A critical exploration of the evolving identity and online pedagogical realisations of an EAP teacher during the COVID-19 pandemic: an autoethnographic study at a Canadian public college

Fully virtualised English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pre-sessional courses are offered at most public colleges in Ontario. A significant body of research indicates that language teacher identity (LTI) influences teachers’ pedagogical decisions, assessment practices and interaction with the learners, and therefore becomes identity work. However, there is little research which has explored Canadian EAP teachers’ perceptions of their teaching practices, particularly in the context of emergency remote delivery. To address this research lacuna, I conducted an autoethnographic study of my virtualised EAP teaching context over two research periods during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and April 2021. Informed by Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of human mental processing as theoretical framework, I utilised the concepts of scaffolding, the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and Zone of Proximal Development and generated data through reflections in a teacher learning journal and Farrell’s Framework for Reflecting on Practice (2015). Utilising the reflexive thematic data analysis method, I identified a conflict between the reflexive, projected and ascribed facets of my LTI, struggling to become and negotiate an imagined identity of an online EAP teacher. The newly empowered position and my developing interactional competence disrupted my established pedagogical approach to create a learner-centred environment and underscored the need to develop EAP specific teaching methodology post-COVID-19. The lack of pre-service and systematic in-service EAP technological and pedagogical training to stimulate teacher development suggests integrating critical reflection on LTI during teacher preparation programmes. Becoming critically aware of the effect of teachers’ identities on their methodology through reflective narratives, may have important implications for EAP teachers’ pedagogical realisations and learning experience of EAP students. Therefore, autoethnographic studies of EAP teachers’ views of their online and in-person pedagogy and methodology contribute to a vibrant and promising research strand with important implications for the professional practice of EAP in Canada and beyond.