Developing, Negotiating, and Articulating Identities: An Autoethnographic Study of a Filipino English Language Teacher in Thailand

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Walailak University, Thailand

2 The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Abstract

Expatriate teachers often face challenges related to social integration and limited access to local professional networks, which in turn shape their beliefs about legitimacy, professional status, and identity formation in their host countries. This analytic–evocative autoethnographic study traces the professional identity (re)construction of a Filipino English-language teacher in Thailand between 2015 and 2022. Drawing on reflective journals, memos, and dialogues with a critical friend, the study explores how identity was negotiated across incidents of marginalisation and transformation. Using raciolinguistic perspectives and identity-in-practice frameworks, the analysis identified three key themes: (1) linguistic gatekeeping and racialisation, (2) identity repair through research and reflective practice, and (3) pedagogical activism as resistance. The findings show that teacher identity is continually (re)shaped at the intersection of race, nationality, and institutional power, and that critical reflexivity and professional agency function as forms of repair and reclamation. This study contributes to language teacher identity (LTI) research by theorising the lived experiences of a Global South educator in a raciolinguistically stratified context and advancing autoethnography as a decolonial methodology for examining teacher identity and agency in unequal transnational spaces.

Keywords

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
Volume 13, 3 (Special Issue)
December 2025
Pages 167-182

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History

  • Receive Date: 29 October 2025
  • Accept Date: 12 December 2025

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