Research in Progress: CLIL Teachers’ Identity Construction and Negotiation

Abstract

This brief report presents preliminary findings of a qualitative investigation into five Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) academics’ professional attributes and identities in China. The findings revealed that the participants possessed diverse types of capital essential to CLIL, including human, social, psychological, cultural, identity, and agentic capital, though with mixed controls. The temporality of personal experiences and the social networks surrounding the participants were deemed influential in shaping and negotiating their professional identities. The study concluded with implications for institutional administrators and leaders, who should consider teachers’ development needs, especially their learning, social and psychological needs, to create an academically supportive, emotionally engaging and socially collaborative organisational climate.