Once an Expert, Now a Newbie: An Autoethnography on Identity in Transition to Online Education

Abstract

Situated in the unprecedented realities of life, the present autoethnographic account is an organic manifestation of how a language teacher (the first author) navigated diverse roles in transition to online education in a dialectic and dialogic manner with another teacher (the second author) in the pandemic period. The sudden and complete shift accompanied by health threats and a number of complexities in the new normal brought about uniquely stressful and demanding conditions in the lives of the teachers. Being in such a delicate position in educational activities, teachers’ views, practices as well as identities were not immune to these changes. Considering that identity is being constantly moulded by lived experiences, deconstruction of the existing identity in order to grow into another seems to be an important niche to be addressed in current studies particularly in such turmoil. For this reason, the present autoethnographical study aimed to uncover how a language teacher at a higher education context grew into another self with emergency remote teaching and online education practices. The data relying on self-observational, reflective and external tools revealed three stages in the identity re/co/deconstruction of the participant: where the researcher felt the shock, where she tried to find a way out and where she found the synergy among diverse selves. The implications regarding teacher identity, well-being and sociocultural foundations of (online) teaching are also discussed in the study.