Balancing Teaching and Research: Multimodal Insights into Novice EFL Lecturers’ Identity Development in China’s Performance-Driven Academia

Year 2025, Volume: 14 Issue: 3, 260 - 281, 31.12.2025

Jing Zhou

Abstract

This study examines how novice English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) lecturers at a Chinese second-tier university construct professional identities as they navigate competing institutional expectations for teaching and research. Situated within the broader context of neoliberal higher education reform, the study draws on three rounds of video-recorded interviews with four early-career EFL lecturers. Using Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis, it identifies four evolving identity trajectories: (1) embodied resistance, where participants reject dominant research imperatives to preserve a teaching-centred ethos; (2) strategic adaptation, in which individuals align with institutional expectations for research advancement; (3) strategic balancing, characterised by efforts to integrate teaching and research through institutional collaboration; and (4) aspirational resistance, where participants desire a research-oriented identity but are constrained by insufficient support structures. The findings demonstrate that identity is not only discursively negotiated but also performed through embodied modes, such as gaze, gesture, and spatial positioning, across three interrelated levels: institutional, relational, and individual. These insights shed light on the complex and situated nature of teacher identity formation in under-researched, non-elite higher education contexts, underscoring the importance of mentoring, workload reform, and evaluation systems that foster the development of multidimensional identities.

Keywords

teacher identity , novice EFL teachers , identity trajectories , multimodal (inter)action analysis , institutional support

Ethical Statement

We confirm that this manuscript is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not under consideration by any other journal. Ethical approval was obtained from the Auckland University of Technology Ethics Committee (Ref: AUTEC 22/243), and all participants provided written informed consent. Details on data protection, anonymization, and ethical safeguards are included in the manuscript.

Project Number

receive no funding

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