My Life as an English Teacher: An autobiographical narrative

Abstract

When talking about English teachers in the Colombian context, it is impossible to unify them under a unique description; on the contrary, there are diverse realities that describe them. Each reality comes from a collection of experiences and paths that determine the practice of such teachers. One of these realities is the one portrayed in the autobiographical narrative inquiry of the bilingual teacher working for private bilingual schools presented in this project. Such narrative was carried out in a collaborative research project for the Research Mentorship Program of the Bachelor’s in English as a Foreign Language of Universidad Santo Tomas, Bogotá. The autobiographical narrative inquiry was done through narrative frames, teacher reflective journals and a Language Learning History. It aimed at collecting data related to the learning and teaching experience of the pre-service English teacher to make sense of their impact in her current practice as a school teacher in one of the bilingual schools of Bogotá. The data was examined through a thematic analysis under three main themes: Pre-service Teacher Beliefs, Going from untrained English teacher to professional English teacher, and English Learning and Teaching contexts. The analysis also rendered emerging subthemes such as Beliefs before being a pre-service teacher, Self-training, Pedagogical transformations based on training, and Pedagogical transformations based on classroom practices, significant experiences as a preservice teachers, English language education and Sharing experiences with other teachers. Such analysis offered powerful insight on the role of reflection and beliefs for the pedagogical choices made by the English teacher.