Yazan, B. (2022).

Multivocal teacher educator identity: A self-study of a language teacher educator’s use of critical
autoethnography. In R. Yuan & I. Lee (Eds.), Becoming and being a TESOL teacher educator: Research and practice.
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003004677-16

13 Multivocal teacher
educator identity
A self-­study of a language teacher
educator’s use of critical autoethnography

Bedrettin Yazan

Introduction
TESOL research has been interested in how teacher candidates grow or
transition into teachers with focus on teacher learning, cognition, reflec-
tion, knowledge base, action research, and identity since the early 1990s
(see Freeman & Johnson, 1998), yet there has not been much attention to
the questions such as: How do teacher educators become teacher educators?
What knowledge and skills do they need? How do they construct the knowl-
edge and develop the skills? How do they construct their identities as teacher
educators? Recently researchers started centering their studies on these ques-
tions and investigating TESOL teacher educators’ growth, practices, beliefs,
identities, and agency (Golombek, 2015, 2017; Peercy, 2015; Yuan, 2015,
2016, 2017). This recent investigation endeavor has further been facilitated
by the introduction of self-­study of teacher education practices (S-­STEP)
to the field of TESOL (Peercy & Sharkey, 2020a, 2020b). Even though
S-­STEP has been an established strand of research in broader teacher edu-
cation literature (see Studying Teacher Education and Springer book series
Self-­Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices), self-­study meth-
odology or the idea of teacher educators studying their own work and self
has been new to TESOL. The current chapter reports on my recent work
to contribute to this growing body of research in which language teacher
educators examine their own work and identities. It explores my experiences
theorizing and using critical autoethnography as a semester-­long teacher-­
learning activity in a graduate level “Linguistics for Classroom Teachers”
course. More specifically, it addresses the following question: How did I
negotiate and enact different identities in four one-­on-­one feedback sessions
with a teacher candidate on their critical autoethnography?
Back in Fall 2009, when taking my first doctoral course (Teaching English
Language Learners: Current and Future Research Directions) with Megan
Madigan Peercy, one of the main topics across the semester was the prepara-
tion of teachers to serve ELLs. One day walking away from the class with my
close friend and colleague, Ali Fuad Selvi, the question he posed stuck with

DOI: 10.4324/9781003004677-16
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  247
me: How are language teacher educators prepared to work with teachers of
ELLs? What is their knowledge base? As budding researchers and teacher
educators, we found it really interesting that our field was concerned with
how teachers grow, but it did not explore how teacher educators grow, to
our knowledge then. Several years later, when I attended Dr. Peercy’s sem-
inar talk on her study (Peercy, 2015) “Do we ‘walk the talk’ in language
teacher education?”, in which she explored her year-­long experience back
in the classroom as a Spanish teacher, her central question and research res-
onated with me so much. Both questions later surfaced when my interest
in teacher identity began and culminated in my dissertation project (Yazan,
2014). As I was researching teacher identity, I found myself reflecting not
only on my identity negotiation as an EFL teacher which I was no more, but
also my imagined identity as a language teacher educator. This reflection is
still ongoing and has led to the conception and design of identity-­oriented
teacher learning activities in my teacher education practices and related
research studies (Yazan, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2019c). That is, I have begun
to use identity as a lens that guides my reflection, agency, and practice within
the constraints and affordances of the sociocultural context, which resonates
with Morgan’s (2004) concept of ‘identity as pedagogy.’
Researching language teacher identity, I have worked toward better
understanding the relationship between language teachers’ practices and
identities and the ways in which they deploy their identities as pedagogy
(Morgan, 2004; Motha, Jain, & Tecle, 2012; Zheng, 2017). I have also
been interested in the theorization of identity negotiation and agency vis-­à-­
vis teacher emotions and commitment/investment (Benesch, 2017, 2018). I
have concomitantly reviewed and questioned my language teacher education
practices with an identity lens. Therefore, the following questions emerged
at the nexus of my identities as a language teacher educator and researcher
of language teacher education: How does my identity orient my practices?
What identity negotiation do I engage in when teaching teachers? How can
I intentionally deploy my identity as pedagogy of teacher education?

Teacher educator identity

Similar to teacher development and growth, becoming a teacher educator
requires constructing an identity as one (Izadinia, 2014; Williams, Ritter,
& Bullock, 2012). This identity construction process is compounded by the
vague definition of teacher educator, the responsibilities that largely vary
across contexts, and the corresponding issues. To explicate, teacher educa-
tors are the practitioners who teach teachers how to teach. This definition
involves a host of practitioners but not all of them directly or explicitly identify
themselves as teacher educators, largely because the institutional nomencla-
ture positions them as mentors, collaborating teachers, supervisors, adjunct
lecturers, or faculty. Moreover, there is no formal preparation that support
the transition and transformation into the identity of a teacher educator
(Butler & Diacopoulos, 2016; Yuan, 2015), nor is there a well-­established
248  Bedrettin Yazan
knowledge base for teacher educators (Goodwin et al., 2014). Teacher edu-
cators typically hold an advanced degree which is supplemented by certain
credits of coursework and their extensive prior teaching experiences. How-
ever, such degrees do not involve professional courses about teaching teach-
ers how to teach in their content areas. Lastly, teacher educators enact other
professional identities at the same time, such as administrator, researcher, lec-
turer, faculty, and teacher (Dinkelman, 2011; Izadinia, 2014; Yuan, 2017).
One of these identities might become more foregrounded in their multivocal
self and influence their teacher educator identity negotiation. For example,
their research interests and responsibilities might be more prominent in their
professional life in a particular institutional context and inform their teacher
educator identity negotiation more than other (Dinkelman, 2011; Hamilton
& Pinnegar, 2015; Murray & Male, 2005). Their beliefs about what lan-
guage teachers should know and be able to do might be closely connected
to their research agenda.
In brief, the above-­mentioned issues point to the complex nature of teacher
educator identity construction which is ongoing, fluid, multifaceted, and
context-­bound (Hamilton & Pinnegar, 2015). Teacher educator identities
are multiple, dynamic, subjective, and relational, and they are constructed
via a constant interplay between social, cultural, and institutional forces
and teacher educators’ agency, investment, beliefs, and future aspirations
(Lunenberg & Hamilton, 2008; Trent, 2013). Teacher educators negoti-
ate their identities at the complex intersection of personal, professional, and
political dimensions (Dinkelman, 2011). This negotiation involves position-
ing themselves and being positioned by supervisors, colleagues, teacher can-
didates, which might lead to identity tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas
(Murray & Male, 2005).
Theoretically in this study, I relied on Akkerman and Meijer’s (2011) defi-
nition of professional identity that is based on Bakhtin’s (1981) theory of
dialogical and multivocal self. They argue that professional identity is “as an
ongoing process of negotiating and interrelating multiple I-­positions in such
a way that a more or less coherent and consistent sense of self is maintained
throughout various participations and self-­investments in one’s (working)
life” (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011, pp. 317–318). I used this theorization
of identity to analyze the I-­positions I negotiated and enacted during my
face-­to-­face feedback conversations with a teacher candidate throughout the
semester, in Spring 2018, as she worked on her autoethnography. Focusing
on my identity negotiation, this self-­study explores my implementation of a
new teacher learning activity, i.e., critical autoethnographic narrative (CAN).

Critical autoethnographic narrative

In Spring 2018, I designed an identity-­oriented teacher learning tool, CAN,
which facilitated teacher candidates’ narration and analysis of language-­related
incidents from their life with a focus on the interplay between language ide-
ologies and identities (see Yazan, 2019a, 2019b for further discussion). As a
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  249
researcher, I have been interested in the relationship between teacher iden-
tity, practice, and learning since my dissertation project. Almost every study
that I read on teacher identity suggests as practical implication that teacher
education practices should include identity as an explicit goal. However,
there are not many studies which showcase the incorporation of identity in
teacher education practices (Leijen & Kullasepp, 2013; Meijer, Oolbekkink,
Pillen, & Aardema, 2014; Varghese, Daniels, & Park, 2019) and very few in
TESOL (Yazan, 2019b; Nguyen & Dao, 2019; Valencia, Herath, & Gagne,
2020) (see Martel & Yazan, 2020, for a synthesis). Therefore, I thought of
designing and using CAN in my Linguistics for Classroom Teachers course
in Spring 2018 with the hope that it would help teacher candidates under-
stand the inevitable relationship between their identity and learning and sup-
port their identity construction as part of their teacher preparation.
Students (five teacher candidates, one doctoral student) were expected to
complete this assignment (constituting 70% of course grade) in four install-
ments (i.e., drafts) throughout the semester with my guidance. When they
submitted each installment, I provided them with written feedback in MS
Word comments, and afterward, I met with them in person to talk about
my comments and their next steps in this writing process. In the first two
installments, I asked students to focus on narrating as many stories as possi-
ble that pertain to their experiences learning, using, and teaching languages.
I reminded them multiple times throughout the semester that they can nar-
rate and analyze any pertinent story in their autoethnography; all stories are
worth telling. In the last two installments, I asked them to focus on selecting
and discussing a theoretical framework and analyzing their stories through
this framework. We had class discussions on potential theoretical frameworks
and did some data analysis practice (using data from two ongoing studies
with language ideology focus) in the class twice during the semester. Toward
the end of the semester, they engaged in four related activities: analyzing one
selected story on an online discussion board, making a concept map of their
autoethnography, co-­constructing a rubric in pairs for the CAN assignment,
and presenting their autoethnography to the class.

Methodology
This study draws data from my implementation of CAN in a graduate lin-
guistics course for teacher candidates and addresses the following research
question: How did I negotiate and enact different identities in four one-­
on-­one feedback sessions with a teacher candidate on their critical autoeth-
nography? Below, I describe and explain the data collection and analysis
procedures I followed.

Data collection and analysis

In the larger project, my pedagogical purpose was to integrate teacher iden-
tity approach in my linguistics class and my research purpose was to examine
250  Bedrettin Yazan
teacher candidates’ identity work in this integration process. I collected the
following as data: four written installments, audio-­ recorded one-­ on-­
one
feedback sessions, discussion board posts, concept map of CAN, pair work
conversation of rubric co-­construction, and CAN presentation. In the cur-
rent study, I chose to focus on audio-­recorded one-­on-­one feedback ses-
sions. I remember noticing the challenges of providing feedback in these
sessions and I thought it was because of my multivocal self orienting my
facilitation of CAN writing for teacher candidates.
I had instituted these sessions in the design of the activity for the purpose
of providing one-­on-­one feedback on my students’ CAN writing process at
four points in the semester. After my students submitted each installment, I
reviewed them carefully to give them written feedback via comment boxes
in MS Word. When I completed my review, I sent out a mass email to all six
students with potential dates and times for them to meet with me individ-
ually. I asked them to reply all, and tell me what one-­hour time slot works
for them the best. I met with each student in my office and the length of
each session varied across students and installments. I started the session by
letting them know that I would be audio-­recording our conversation for
them to listen to later when they were revising their CAN. Then, I asked
how their writing was going and what challenges they had thus far. Next,
I walked them through the comments I left in their CAN document and
they asked me questions if anything needed to be clarified. I sometimes had
written comments which specifically said “we need to talk about this in our
feedback session” since it was not easy to explain in written comments. Last,
we discussed what their next steps are in writing their CAN, i.e., new stories
they will incorporate, articles they need to read for their analysis, options for
theoretical framework to use. Right after the session ended, I sent them the
link to the audio file of our conversation which they mentioned several times
how useful it was to go back and listen to the feedback session.
In my analysis for this chapter, I chose to focus on Peggy’s (pseudonym)
feedback sessions since she was great at asking me challenging questions about
the CAN writing process and its instrumentality for teacher candidates. I
truly appreciated Peggy’s questions which made me engage in reflections on
this assignment I was using for the first time. My data analysis aimed to ana-
lyze the teacher educator identity I negotiated and enacted in my feedback
sessions (totalling more than 4 hours) with Peggy. I first transcribed these
sessions for research purposes and read them through twice along with her
CAN installments. After I contextualized the conversations, I started analyz-
ing the data by using Akkerman and Meijer’s (2011) Bakhtinian approach to
teacher professional identity in order to address the aforementioned research
question. More specifically, I analyzed the conversations to find the I-­posi-
tions (e.g., a former language teacher, teacher educator, educational linguist,
qualitative researcher, teacher education researcher, advocate for autoeth-
nography methodology, academic writer, potential autoethnography writer,
and story teller) I negotiated and interrelated as I was enacting my identity
as a language teacher educator. Further analyzing the instances where I enact
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  251
these identities, I concluded that all these I-­positions tended to converge on
a new identity I constructed: autoethnography coach. Particularly, I enacted
this identity as an autoethnography coach who supports Peggy’s narration
and analysis of her stories in this entirely new genre of research and writ-
ing. My identity negotiation relied on multiple ‘voices’, predominantly as a
researcher and teacher educator which tended to conflict each other to a cer-
tain extent. My acts of identity negotiation demonstrated my multivocal self.

My researcher positionality
Conducting and reporting on this study, I acknowledge that my researcher
positionality is very much intertwined with my teacher educator identity.
I followed the self-­study research methods (Peercy & Sharkey, 2020a) in
which the boundaries between the researcher and the researched become
rather blurry. That is, implementing the design of CAN in my course, I was
predominantly a teacher educator who is providing guidance and mentor-
ing for new writers of autoethnography, although I had not had any earlier
autoethnography writing experience. However, I was also a researcher of
teacher education and I was planning to analyze the data gleaned from the
CAN implementation as a self-­study. I view the analysis I conducted for
this chapter and the writing and revising process (facilitated by the volume
editors) as part of my professional development. Therefore, reading this
chapter, you as the reader will hear my voice as a language teacher educator
who is researching his own practices of teacher education for the purpose of
engaging deep reflective practice and understanding the interplay between
my practices and identities.

Findings
Below, I will discuss how I constructed a new identity as an autoethnography
coach and how my multiple I-­positions conflicted in this construction.

Constructing a new identity: Autoethnography coach

Although CAN design was intended for the teacher candidates to engage
in solo autoethnography writing, the analysis of the conversations between
Peggy and me demonstrates that I played the role of a “sounding board”
which is the essential component in collaborative autoethnography, “a qual-
itative research method that is simultaneously collaborative, autobiographi-
cal, and ethnographic” (Chang, Ngunjiri, & Hernandez, 2016, p. 17). The
sounding board’s role in this research method involves “listening to stories
or asking probing questions to help others, sometimes caught in their own
experiences, connect their stories with those of others” (p. 58). These are
almost exactly what I did even though I was not cognizant of such a role in
collaborative autoethnography back then. Chang et al. (2016) would deem
me as “a non-­autoethnographer in relation to the particular research project
252  Bedrettin Yazan
he or she is involved in, because the non-­autoethnographer’s autobiograph-
ical data is not part of the investigation” (p. 58). However, I should note
that there was an uneven power relationship between Peggy and me since I
was officially her instructor who needed to review and grade her work in this
teacher education course. My role was not entirely the one that Chang et
al. recommends in collaborative autoethnography, which makes me call my
I-­position as autoethnography coach.
I enacted this I-­position by providing feedback and guidance on three
main areas of autoethnography writing process: narrating, analyzing, and
composing. In the interest of space in this chapter, I share one example for
each one of these areas.

Narrating
I negotiated the I-­position of an autoethnography coach for Peggy mainly
when I did the following in multiple occasions during the four feedback
sessions: (a) encouraging her to tell more stories; (b) bringing in my sto-
ried identity; (c) suggesting theories; (d) providing additional readings (e.g.,
sample autoethnographies); (e) encouraging further discussion of emotions.
For example, in the excerpt below, I explain the importance of emotions in
Peggy’s autoethnography in the first feedback session:

In the stories you tell, you’ll interpret your experiences and your feel-
ings too, right? Like emotionally, did you feel excited, did you feel
nervous, did you feel afraid, scared, did you feel frustrated, did you
feel annoyed or uneasy in those incidents! Like those! Because we
were talking with Rachel about it! Our feelings are also part of our
responses to experiences, right? We have an experience, like the most
noticeable part of it is our feelings about it. They can give us direction
too! And identity and emotions are also pretty much related! How we
respond to something is or how we emotionally respond to one inci-
dent, I believe, is informed by our identities! {P: Uhum} Not causality
per se. Also, every emotional response is identity enactment for us. So
see how you can capitalize more on your emotions when telling your
stories.
(Feedback Session 1, February 9, 2018)

We had a class discussion on the subjectivity of autoethnographic research

which also recognizes autoethnographers’ emotions as legitimate sources
of data to discuss the tensions between the self and the culture. What I
explained to Peggy reflected my orientation in autoethnography and invited
her to incorporate her emotions into her writing which I believed would
help her further excavate her identities. As a response, Peggy started discuss-
ing the frustration she felt during family gatherings when she felt obligated
to speak in English only, although she wanted to speak in Russian with her
fiancé. Also, later in her autoethnography, she talked about what she felt
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  253
when she observed her co-­teacher enact English-­only policies in a classroom
full of multilingual students. The ideological tension between herself and her
co-­teacher led her to experience frustration: “the conversation in the class
started pushing toward ‘you should just do it in English’. And there was the
point when my co-­teacher was like doing that whole like ‘speak English in
class’ which really frustrated me” (Feedback Session 2, March 8, 2018).

Analyzing
My negotiation of I-­position as an autoethnography coach also involved
engaging in the following practices that was intended to scaffold Peggy’s
analysis in her CAN: (a) modelling the use of concepts to make sense of her
experiences; (b) explaining the relationship between identity and practice in
her stories; (c) demonstrating the relationship between her multiple iden-
tities as language user, learner, and teacher. For example, as I read Peggy’s
CAN installments and discussed them with her in the feedback sessions, I
noticed that she narrated very interesting stories in which she could see the
interrelation of her multiple identities and engage in the analysis of this inter-
relation in her autoethnography. Below is an example from Feedback Session
2 where I direct Peggy’s attention to the complex intersection between her
identities:

Peggy: So, I think that they do influence my teaching, so my linguistic

sort of beliefs! I kind of like, I guess, I don’t know how much they influ-
ence students’ learning, like empirically, like I’m not sure that I can see
the results yet, but I think that because of my values of multiculturalism
and just different identities, I try to make sure that everybody has, in my
class, feels like welcome and has a welcoming environment! So, I try to
incorporate, just even cite things about like different music interests and
different ideas of things and [UMMMM]. I guess I try to make it less
English-­only, at least in culture, so if they’re learning English and they
wanna talk about music they don’t have to just talk about mainstream
American pop music! … I guess me empathizing with students on how
some things are difficult and basically since I do know… since I do know
some of the common mistakes that say, Spanish speakers make, I can
kind of anticipate them. I am wondering how significant that is, for
example other teachers, you know, know that if they haven’t learned the
language or maybe they were exposed to the language, somehow…like
how does that…I don’t know how unique that is!
Bedrettin: So, maybe that is one of the, like, I don’t know…what
makes you multicultural or multilingual teacher, right? You know dif-
ferent languages, and how people…when people shuttle between lan-
guages, they are not just in a vacuum, right? They are bringing in their
language repertoire, right! And they’re bringing their first language
lens and they’re using their second or third or whatever you call them
with their existing lens, which you know, and culture too! {P: Yeah}!
254  Bedrettin Yazan
Culture is part of it too! It’s very interesting to me! …there is a rela-
tionship between you as a language learner, user of multiple languages!
This background, you cannot ignore that! It’s going to be there, it’s
going to be creating a basis for the decisions you’re gonna make as a
language teacher with your students.
(Feedback Session 2, March 8, 2018)

The main goal why I designed CAN was to provide a discursive and expe-
riential space for the teacher candidates to construct their identities as they
narrate and analyze their stories (Yazan, 2019a). Whenever I found oppor-
tunities to explicate this goal in my feedback sessions and class discussions, I
tried to avail myself of them. The excerpt above is one of these opportunities
when I wanted to help Peggy see the intertwined nature of her multiple
identities. Foregrounding her teacher identity, I thought she needed to see
my rationalization of CAN as an assignment for language teacher candidates
and keep thinking about her interrelating I-­positions. For instance, her iden-
tities as a multilingual language user and daughter of immigrant parents are
inseparable from her teacher identity. Her ideologies about learning, using,
and teaching languages have been shaped through her past experiences and
woven into her “ideological becoming” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 341) as a pro-
fessional language teacher. These ideologies will inform what she deems as
important in her instructional decisions and her work with language learners
in general.

Composing
Lastly, composing is another dimension of autoethnography writing in which
I negotiated my I-­position as an autoethnography coach. The analysis of four
feedback sessions with Peggy indicates that I tended to engage in the follow-
ing guidance to support her composing of CAN: (a) discussing conventions
in autoethnographic writing; (b) organizing the paper; (c) considering the
audience’s take-­away; (d) supporting the submission of her manuscript to a
journal. For example, in Feedback Session 4, our conversation involved some
of these points of guidance.

Bedrettin: What you’re doing, you know, is brave in the sense that you
just tried out a new genre and wrote it in that genre’s conventions, it’s
gonna take some time to like…I mean I’m not saying that there are like
clear-­cut conventions in autoethnography but, like, in terms of being
analytic, readers would expect to see the analysis in your discussion
when you are narrating your stories {P: Uhum} But, yeah! It’s getting
there! Your…I really enjoyed the stories and perhaps…I was gonna ask
you, like, when you start working on this, one more time, why don’t
you ask yourself to begin with: what do I expect my readers to take
away from this piece, right? {P: Yeah} So, what is my focus? Or maybe
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  255
a few foci, right? What do I want my readers to experience reading my
autoethnography?
(Feedback Session 4, May 7, 2018)

At several points during the semester, I stressed the impact of autoethnog-

raphy on readers since autoethnography needs to connect with the reader
and expect their involvement (Gannon, 2017). With that goal in mind,
I wanted to direct Peggy’s attention to how she can compose her paper
and to consider how her stories could best resonate with the reader. I also
knew that Peggy wanted to submit her paper for publication after the
fourth installment, which was why I suggested she discuss the analysis of
her stories. I encouraged all teacher candidates to pursue publication since
I believe that scholarly literature on language teaching should include pro-
fessional knowledge generated by teachers themselves, especially through
narrative-­knowledging (Barkhuizen, 2011; Johnson & Golombek, 2011).
Having read the autoethnographies of other TESOL professionals, Peggy
became interested in publishing her story narrated in her voice. I offered all
teacher candidates my support in preparing their manuscript for publication.
I believed that making their voice and story visible and accessible to other
members of the professional community will reinforce the idea that their
own teacher knowledge and identity is the foundation for their practices and
professional development.

Navigating the identity tensions: Researcher vs. teacher educator

In Akkerman and Meijer’s (2011) Bakhtinian definition, professional iden-
tity involves negotiating and interrelating multiple I-­positions. In the design
and implementation of CAN, I constructed the I-­position as an autoethnog-
raphy coach which actually emerged at the intersection of other dominant
and pertinent I-­positions I negotiated, i.e., teacher educator and researcher.
Both voices were evident in the instances above when I enacted the identity
of an autoethnography coach. In this section, I will discuss the tensions I
grappled with between these two ‘voices’. I found four main tensions in the
four feedback sessions analyzed: (a) weaving theory with story; (b) model-
ling analysis; (c) not an autoethnographer yet; and (d) publishing as a goal
of CAN (?).

Weaving theory with story

As I constructed my I-­position as an autoethnography coach in these four
feedback sessions with Peggy, I found my identities as a researcher and
teacher educator in tension when making decisions about how theoretically
oriented the CAN writing should be. My researcher orientation deemed
“weaving theory with story” as an essential component in autoethnogra-
phy (see Spry, 2001, p. 713), but I was using autoethnography as a teacher
256  Bedrettin Yazan
learning tool which may not need to involve much theoretical discussion.
Below is one of the several times when I explicitly provide guidance on the
theoretical framework in Peggy’s CAN.

One general comment, before we get into…probably I put it in one

of those comments in the Word document too, you…so, why don’t
you…why don’t you read for example… Uhhhh… Canagarajah’s article
or other authoethnographies we have read? Read them with the pur-
pose of understanding how they have used the theoretical framework to
explain their experiences. Because that’s…that’s a learning experience!
Whenever…I remember writing papers and not being able to connect
the data to…or to show the readers how I use the theoretical frame-
work to make sense of the data! {P: Uhum} That was a disconnect that
I’ve noticed while reading your data analysis or the interpretation of the
experiences you had from like data that you generated. That was a dis-
connect, so you tell the story and then you…when you switch from the
narrative to the analytic part of it there was this disconnect. And it’s a
learning experience, I probably, you know, I mean I wouldn’t be able to
do that right away, specifically for autoethnography, but maybe reading
a few other autoethnographies and seeing how people have done this
could give you some idea.
(Feedback Session 4, May 7, 2018)

I had shared potential theories of identity, language ideologies, language

socialization, teacher learning with the class and I remember second-­guessing
myself when doing that. I was not sure if I was overwhelming these teacher
candidates with lots of theory which could be a source of awe, confusion,
and concern for teacher candidates. My conversations with Peggy involved
multiple instances where she wanted to discuss the use of theory in her CAN.
Whenever I started explaining the reason and function of a theoretical frame-
work in CAN, I felt the tension between being a teacher educator and being
a researcher. Although Spry’s (2001) metaphorical description, “weaving
story with theory” sounds inspiring, I believe that it is such a challenging
component in autoethnography in practice, especially when using it as a
teacher learning activity.

Modelling analysis
The other tension I experienced during the feedback sessions concerned
my modelling of analysis for Peggy when I was listening to her stories. As
a teacher educator, I was envisioning these feedback conversations to be
a space for teacher candidates to reflect on their past and current experi-
ences with language use, learning, and teaching and to view their profes-
sional growth as identity construction. This vision also resonated with being
a “sounding board” (Chang et al., 2016) for the novice autoethnographers.
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  257
However, as a researcher of teacher education who is interested in teacher
identities, I tended to jump in to model some analysis for Peggy. Such inter-
jections did not prove to be productive for our conversations. For instance,
the exchange below illustrates how Peggy’s rich reflection was intervened by
my researcher (over-­) enthusiasm:

Peggy: Well, I think some of the key stories is kind of based on my

identity and how I developed my … sort of negotiation of nation states
and the impact of different languages and language hierarchies! Like, as
a teacher I…I think I’ve kind of structured my identity to…to be one
that I think tries to advocate for translingual practices. I need to think
about more like what theories I should use for that but kind of that idea,
I think it was a capital, but also symbolic violence or something like that
{B: Uhum} where I want to make sure that my students have that agency
and I want them to be able to feel valued and all the languages that they
are speaking use them as resources {B: Uhum} so, that I think…
Bedrettin: Yeah, this is a nice summary of your teacher identity
based on your experiences with a lot of different languages {P: Uhum}
learning and teaching and you as a multilingual and translingual speak-
er and language user, you have that identity as a language user and you
are applying that to your teaching.
P: Yeah, I wanna give my students like more agency in the classroom
to sort of question things and contribute to different practice and
things like that! So…
B: Yeah, that’s a very good example of identity as pedagogy, right!
{P: Uhum}. I’m not sure if I mentioned in your… Uhhh…there is this
article that I am going to send to you…Brian Morgan talks about how
teachers deploy their identities as pedagogy.
P: Oh, I think also…I just feel like that I have so many little pieces
that I’ve found relatable and like significant to my autoethnography! I
guess that I need a little bit more time to make it all come together!
(Feedback Session 3, April 19, 2018)

Peggy’s reflection is a great example of her articulation of own teacher iden-

tity in relation to students’ translingual practices and agency, and making
sense of the theoretical concepts (e.g., capital, symbolic violence, agency)
she planned to use when analyzing her stories. My response was a summary
which also was intended to demonstrate the linkage between her identities
as a language user, learner, and teacher. However, my next response was an
interjection which interrupted her reflective moment. My researcher ‘voice’
became too loud. I was too enthusiastic to show Peggy how her identity
and practice are interrelated and how she could take it one step further to
intentionally rely on her identity in instructional decisions and actions. She
did not take it up, though. She made a general comment on her experience
and progress in writing CAN.
258  Bedrettin Yazan
Not an autoethnographer yet!
When I first designed CAN, I felt a little insecure to use it in my teacher edu-
cation course since I had never written an autoethnography myself. This feel-
ing coincided with challenging comments from peer reviewers on a related
journal article submission (Yazan, 2019a). I was questioning my capability
to support and guide my students’ CAN writing process and I was not sure
if the students would see me as a legitimate autoethnography coach. I openly
shared this with my students in the first class meeting, which was actually
initiated by a question from Peggy. She asked if I had ever published an
autoethnography. My ideal plan was to write one as part of this graduate
course that semester, but later I needed to re-­budget my time to devote my
energy to providing students with feedback. As I negotiated my I-­position
as an autoethnography coach in feedback conversations with Peggy, I felt
the tension stemming from me not being an autoethnographer yet. In the
following comment, I try to explain a potential organization for Peggy’s
autoethnography:

So, here is what I would suggest Peggy! When you are re-­framing or
re-­writing the first part of your paper {P: Yeah}, like think about organ-
izing it the way like starting with an introduction, like telling people
why you are writing this piece and before you move on to theoretical
framework…it’s not relevant to your question…but, you know, before
you move on to your theoretical framework why don’t you give people
a snippet in a paragraph, like 5-­sentence, 6 or maybe 8-­sentence para-
graph, it’s not easy I know but the story of your life, right! What hap-
pened…like…I was born here and…and I was a Fulbright scholar and
…. now I’m having my master’s degree in M.A. TESOL, right! So, give
people a snippet, a very succinct {P: OK} like summary of your life, then
when you move on your theoretical framework tell people and explain
to your readers whatever concepts you’re gonna use in your discussion
or in your analysis before you use them, right!
(Feedback Session 4, May 7, 2018)

Autoethnography does not have a replicable genre or writing (Gannon,

2017), but in this comment, I was trying to help Peggy organize her paper
which would look similar to a ‘traditional’ qualitative research paper. I was
negotiating an I-­position as an autoethnography coach, which interrelated
with my I-­position as a qualitative researcher. However, at the same time,
I was unsure whether that was the best way to go about when writing an
autoethnography since my knowledge was limited to reading autoethnogra-
phies rather than actually writing them.
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  259
Publishing as a goal of CAN (?)
When I first designed CAN as a teacher learning tool, one of my original
goals was to contribute to the efforts to involve teacher voices in the lan-
guage research discourse which has become distanced from the practitioners
over years (Legutke, 2016). Additionally, I am interested in autoethnogra-
phy’s power to decolonize academic discourses as Gannon (2006) argues
that “Autoethnography is part of a corrective movement against coloniz-
ing ethnographic practices that erased the subjectivity of the researcher” (p.
475). However, CAN was intended to function basically as a teacher learning
activity and, frankly, potential publication was the secondary goal. My feed-
back conversations with Peggy included a tension between these two goals,
and I found myself questioning whether both can simultaneously drive the
implementation of CAN. My following comment explicitly intends to help
Peggy prepare her CAN for publication:

…but think about it as data, your stories are the data and you from this
point on use the theoretical framework to make sense of these experi-
ences and analyze them, right! When you analyze them, you’re gonna
have certain conclusions, right! They’re not going to be like generaliza-
tions but conclusions within your own case, and your readers whoever
they are, depending on the journal, they’re going to be applied linguists,
they are gonna make sense of those conclusions, right! So, what I would
recommend you do is to make sure that the connection between your
experiences and your conclusions are clearly articulated, right? How, like
your readers should see …should be able to see how you analyzed your
data and came up with that, you know, analysis and conclusion or inter-
pretation, right!
(Feedback Session 2, March 8, 2018)

The feedback in my comment imagines academic journal readers as potential

readers of Peggy’s CAN. Noticing this, I question the instrumentality of
CAN for teacher learning purposes. My multiple I-­positions were in conflict
and were pulling my practice into different directions. As much as I wanted
Peggy to get her CAN published (which I supported after classes ended),
whenever I made a suggestion in feedback sessions toward publication, I was
thinking twice whether it was the right decision as a teacher educator. I was
concerned about the fact that focusing on publication as the final desirable
goal of this process was overshadowing the primary goal I had imagined at
the outset of CAN implementation which is identity-­oriented teacher learn-
ing. This tension between the two goals was an important source and venue
of identity negotiation for me as a language teacher educator.
260  Bedrettin Yazan
Discussion and conclusion
In this study, I examined my multivocal self as a teacher educator by address-
ing the following research question: How did I negotiate and enact different
identities in four one-­on-­one feedback sessions with a teacher candidate on their
critical autoethnography? Using Akkerman and Meijer’s (2011) Bakhtinian
definition of professional identity, I analyzed data from four feedback ses-
sions with a teacher candidate, Peggy, who wrote her CAN in Spring 2018.
My analysis demonstrates that I constructed a new I-­position in these feed-
back sessions, but doing so, I had to navigate the tensions between my I-­po-
sitions as a researcher and teacher educator. Based on the findings shared
above, I would like to discuss three main insights about teacher educator
identities.
First, the findings lead me to discuss the complex relationship between
teacher educators’ practices and identities and argue that professional prac-
tice inevitably involves identity work with tensions (Clarke, 2009; Menard-­
Warwick, 2017). When I designed and implemented CAN in my teacher
education course primarily to support teacher candidates’ identity con-
struction, I enacted my identities as a teacher educator and researcher who
believes that identity should be an explicit focus in teacher education prac-
tices. However, executing my plan for this new assignment, I negotiated and
interrelated these two I-­positions (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011) which were
in conflict at times. I negotiated and enacted a new I-­position, autoethnog-
raphy coach, in the feedback sessions with Peggy. Being an autoethnography
coach was closely intertwined with my I-­positions as a teacher educator and
researcher and involved tensions throughout when I needed to make deci-
sions (e.g., What to focus on in my feedback? What theories I need to intro-
duce to students, and how?) in the implementation of CAN in my course.
That is, coaching Peggy to write her CAN, I engaged in identity work by
navigating tensions to maintain “a more or less coherent and consistent”
multivocal self (Akkerman & Meijer, 2011, pp. 317–318).
Second, my imagined teacher educator identity guided my agency and
investment in my practices which involved my “emotion labor” (Benesch,
2017), i.e., my struggle of feelings as “an inevitable result of interaction
between different spheres of power: institutional, professional, and individ-
ual” (p. vi) in my context of teacher education. Designing and using CAN
as a new teacher learning tool, I imagined becoming a teacher educator who
is intentionally making decisions to incorporate teacher identity in teacher
preparation. I believe that using CAN was an act of agency on my part. I
needed to do away with the earlier assignments which I was not completely
happy with and base the entire semester on one big assignment. However, I
also needed to keep investing in my practice over four feedback cycles with
a multivocal self of a teacher educator. I needed to invest in my practice by
navigating the multiple ‘voices’ that attempted to tell me what the ‘best’ way
to help Peggy write her CAN. This makes me argue that one act or instance
of agency is not an isolated event in a teacher educator’s professional practice;
 Multivocal teacher educator identity  261
most of the time, our agency necessitates continuous investment and other
related acts of agency. This complex experience involves emotion labor espe-
cially when constructing a new identity such as autoethnography coach, at
the nexus of the existing identities of teacher educator and researcher which
were in tension in my case.
Third, every professional identity involves interrelating I-­positions (Akker-
man & Meijer, 2011). In the case of teacher educators, these positions are
mainly teacher educator and researcher (Dinkelman, 2011). Particularly
when teacher educators have research agendas including teacher learning or
teacher preparation in general, their interrelating and conflicting I-­positions
are more prominent. During the initial years as a teacher educator, as well as
later on as veterans, when trying out new practices, teacher educators should
know that such tensions and conflicts are inescapable. Acknowledging poten-
tial conflicts and tensions between I-­positions would be an important com-
ponent of identity work. For example, my decision to implement CAN in a
teacher education course was led by the identity tension that I experienced
in my multivocal self. That is, I was engaged in reflections on the potential
alignment or consistency between the implications of my research on teacher
identity and my practices as a teacher educator. As manifestation of identity
work, these identity-­focused reflections were intended to address the identity
tension I was grappling with, and then I incorporated CAN in my course to
alleviate this tension. The entire process of implementation was an important
investment in my work life and involved my identity negotiation by trying
to maintain a more or less coherent self with multiple voices (Akkerman &
Meijer, 2011). Although I now feel better about this identity tension of
mine thanks to the implementation of CAN, it will continue being part of
my reflections depending on how institutional, professional, and individuals
powers will interact in my professional life as a faculty who both works with
teacher candidates and carries out research on teacher learning.
To conclude, I need to note that going back to my recorded feedback
sessions to analyze the data and writing this paper was a process of focused
self-­reflection for me to better understand what is going on in my profes-
sional life. This self-­reflection involved further identity work, as well. Like
the relationship between language teacher and learner identities (Motha,
2017; Reeves, 2009), teacher educators’ identity work influences teacher
candidates’ learning to teach and identity negotiation. That is, my practices
as a teacher educator were foregrounded in my multivocal self involving
voices of a teacher educator and researcher as well as a transnational indi-
vidual crossing ideological and physical borders. The learning opportunities
designed as part of my linguistics course for Peggy and her fellow teacher
candidates were informed by this multivocal self. Also, I would like to admit
to the feeling of vulnerability which was prominent in the writing process
since I opened up for public scrutiny by sharing an analysis of my identity
and teacher education practices with the scholarly community through this
book chapter. I believe we should practice sharing such emotions of vulner-
ability because the relationship between identity and practice also involves
262  Bedrettin Yazan
experiencing and navigating emotions, which is an inevitable dimension of
identity work.

Acknowldgment
I am thankful to the editors for inviting me to this project and for their
patience with me as I prepared this manuscript. I truly appreciate their com-
ments and suggestions on this article. I also gratefully acknowledge all six
students in my Linguistics for Classroom Teachers course in Spring 2018
for sharing their stories and using critical autoethnography as their teacher
learning tool.

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