TY - JOUR
T1 - Teaching English in the shadow
T2 - Identity construction of private English language tutors in China
AU - Xiong, Tao
AU - Li, Qiuna
AU - Hu, Guangwei
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Funding under [grant number 20YJA740050].
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - The global spread of private tutoring of English (PTE) has become a driving force of the global marketisation of English. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this study explores how tutors in the PTE sector, an under-researched group of teachers, construct their professional identities in the market-oriented educational, institutional, and socioeconomic settings. Findings show that they have constructed a range of hybrid identities, that is, tutors as exam experts, tutors as salespeople, and tutors as underdogs. These identities reflect multiple overlapping discourse in private supplementary tutoring (PST) underlined by the utilitarian discourse underlying exam-oriented education and the neoliberal discourse promoting the market logic of competition and profit-making. The instability and vulnerability of their identities have led to the tutors’ deprofessionalisation and identity crisis. This paper also offers discussions on the space of shadow education and recommendations on policy making.
AB - The global spread of private tutoring of English (PTE) has become a driving force of the global marketisation of English. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, this study explores how tutors in the PTE sector, an under-researched group of teachers, construct their professional identities in the market-oriented educational, institutional, and socioeconomic settings. Findings show that they have constructed a range of hybrid identities, that is, tutors as exam experts, tutors as salespeople, and tutors as underdogs. These identities reflect multiple overlapping discourse in private supplementary tutoring (PST) underlined by the utilitarian discourse underlying exam-oriented education and the neoliberal discourse promoting the market logic of competition and profit-making. The instability and vulnerability of their identities have led to the tutors’ deprofessionalisation and identity crisis. This paper also offers discussions on the space of shadow education and recommendations on policy making.
KW - critical discourse analysis
KW - English language teaching
KW - Private supplementary tutoring
KW - shadow education
KW - teacher identity
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089447945&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/01596306.2020.1805728
DO - 10.1080/01596306.2020.1805728
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85089447945
SN - 0159-6306
VL - 43
SP - 73
EP - 85
JO - Discourse
JF - Discourse
IS - 1
ER -