The EFL Teachers’ Self-perceptions of Professional Teacher Identity in Turkey

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the professional identity of EFL teachers through metaphor and emoji elicitations. Methodology: 40 teachers teaching EFL at different education institutions throughout Turkey voluntarily participated in the study. As the core point of the investigation, teachers were asked to frame their professional identity with representative metaphors besides explaining the main reason for selecting the related metaphor to represent their teacher identity and to type top four emoji that stand for their emotion and identity as an EFL teacher. Content analysis and descriptive analysis were employed for the analyses of the data. Findings: According to the analysis, the metaphors were distributed to 8 distinct categories. As indicated by the findings related to the groups of metaphors, the labels appeared as ‘a new identity’, ‘challenger’, ‘craftsperson’, ‘inspirer’, ‘nurturer’, ‘problem solver’, ‘traveller’ and ‘vitality’. Moreover, the most frequently typed top 4 emoji that participants associated with their professional identity commonly appeared to be positive illustrations that symbolize professional satisfaction with smiling face icons. Conclusion: The conclusive evidence of the study suggested important implications for how these teachers regard themselves as professionals.