforts were never enough:
Ada: At the beginning everything was a challenge to be honest because I have very
big inhibitions when it comes to speaking English and I spoke only when I had to. I
didn’t find any pleasure speaking English because I was too ashamed and I didn’t feel
comfortable (…) And also learning new skills through English. For instance, I had to
do my driving license there and I had no idea about cars, even in Polish.
These accounts go in parallel with the personal struggles Polish teachers went
through in launching themselves into stay-abroad experiences. While they refer to
meso-scale activities of improving English limited within the timescale of their stay-
abroad, they also draw on macro-scale attitudes towards the improvement of English.
In the case of Jola and Teresa, the source of struggle is lacking in the col-
loquial. Jola states that she could understand everybody, but had some prob-
lems with the colloquial, and “dirty words” that she heard at her work. Similarly,
Teresa frames her troubles as a matter of lacking “everyday terms”, and “subtle-
ties of language and culture”:
Teresa: In the first year, I had some difficulty in adapting to the school, to that English
environment, because I worked directly under the coordination of an Englishman, an
English teacher. And I didn’t feel well, because I lacked, even though I could speak
English and I had some experience, I was lacking those everyday terms, those subtle-
ties of the language and the culture, I lacked those.
Teresa, as well, refers to both micro-scale experiences when she refers to
her perceived weaknesses in language, and the meso-scale experience that she
went through at school. This is somewhat different from the Portuguese teach-
ers’ stories. For Rosa, having no contact with the fellow Portuguese was a posi-
tive experience overall, which she thinks helped her improve her English. She
states that her English was above average already, and she could go for days
without speaking any Portuguese. Different from other participants, Rosa ex-
presses her admiration for the British English openly, and compares it with the
American English that she is exposed to right now:
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
361
Rosa: That was one of the best parts, and going somewhere and, “Oh, I sound British,
don’t I?” Of course, that can’t happen now, because you get to Portugal and you get
all the American influence, which is a pity. I miss that Britishness in me.
Rosa, too, refers to the macro-scale cultural affiliation of being British and how
it permeates into her daily interactions.
In the case of the Turkish teachers, the narratives are constructed in a dif-
ferent way. The Turkish teachers all left Turkey as graduates of foreign language
education programs at reputable universities, and two also had some teaching
experience. They left for the target country with higher levels of English profi-
ciency. What was missing was the knowledge of the colloquial as they all indi-
cated in their interviews. Pelin, for instance, recounts that her academic English
deteriorated while teaching Turkish in the US, but her colloquial English im-
proved. A similar divide between academic and colloquial English is highlighted
by Seda, but both Seda and Aycan recall that they had no serious problems with
the academic English they heard in classes:
Seda: The first few days when I was there, I understood almost nothing in teenagers
speaking but I perfectly understood everything the professors are saying because
they speak the proper English.
Aycan: It was a connected flight from New York to Portland and then I wanted to ask
something to the guards there and then I didn’t understand what they said. It was all
in English but to me it sounded like Spanish, French something else, and he repeated
many times and I was like does he speak English? Is this English? What is he saying?
et cetera So that was, that was very, that was the first shock but once I was in an
academic environment I was like okay I can easily understand and talk about et cetera
so I can, I need to tell that there are two worlds there.
Not only does Aycan recognize the difference in coping with everyday and
academic English, but also she recalls impressing her American professors with
her fluency. She thinks it was because of her degree in English and private tutor-
ing, thanks to which she always used English with her students. Clearly, Aycan
refers to meso-scale activities that were responsible for contributing to such
outcomes. Yet, both Seda and Aycan also draw on macro-scale notions of lan-
guage ideologies when they refer to “proper English” or different accents.
Unlike the rest of the participants, Ela has experience of staying both in the
US and the UK. She comes from a strong English background training in a private
secondary school in Istanbul, with native and non-native teachers and highly com-
petent English lessons focusing on literature. After teaching English in Istanbul for
five years, she went to England for her Master’s. When asked whether she had any
trouble in understanding English when she first went there, this is what she said:
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
362
Ela: I can say both in school and in daily life especially in daily life I felt that we have
been exposed to American accent mostly. It was hard for me especially in the trains
at the train stations I remember I asked something about the student card discount
kind of thing, I didn’t understand what the staff was talking about. He repeated three
times and then I left quietly there [imitates] “okay I got it” I didn’t understand a word,
of course, but Americans say the same thing from time to time, about the British, but
then of course through the end of the year it was much more easy in the States, I
didn’t have any difficulty. The two experiences were totally different.
Ela recalls the whole experience in a light-hearted way, far from the negative
tone portrayed in the other Turkish teachers’ narratives. Having experience in
both countries seems to have helped her develop more common sense.
All in all, teachers’ rationales for staying abroad and their proficiency in
English seem to play a role in the linguistic struggles through which they went.
While both Polish and Portuguese teachers recount that being European and
speaking English opened the doors for them, the Turkish teachers recount rely-
ing on their high level of English. Doing so, the teachers bring together the
macro-scale cultural and social differences with the meso-scale experiences
they had in speaking and improving their English.
3.3.3. Sociocultural factors
An important part of the interviews was spent on teachers’ observations and
their ways of dealing with sociocultural differences between their different con-
texts of teaching. Strikingly enough, the Polish participants that we interviewed
did not frame their short stories around these differences. One reason might be
the “survivor” quality of Polish teachers’ self-portrayal which kept them away
from thinking about the cultural struggles they experienced in the UK, while an-
other might be the scope of the interviews conducted with them. As such, the
Portuguese teacher Rosa recounted in her short stories that she did not have
any problems making friends with the British, or finding her way in her daily life,
like going to the doctor’s. These portrayals refer to the micro and meso-scale of
teachers’ positive experiences of stay-abroad.
Yet, stay-abroad as a cultural experience might ring with it its own strug-
gles. The Portuguese participant Teresa explains this as the mismatch between
the mental representation of another culture and its reality. The discrepancy
that Teresa talks about might be better understood in the context of an unpleas-
ant incident that she recounts. As an Afro-Portuguese woman, Teresa had trou-
ble with her British colleagues in terms of forming a social relationship. In the
end, one of them “broke the ice”, and invited her to her house party:
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
363
Teresa: We went over to that house in the weekend, it was just the English there, the
blue-eyed white people. Plus me, the African, and my Jewish colleague.
Interviewer: And she invited you
Teresa: She invited me, and I even said, when she came to meet us at the gate, she
said, “Ah, Teresa, welcome, now you are one of us”.
Interviewer: And that was after how long? A year?
Teresa: A year. And I’ve never forgotten that. And I said, “Well, you are really racists”.
And my colleague looked at me, “you are really racists!” And that just came out, but
at the same time, I gained some friends.
Teresa recalls this confrontation as a moment of empowerment when, after giv-
ing her response, she says that she also gained friends. Her account reveals that
the macro-scale cultural patterns of racial discrimination make their way
through the micro-scale interactions among colleagues.
The case of the Turkish participants is equally marked by sociocultural
struggles they went through in their daily lives abroad. Among those, Pelin’s
recollection of her experience of daily life is the most striking:
Pelin: When I went to the city center you know I lost that contact because even scared of
getting on a bus, because on the bus there were poor people, black people, the people I
was unfamiliar with. So I had a little bit like, how can I say, scared to live in the campus
because I thought I would get lost. This is why culture shock I mean, yes culture shock.
Pelin describes the people that she encounters in daily life, “the poor peo-
ple and the Black people”, as the people that she was “unfamiliar with” and ap-
parently the idea of leaving the campus scared her. She considers this as a part
of the culture shock that she went through. It seems that Pelin had a harder
time in cultural adaptation. It also reflects the acknowledgement of inhibitions
in her cultural distance. Pelin explains this as doing the opposite of what she
used to do in Turkey. She discloses that although she was not keen on such as-
pects of the Turkish culture as “customs, traditions, religion” and would often
criticize them, she came to support them when she started living in the USA.
These ambiguities are not altogether paralleled in the other Turkish teach-
ers’ accounts. Seda seems to be more tolerant towards the American culture,
and recounts changing her perception by revising her previous stereotypes. Her
open-mindedness is actually a two-way mindset. As a Turkish teacher at the uni-
versity, she remembers being received by others positively, and thinks that she
changed the Turkish image in her students’ minds:
Seda: My students were especially beginner ones maybe it was the first time for them
to see a Turkish person so they were actually a little bit sometimes surprised because
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
364
the image they have in their minds a little bit kinds of stereotype they hear on TV
they watched on TV and then there is me who has a modernist style who is speaking
English who is teaching English and who is hanging out with them at nights so I think
I changed the image little bit in their minds and it was a little bit shock for them
because they knew some Turkish people beforehand.
Not only cultural habits, but Seda’s outlook on students’ various identities
have changed. As one of the colleges she was working for was an all-girls college,
she had the opportunity to observe same-sex relationships in this school:
Seda: My point of view totally changed for in that point for example, my stu-
dents were lesbians and you know they were very happy in their own life, then
I start to make comparisons with, like American life style Turkish life style, oh my
God these girls wouldn’t be able to really enjoy their lives in Turkey, I was saying
to myself so that really changed in my mind.
Similar “radical” cultural observations and changes have been observed
by Aycan. When asked whether her stay-abroad experience has changed her
perception of culture, she immediately recounts “romantic relationships” where
she had to learn new customs such as dates on Friday nights or friendships,
which she found different from her Turkish friendships in terms of the quality of
time spent together. Yet, she opens up the most on the change she went through
in terms of her perception of religion:
Aycan: It changed many things it has changed my views about religion, about culture
and about my family, about many stereotypes that we had about cultures et cetera.
I mean I studied different language different culture et cetera but going there and
living there is a different thing that you know, it’s not that my family is a conservative
family but you know I became less religious.
Ela’s accounts did not bear strong traces of cultural differences that made
their way into her stay-abroad experience. The only point that she emphasized
is the cultural stereotypes that she had had about the British culture and how
differently she perceived them:
Ela: We have stereotypes as you know people would say British people are cold this and
that e:h this description of coldness I mean where and why I realize that I cannot have a
British family but on the buses at the shops on the streets they are very kind polite and
they are not bothered by your questions at restaurants they are extremely kind in that
sense I didn’t feel that they’re cold but to me I think you cannot make friends there.
All in all, it might be suggested that the Turkish participants went through
questions of who they are vis-à-vis the native and international people they met
in the US more seriously than the Polish and Portuguese teachers. They had more
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
365
cross-cultural encounters that they recalled as struggles, and they referred to
the macro-scale patterns and practices more often than the Polish and Portu-
guese participants in constructing these encounters in their short stories.
4. Discussion
The study reported in this paper reveals that stay-abroad experience is a multi-
dimensional endeavor. While it is the English language that serves as a passport
for the teachers’ moving and working overseas, it is a complex set of issues that
shape this experience well beyond the language. Our data indicate that, regard-
less of the national background, three main factors recur in the teachers’ stay-
abroad narratives: personal, linguistic, and sociocultural.
In the case of the personal factors, language teachers in focus are ex-
tremely self-conscious in going through their experience of staying abroad. Their
responses to the interview questions are highly contextualized, which shows
their ability to understand their experience within larger contexts, which, in
turn, confirms our decision to adopt short story analysis as our analytical tool.
We have demonstrated that the major divide in terms of personal factors seems
to be between the European group and the Turkish group, although we have
also observed differences between Polish and Portuguese teachers’ narratives,
like the former being focused more on personal struggle. While the general ten-
dency of the European group is more on acculturating to the British culture and
language in the earliest and best way possible, the Turkish teachers’ accounts
reflect sentiments of feeling lonely, feeling like a stranger, and avoiding making
friends with locals due to the limited duration of staying there. This might be
interpreted as the reflection of differences between the European and Turkish
cultures in terms of their perspective on adulthood. Except for one, all Turkish
teachers went to the US straight out of college. A college graduate in Turkey and
one in Europe have strikingly different experiences in terms of living and work-
ing, which leads them into having different expectations from staying abroad.
We have demonstrated these as differences in bringing together the micro-scale
and macro-scale cultural patterns.
In terms of linguistic factors that have played a role in stay-abroad experi-
ences, the picture is less clear, as we have analyzed a mixed group in terms of
first languages, and languages and levels taught, and these teachers’ experi-
ences are different from each other. What they share, however, is the motiva-
tion to improve their English in the limited time available. The Polish and the
Portuguese teachers’ attitudes are strikingly similar in terms of making deliber-
ate effort into developing their English language. By contrast, the Turkish teach-
ers did not experience many of these stages, due to their good level of English
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
366
as Fulbright scholars. It is important, however, that all teachers see colloquial
uses of the language as something that they gained through their stay-abroad
experience. It is also crucial to note that the European group’s efforts to improve
their language stems from their perceived proximity to the culture in the UK,
which made it possible for them to be exposed to more natives than the Turkish
teachers. Turkish teachers’ conceptualization of personal distance and lack of
access to native speakers due to their perception of a short and limited stay
seem to have played a role in their lack of reported deliberate efforts to improve
their English even more. Thus, we can conclude that the micro-scale experiences
on a daily basis and the meso-scale patterns of ideas about improving English
merge in different ways across the three groups of participants.
As far as the sociocultural factors that impact stay-abroad experiences of
language teachers are concerned, we have noted that they failed to appear in
the Polish participants’ narratives. This might be due to the differences in the
interview scope, such that the Polish interviews might not have directed the
conversation to narratives of sociocultural factors. It might also be related to
how stay-abroad experiences are perceived by Polish teachers. It is also im-
portant to mention that the major sociocultural struggles seem to stem from
racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural background of the teachers, as far as our in-
terviews with Portuguese and Turkish teachers suggest. The case of the Portu-
guese teacher Teresa tells us that not only national but also ethnic culture plays
a role in stay-abroad experiences. On the other hand, the case of Turkish teach-
ers portrays some ambiguities and tensions. Attitude towards Turkish and Amer-
ican culture, adopting native culture versus critically analyzing it, finding “reli-
gious” answers to the questions on struggle, are some examples prone to ambi-
guities. Apparently, Turkish teachers have found the way to deal with these
questions thanks to their stay-abroad experience. The sociocultural aspects of
stay-abroad experience directly connect the macro-scale issues and struggles
with the quotidian experiences. The level of their incorporation into each other
shows variations across these three groups.
5. Conclusion
Mobile language teachers’ working and staying abroad is a complex area of iden-
tity negotiation, as it is a different set of experiences than, for instance, the case
of study-abroad, or permanent migration. These complexities involve a diverse
set of relationships between linguistic experiences and identity construction.
Our data suggest that individuals might excel in one area, such as linguistic skills),
but they might still perceive themselves as insufficient when it comes to personal
and sociocultural struggles. These perceptions lead them into developing certain
The impact of mobility on language teacher identity: Turkish, Polish and Portuguese perspectives
367
inhibitions in making native friends, feeling alienated, or feeling as an outsider. Yet,
unpacking these complexities and locating them within micro, meso and macro
scales of identity construction seem to help if our purpose is to better understand
how language teachers’ identities are shaped by their stay-abroad experiences.
Ișıl Erduyan, Dorota Werbińska, Burҫak Yılmaz Yakıșık, Luis Guerra, Małgorzata Ekiert
368
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APPENDIX
When and why did you go abroad?
What were the biggest challenges during your stay abroad?
How did you learn English abroad?
How were you received by others?
Did your stay abroad have an impact on your perception of culture (target country culture,
your native culture)?
Did your stay abroad have an impact on your status as a language teacher?
Do you think you maximally used your time abroad or could have achieved more?
How does the stay-abroad affect your teaching/life/position right now?
