Imaginarios sociales e identidad profesional de los docentes de inglés

Abstract

The community of the english private institution Smart is the context in which the reflections over the existence of english language teacher's social imaginaries in association with their professional Identities took place. This research paper wonders how these social imaginaries construct relationships within the teacher's professional identity under the perspective of the interpretative paradigm; the ethnographic way to collect and interpret data will allow to identify, analyze and describe through life stories/ narratives, semi-structured interviews, observation journals plus focus groups; the ideas, beliefs and meanings that these imaginaries have in contrast with the concept of professional identity. In order to answer the research question, a triangulation process of data was done to finally conclude that the teacher's professional identity is taken for granted since they are professionally measured by their capacity of offering an excellent customer service; the preferences of the company in hiring English native speakers and the institutionalization of power to make the teachers wear an imposed uniform plus the neoliberal perspective of teaching practices affects the teachers’ identity in aspects such as the need of empowering their self image along with their self-esteem, the need of subjective motivation to continue working as teachers, their professional identities weakens due to the institutionalization of the social imaginaries; all these ideas answer the initial research question.