Experiences of an EFL pre-Spservice teacher at distance that construct her Identity.

Abstract

The present autobiographical study under the narrative inquiry approach depicts the life story of an English pre-service teacher at distance education, before and after living abroad to determine how experiences have shaped her personal and professional identity. It is the story of an English pre-service teacher who was born and raised in Colombia, who had experiences such as having had difficulties learning English at school, or having had to travel to the United States twice, once with the Au-pair program and the other as a tourist. She decided to stay there due to different circumstances but continued studying a degree in English at Santo Tomas University at distance modality. This study describes how to learn in a distance modality, and had to go through difficult situations that made her stronger.

The researcher followed inquiry research and after an information analysis decoding process, two categories emerged: category 1: Personal-focused development.With the sub-categories: Sub-category 1: Religion, sub category 2: Family support, sub-category 3: Violence, sub-category 4: Resilience (Arte, Medical support) and category 2: Academic-focused development with the sub-categories: sub-category 1: Autonomy (self- learning) and independence, sub- category 2: English and travel to the USA, sub-category 3: Research -skills development. This story is worth telling because when it is written, it is added to the web of knowledge in this field and it can help better understand (Barkhuizen et al., 2014). Additionally, these valid experiences reach important conclusions that add to the investigations of Identities in English pre-service teachers.