System 118 (2023) 103149

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System
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When teaching and research are misaligned: Unraveling a

university EFL teacher’s identity tensions and renegotiations
Jie Bao a, b, Dezheng (William) Feng b, *
a
School of Humanities, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, China
b
Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study investigates the identity construction of a university EFL teacher in China through
University EFL teacher narrative inquiry in ethnography, probing into the tensions she experienced as a teaching-focused
Academic identity academic as well as her renegotiations of her professional self in face of these tensions. Narrative
Teaching-research misalignment
data were collected through in-depth interviews and informal communications with the partici­
Tensions and renegotiations
Narrative inquiry
pant while contextual data were collected through prolonged fieldwork. Through thematic
China analysis and constructing storylines in relation to the identified themes, the participant’s identity
experience is mapped out in three story constellations, namely, identity tensions, identity relin­
quishment and reinterpretation and identification beyond the institution, through which the partici­
pant developed her identity as an academic outcast, an ace coach and an expert. The constructions
of these identities are mutually informing and reveal an alternative trajectory of professional
development, in which boundary-crossing between the academic and non-academic communities
becomes a transforming space. By delving into the intricacies of the participant’s professional
stories within the contextual dynamics, the study reveals the complexities of the teaching-
research misalignment in the unique context of tertiary EFL education in China and provides
new insights into the maintenance of academic identities in times of policy shifts and contextual
challenges.

1. Introduction

Within the ideal of “holistic academic” in higher education (McKinley, 2022, p. 7), university teachers are supposed to incorporate
both teaching and research into their academic identity. Failure to do so may trigger identity tensions (Dugas et al., 2020), which are
manifested in demolished confidence, reduced motivation, emotional struggles, or even a complete withdrawal from professional
development (Strauss, 2020). Against this background, university teachers are in a state of constant negotiations between their
different roles to construct workable identities and to maintain their professional wellbeing (Shams, 2019). Extant literature has
focused on how teachers draw on external and internal mediation to resolve their identity tensions and reconstruct their identities (e.
g., Bao & Feng, 2022; Nevgi & Löfström, 2015; Trautwein, 2018; Yuan et al., 2022; Zhang et al., 2022). However, there are still many
teachers who fail to maintain the teaching-research duality. Their identity tensions are sporadically reported in multi-case studies on
academic identity (e.g., Huang et al., 2018; Xu, 2014; Yang et al., 2022), mostly through cross-sectional comparisons. The temporal

* Corresponding author. Room AG408, Department of English and Communication, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong
Kong, China.
E-mail addresses: amy-jie.bao@connect.polyu.hk (J. Bao), will.feng@polyu.edu.hk (D.(W. Feng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2023.103149
Received 28 February 2023; Received in revised form 19 September 2023; Accepted 20 September 2023
Available online 24 September 2023
0346-251X/© 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Bao and D.(W. Feng System 118 (2023) 103149

development trajectories of these teachers, for example, how their identity tensions are developed, and how they respond to those
tensions and attach meanings to their professional selves in face of the teaching-research misalignment, are rarely investigated. To get
a more holistic understanding of the ecology of the academic workforce, we need to further explore these alternative development
trajectories (Zhang et al., 2022), which might be experienced by a significant proportion of teachers in higher education.
In the global restructuring of the teaching-research duality in higher education driven by neoliberal ethos, whereby increasing
weight has been given to research over teaching (McCune, 2021), the two academic roles (i.e., teaching and research) are in greater
tension with each other (McKinley et al., 2021). In this context, teaching-focused academics are more prone to identity struggles, as
their competent teaching identity does not contribute much to their professional status or career prospects (Skelton, 2013). Teachers
who teach English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in mainland Chinese universities are quintessential representations of teaching-focused
faculty. Due to China’s huge investments in tertiary-level EFL education for the purpose of internationalization ever since its Reform
and Opening-up (Hu & Lei, 2014), a large number of EFL teachers have been hired to teach compulsory English courses in under­
graduate programs. While universities that adopt English-as-the-medium-of-instruction usually have separate teaching-track staff to
provide language training, most universities in mainland China still adopt a recruitment model that seeks “all-around academics”
(Macfarlane, 2011, p. 59), which means that EFL teachers are on the teaching-research track, like academics in other disciplines.
However, with heavier teaching load and less research training (Wang, 2018), it is often difficult for them to fulfill their expected
research identities. Their deficits in research make them feel marginalized in the higher education community (Bao & Feng, 2022).
As Zeng and Fickel (2021) cogently put, recognizing EFL teachers’ contribution to quality teaching and providing them with
opportunities for professional development will “improve chances for our educational success and social equity” (p. 664). To enact
possible changes, the voices of this marginalized group need to be brought to the fore through narratives (cf. Clandinin et al., 2013).
Addressing this need, the present study uses narrative inquiry to investigate the identity development trajectory of a mid-career
university EFL teacher who had an outstanding teaching record yet unsatisfactory research performance. The guiding question is:
How did the participant experience and respond to identity tensions within a research-oriented institutional culture?

2. Literature review

2.1. The academic identity of university teachers: A contested issue

The academic identity of university teachers has always been in contestation across the globe. Unlike schoolteachers who mainly
fulfill the teaching role, university teachers’ academic identity is concerned with “the threefold field of academia – research, teaching,
and administration” (Trautwein, 2018, p. 996). Among the three, teaching and research are unanimously recognized as the central
ones (Dugas et al., 2020), in correspondence with higher education’s responsibility for “educating the future workforce” and
“generating knowledge” (Shams, 2019, p. 621). University teachers are therefore expected to take on an academic identity that reflects
both quality teaching and research excellence (Billot, 2010), in line with the Humboldtian ideal of the teaching-research nexus
proposed in the 19th century (Humboldt, 1970, original work published in 1809).
Despite the consensus on the teaching-research duality of university teachers’ academic identity, contestation arises out of two
major issues, which raises the ontological question of what it means to be an academic. First, it is disputed which identity, teaching or
research, is primary (Dugas et al., 2020). Academics may choose from multiple subject positions according to situations of the context
and personal inclinations, premised on the long-standing academic freedom and personal autonomy in higher education (Fulton,
2002). For example, academics with a background in teaching at provincial universities can maintain a palatable teaching-oriented
identity out of their personal ideals (e.g., Sutton, 2015), while academics working at research-oriented universities can identify
more with their researcher role (Nevgi & Löfström, 2015). Academics’ freedom to prioritize teaching or research and their disparate
identifications, however, are greatly challenged by the prevalence of neoliberal ethos in higher education. In the neoliberalized
performative landscape where universities are striving for research excellence and competing for places on league tables, there is an
increasing trend of relegating teaching to the background, with resources and status given to research-active staff (Sikes, 2006).
Teaching thus becomes “a Cinderella activity” (Macfarlane, 2011, p. 71) which receives little real acknowledgement despite the
institutional rhetoric. Traditionally teaching-focused academics, in this climate, are becoming less visible and valued (McIntosh et al.,
2022), and may have feelings of incompetency and de-professionalization.
Second, it is contested whether there is reciprocity between teaching and research. Although scholars have been canvassing for the
symbiotic and mutually supporting relationship between teaching and research (e.g., Xu, 2017), empirical evidence seems to challenge
this utopic ideal. For example, through a large-scale survey study, Ramsden and Moses (1992) found that there was no correlation
between research productivity and teaching excellence at the level of undergraduate teaching. In line with this, through a
meta-analysis, Hattie and Marsh (1996, p. 529) further claimed that teaching and research are at best “very loosely coupled”. The
incompatibility between teaching and research, together with the metrics-driven competitive culture in higher education, has led to
academic duty unbundling and the division of research and teaching at the institution level (Macfarlane, 2011; McKinley et al., 2021).
Universities begin to disaggregate academic duties into teaching, research and student support/tutoring, and look for different
qualities in each role. The teaching-research holism and reciprocity is sometimes no longer perpetuated (Sippel & Sato, 2022), and
increasing attention has been given to the gap between these two academic practices (Tight, 2016).
As regards foreign language (FL) teachers in higher education, a large body of literature has pinpointed the big divide between
teaching and research (e.g., Medgyes, 2017; Rose & McKinley, 2022; Sato & Loewen, 2019). Of particular relevance to this divide is the
increasing intellectualization of the proclaimed practice-oriented applied linguistic research (Kramsch, 2015). The pursuit of scientific
inquiry is pulling research further away from language teachers’ real classroom practices (McKinley, 2022), and academic journals are

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J. Bao and D.(W. Feng System 118 (2023) 103149

gradually closing the venue for language teachers to share their practitioner research due to its messiness and lack of scientific rigor
(McKinley, 2019). Against this backdrop, it has become all the more difficult for university FL teachers to integrate their roles of
teaching and research, which seems to be drifting further away from each other.

2.2. Chinese university EFL teachers’ identity tensions: A mismatch between the ideal and the real

Like its global counterparts, China’s zealous quest for building world-class universities has led to a performative institutional
culture that prioritizes research over teaching (Gao & Zheng, 2020). In this context, university EFL teachers are severely disadvantaged
because of their deficits in research (Huang & Guo, 2019). As the largest cohort in Chinese higher institutions (Yang et al., 2022), EFL
teachers “occupy the bottom of academic hierarchy in higher education context” (Zeng & Fickel, 2021, p. 651), with their legitimacy
constantly questioned. For most EFL teachers, their institutions’ ideal picturing of them as researchers contradicts their real practiced
identity as teachers, which has created an ontological crisis for them. Their identity tensions have been widely discussed in the existing
literature (e.g., Huang & Guo, 2019; Yang et al., 2022; Zeng & Fickel, 2021). It is reported that university EFL teachers identify more
with their teaching role and consider doing research to be painful and unattainable (e.g., Yang et al., 2022). In particular, mid-career
teachers hired before the ascendancy of the performative culture still perceive teaching as their major responsibility. Their identity
tensions are thus exacerbated by the “misalignment between institutional and personal values” (Arvaja, 2018, p. 291). In the existing
literature, while much of the work has focused on problematizing the current situation (e.g., Zeng & Fickel, 2021), less is known about
how these teachers draw upon their multifarious experiences both in and beyond their institutional context and navigate their tensions
through agentic identity work, which stimulates the present study. Besides, despite surging research attention paid to the
teaching-research nexus in higher education in Western contexts, such as UK (McIntosh et al., 2022; McKinley et al., 2021), US (Dugas
et al., 2020), Finland (Arvaja, 2018), New Zealand (Robertson, 2007), and Australia (Brew, 2010), few empirical evidence has been
gained from the mainland Chinese context within the EFL discipline. As a value-laden and context-sensitive concept, the
teaching-research nexus needs to be understood in relation to the “situated and historical influences” as well as the “disciplinary,
institutional, and systemic conditions that are shaped by overarching political ideologies” (McKinley et al., 2021, p. 1026). Thus, this
study is also expected to provide a localized account of the complexities of the teaching-research nexus within the specific discipline of
EFL in the Chinese higher education context.

2.3. Navigating tensions through identity work: In and beyond the community

As an important analytic lens in education research (Gee, 2000), identity has been theorized as people’s subjective understanding
of who they are (Brown, 2015), their multiple memberships in communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), and an ongoing negotiation
between people and their contexts (Beijaard et al., 2004). The importance of a coherent and distinctive identity has been emphasized
by many identity scholars (e.g., Day et al., 2006; Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2013). It is what people use to make sense of themselves and justify
their actions (MacLure, 1993). In other words, it gives people ontological security in a world of uncertainties. Therefore, in face of
identity tensions, people have to engage in “identity work” to constantly reconstruct themselves to achieve “a sense of coherence and
distinctiveness” (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003, p. 1165). Identity work is especially manifest when people’s personal ideal contra­
dicts contextual expectations and they have to make massive amounts of efforts to negotiate different sources of identities (Yazan &
Lindahl, 2020). The notion of identity work emphasizes the role of agency. Closely intertwined with identity (Buchanan, 2015), agency
can be understood as people’s autonomous beliefs and actions in authoring themselves (Reeves, 2022). Through exercising their
agency, people become intentional beings who can actively construct themselves according to their understandings of who they are
and who they want to be (Buchanan, 2015). University academics, in this sense, are able to negotiate their multiple roles and construct
their preferred identities through the process of prioritizing (Huang et al., 2018).
However, our active self-constructions are not entirely volitional, but are anchored in our concrete practices and are shaped by
multilayered contexts. In this study, we draw upon Wenger’s (1998) notion of community of practice to understand a university EFL
teacher’s identity work in and beyond her workplace contexts. Community of practice refers to a context, in which a group of people
“engage on an ongoing basis in some common endeavor” (Eckert, 2006, p. 683). According to Wenger (1998), identity is concerned
with memberships in communities of practice, and the competence to participate in the communities’ shared enterprises and meaning
negotiations is central to constructing a legitimate identity (see also Tsui, 2007). Conceptualizing the broader higher education
academia and teachers’ situated institutions as communities of practice, university teachers’ identities are born out of their compe­
tence to participate (at least peripherally) in activities valued by the communities, be they teaching or research. Failure to do so often
leads to a marginalized status in the communities. Teachers’ agentic self-constructions are therefore very much colored by the dy­
namics of the communities. On the other hand, the incompetence to participate and the subsequent exclusion may also become a
chance for new identifications (Liu & Xu, 2011). That is, non-participation may serve as a “compromise, strategy, or cover” (Wenger,
1998, p. 169–170), through which people gain freedom to construct their own sense of the self despite the ideology of their situated
communities. People may also transcend a certain community and identify with new communities. This experience is conceptualized
as boundary crossing (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011; Wenger, 2010), through which people may participate in new forms of enterprise
valued by the new communities and thus enrich their existing identities (Tsui & Law, 2007). They may also integrate their multiple
memberships to create a “nexus” that gives meaning to their ongoing engagements (Wenger, 1998, p. 105). Due to the complexities of
identity interactions across different settings, it is important to explore identity tensions and renegotiations through the lens of
community (Yuan et al., 2022). Based on this theoretical premise, in this study, we theorize identity as people’s ongoing agentic work of
self-identification with diverse communities of practice.

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J. Bao and D.(W. Feng System 118 (2023) 103149

3. Methodology

We use “narrative inquiry in ethnography” (Liu & Xu, 2011, p. 591) to investigate the identity construction of a university EFL
teacher. Identities are “the stories to live by” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999, p. 4) and thus can be “narratively constructed and un­
derstood” (Burns & Bell, 2011, p. 952). Narratives allow people to give meaning to their experiences, and integrate their fragmented
identities over time (Bruner, 2001). The use of narrative inquiry responds to the “the human dimensions” of social research (Bar­
khuizen & Consoli, 2021, p. 8), attending to idiosyncrasies of the participant and making marginalized voices to be heard. Informed by
the view that narratives should be understood within the ethnographic context (Barkhuizen, 2014), we conducted prolonged fieldwork
so as to situate the participant’s stories in her institutional and socio-cultural contexts.

3.1. Context and participant

The site of this inquiry, TU, is a regional non-elite public university. Universities like TU make up more than 90% of the universities
in China (Wang, 2018). Unlike some of its proactive counterparts that adopt an “up or out” hiring system, TU still operates on the
traditional Danwei system [单位],1 meaning that faculty members generally work on permanent contracts once they are hired. During
the time of the inquiry (from late 2019 to early 2022), TU promulgated one major reform in staff appraisal in line with the national
mandate of Powuwei [破五唯]2 proposed in 2018, a guiding policy that encourages qualitative assessments of academic staff. The
typicality and specificity of TU, together with its changing policy context, make it an apt site for inquiry.
The chosen participant, Mary, was a mid-career female teacher born in the late 1970s. In her 19 years of service at TU, she won
many teaching awards at the institutional, provincial and national levels, and coached students to win big awards in various English
competitions. While widely acknowledged as a top-performing staff member in terms of teaching, she failed to get any promotion in
the past 17 years and was still a lecturer during the inquiry period. The reason for choosing Mary was twofold. First, Mary was an
“information-rich” case (Patton, 2002), whose stories may maximally manifest the teaching-research misalignment and penetrate into
institutional discourse of Chinese higher education. As a teacher with top-notch teaching records, Mary had a marginalized status in
her professional context due to her limited research outputs. Second, during the time of the inquiry, the first author, a former colleague
of Mary, was in close contact and built a good rapport with her. The friendship developed through mutual help facilitated the flow of
information exchange and guaranteed the credibility of the data (Tillman-Healy, 2003), which is especially important in narrative
inquires that value the co-construction of knowledge between the researcher and the researched (Barkhuizen & Wette, 2008).

3.2. Data collection and analysis

The “restorying” of Mary’s lived experiences lasted for two years, during which we collected data and weaved different sources of
data into a “restoried whole” with “a specific analytical agenda” (Consoli, 2021, p. 2). The main source of data, Mary’s narratives of her
lived experiences, were collected through interviews, the ideal mode for narrative researchers to ask for life stories (Chase, 2003). Two
types of interviews were used: unstructured and semi-structured. Unstructured interviews happened spontaneously when the first
author was in the field, working with Mary on two shared courses and student tutoring. These interviews were usually event-based,
through which the first author elicited Mary’s ongoing professional and personal engagements as well as her feelings and attitudes
toward those engagements. Before the first author left TU in early 2022, she had conducted three intensive semi-structured interviews
with Mary to further probe into her professional history, the junctures in her professional life, her perceptions of teaching and research,
and her professional quandaries and coping strategies. In these interviews, Mary was also asked to reflect upon and relive the nar­
ratives she had told in the unstructured interviews (cf. Tsui, 2007). Although the semi-structured interviews followed a brief outline,
Mary was encouraged to take the lead to tell her stories and “take responsibility for the meaning of [her] talk” (Chase, 2003, p. 274).
When critical events were mentioned, the first author would ask for more details. All interviews were conducted in Chinese, Mary and
the first author’s first language, to create a natural and comfortable atmosphere for in-depth communication.
Fieldwork was conducted at TU to understand the ethnographic contexts in which Mary’s narratives were produced. The prolonged
engagement with the participant in the field enabled us to capture “the dynamics of situations” (Cohen et al., 2011, p. 466), and thus
facilitated “an ecological representation” of the participant’s lived experiences (Barkhuizen & Consoli, 2021, p. 3). Specifically, while
working with Mary at TU as a colleague and friend during the time of the inquiry, the first author kept fieldnotes and jotted down the
contextual particularities of the university and collected artefacts such as students’ reviews of Mary’s classes, and the university’s
appraisal documents. The fieldnotes and documents were all written in Chinese.
Data analysis followed three steps. First, we transcribed the data into the textual form and went through the data several times to
get an overall understanding of Mary’s lived experiences over the years. Critical events related to identity constructions were marked.
Second, we conducted a thematic analysis searching for codes and categories which later developed into themes. By sorting out the
“indigenous concepts” mentioned by Mary (Patton, 2002, p. 454), we elicited several meaningful categories centered around Mary’s

1
Danwei [单位, work unit] refers to the organization or institution that people work for. The Danwei system is characteristic of the Chinese
socialist economy and it is often used in the context of state-owned enterprises. In the Danwei system, people generally work on permanent contracts.
2
Powuwei [破五唯, Breaking The Five] is a policy promulgated by the Ministry of Education in China in 2018. The Five refers to ranks, awards,
diplomas, papers and titles. The policy aims to break the pragmatic and quantitative orientation in staff appraisal and bring about process-orientated
qualitative evaluation in higher education.

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identity tensions and renegotiations, such as marginalization, demoralization, recognition, etc. These categories were further subsumed
under three themes, i.e., identity tension, identity relinquishment and reinterpretation, and identification beyond the institution. As story­
telling is an important feature of narrative analysis (Consoli, 2021), it followed that the third step of the analysis was to construct
storylines in relation to the identified themes, with Mary’s original narratives knitted into “story constellations” (Craig, 2007, p. 175).
When constructing the storylines, we followed Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) three-dimensional inquiry model and considered
Mary’s lived experiences within the three-dimensional space, that is, temporality, sociality and place. Specifically, we focused on
Mary’s evolving actions and understandings of herself from the past to the present and toward the future (temporality). We illustrated
how her identities emerged and developed out of her ‘inward’ values, perceptions and feelings and the ‘outward’ social conditions
(sociality) in specific settings (place).
Additional data, such as fieldnotes and policy documents, were used to contextualize, complement and triangulate the main source
of data. Thus, “a selective reading approach” (van Manen, 1990) was adopted and analysis was based on themes generated from
interview data. For example, Mary’s recount of the research-oriented institutional culture was triangulated with the appraisal doc­
uments. The systemic invisibilization of EFL teachers at TU (e.g., the English Department’s proposal of crediting teaching awards in
staff appraisal was constantly rejected by the upper management), which was observed and documented in fieldnotes, helped to
contextualize Mary’s identity tensions. Students’ reviews of Mary’s classes complemented and evidenced Mary’s self-reported
competence in teaching. Taken together, additional data were synthesized and weaved into the main storylines where necessary.
It has to be noted that we conducted the data analysis based on the original Chinese transcripts and only translated the data into
English when they were used in the presentation of findings (cf. Yung & Yuan, 2020). To guarantee the accuracy of the translation, the
two authors, who are both Chinese-English bilinguals, worked together to negotiate the most appropriate English expressions to
represent Mary’s meanings in the situated interactional contexts. We also checked with Mary whether our translation best reflected her
original meanings expressed in Chinese.

3.3. Trustworthiness and ethical considerations

Trustworthiness was guaranteed through several strategies. First, the first author, who is a friend of the participant, held an open
mind and constantly reflected upon her voice and positionality during the research process (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Second, the
two authors analyzed the data together and discrepancies in data interpretation were resolved through rounds of discussion until a
consensus was reached. Third, trustworthiness in qualitative inquiry rests with respondent validation, i.e., inviting the participant to
check and confirm their life stories reported (Webster & Mertova, 2007). During the data collection and analysis, close contact was
maintained with the participant, and drafts of data interpretation were sent to her for review. Fourth, prolonged engagements in the
field, together with different sources of data collected over the years, also enhanced the trustworthiness of the study.
For ethical considerations, reciprocity was achieved on the grounds that the participant was willing to share her stories with the
first author and the interviews were more than just a method of data collection but also “therapeutic opportunities” (Birch & Miller,
2000, p. 189). Besides, informed consent was gained before commencing the study. Pseudonyms were used to refer to both the
institution and the participant. All personal identifiers were removed when presenting the findings.

4. Findings

Mary’s identity trajectory revolves around three themes: identity tensions, identity relinquishment and reinterpretation, and identifi­
cation beyond the institution. In terms of temporality, these three phases were sequential and interrelated. Her identity tensions derived
from her past and ongoing professional experiences and led to her renegotiation of the prescribed academic identity and her identi­
fication beyond her institution. Her identification beyond her institution shaped her future investments in re-identification with her
institution. In terms of sociality and place, her shifting identities (i.e., an academic outcast, an ace coach, and an expert) manifested the
interplay between her agentic self-construction and the changing physical settings (i.e., TU and the broader EFL teaching community).

4.1. Identity tensions: They call me the backbone, but I feel like an outcast

With a master’s degree in linguistics, Mary had no difficulty in getting an academic position in the early 2000s when English
proficiency was the major recruiting criterion for EFL teachers in mainland Chinese universities (Zhou & Zhang, 2016). With her fluent
English and innovative teaching styles, Mary became the most popular teacher in the department. In her 19 years of service, she won
big teaching awards, and taught a number of courses with excellent reviews. When it came to external teaching audits, Mary was
always entrusted to give demonstration lessons.
I’ve taught more than twelve courses, won three national and provincial teaching awards and coached students to win more than ten
awards in national competitions. They put my lesson forward when there are external audits. The department head calls me the backbone
of undergraduate teaching.
Although acknowledged as a backbone teacher, Mary did not receive any “material recognition” such as a promotion (Strauss, 2020,
p. 1018). While the department head was fully cognizant of her outstanding achievements in teaching, the university’s policymakers,
who implemented a research-oriented appraisal system, seemed to be oblivious of these achievements. This was reflected in Mary’s
constant failures to get a promotion in the past 17 years.

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I have applied for a promotion to Associate Professor three times and I failed each time. I remember going to the human resources office
with a list of my teaching awards and asking the director whether the awards could be given credit. He pointed to the university document
and replied with a hint of impatience that teaching awards did not count.
Recalling this unpleasant experience, Mary felt slighted, with her teaching competence ignored in a community that valued
research productivity. Even with the university’s implementation of a new appraisal policy in 2021, teaching was still listed as a low-
stake factor for staff promotion. According to Mary, the new policy was a “masked reproduction of an even harsher research-oriented
policy”, as the requirement for research was raised and teaching performance was listed as an optional requirement.
Mary’s recount was triangulated with our diachronic analysis of the university’s appraisal documents over the past few years. In the
2021 document, teaching was for the first time listed as a performance indicator, yet as a supplementary item to major research-
oriented indicators. Unlike research items, teaching awards, reviews and workloads were not systematically quantified. Meanwhile,
the bar for research was raised. Besides publications in prestigious journals, academic staff who wanted a promotion from Lecturer to
Associate Professor were also required to have undertaken national-level research projects as principal investigators, while the entry bar
before 2021 only required participation in a provincial-level project as a co-investigator. Considering the eligibility for applying for
national-level research projects (i.e., teachers should either have associate/full professor titles or be below the age of 40), it seemed
that mid-career teaching-focused EFL lecturers were excluded. As noted by Mary, the new appraisal system put her in a desperate
“Catch-22 situation”.
Besides constant failures to get a promotion, Mary’s feeling of being despised was accentuated by the university authority’s
questioning of her legitimacy in teaching higher-level courses. She was once asked by the department head to teach a postgraduate-
level course, as the former course teacher was on sabbatical. However, when the department head reported the arrangement to the
graduate school, the dean of graduate school expressed his concerns on the grounds that all postgraduate programs were taught by
teachers with a doctoral degree or a professorial title. Mary was only allowed to teach the course temporarily as a probation teacher
and had to withdraw once a new teacher was hired.
I felt embarrassed. If you do not excel in research, the university will doubt your competence in teaching. I agreed to teach the course as a
probation teacher anyway, as I wanted to help out. But I felt like I was teaching in the shadow.
As Wenger (1998, p. 203) put, “members whose contributions are never adopted develop an identity of non-participation that
progressively marginalizes them”. Although Mary’s merits in teaching were widely recognized, she still felt “not quite university
people” (Strauss, 2020, p. 1013). In a research-oriented community, her deficit in research made her an “academic outcast”, away from
the mainstream institutional culture.
Sometimes I feel accomplished, being able to perform well in teaching-related tasks. At other times, I highly doubt my legitimacy in higher
education. My friends and relatives know that I’ve taught in a university for almost 20 years and they call me a ‘Professor’. I keep telling
them that I’m not. I don’t belong here.
While Chinese EFL teachers’ feeling of alienation in higher education has been widely reported (e.g., Zeng & Fickel, 2021), Mary’s
situation further illustrated the complexity of how the research-oriented institutional culture could undermine teachers’ professional
wellbeing when their research and teaching are misaligned. The paradox of “being called a backbone yet feeling like an outcast” showed
that even as a high-achieving teacher, Mary still suffered from self-doubt and frustration.

4.2. Identity relinquishment and reinterpretation: I’m ace coach, Ms. Mary

Stuck in the “backbone-outcast” paradox, Mary attempted to solve her identity schism through “embracing and distancing” her sub-
identities (Shams, 2019, p. 629). Before the advent of the new appraisal policy in 2021, Mary still struggled to publish one or two
articles in less prestigious journals every few years, hoping to increase her research profile and add weight to her future promotion.
After the implementation of the new policy, Mary completely forwent her research identity pursuit. For one thing, previously
accredited publications in less prestigious journals were no longer acknowledged, which demoralized Mary in her research endeavor.
For another, publishing in prestigious journals, which requires systematic and structured mentorships (Habibie, 2015), was beyond
Mary’s reach. As a middle-aged, mid-career teacher, Mary felt diffident about learning from scratch.
In the old system, though my publications were given lower credit scores, they still meant something. For example, you got five credit
scores for publishing in a prestigious journal and one for publishing in a less prestigious journal. Now you get nothing for publications in
the latter. If they don’t count anymore, why should I bother to write them?
I have to start from scratch if I want to publish in prestigious journals. I was not trained to do that. It’s difficult for a middle-aged teacher
like me. I don’t know where to start.
Aside from instrumental considerations, Mary’s research engagements were also inhibited by her bewilderment of the teaching-
research nexus in the language classroom. To Mary, the proclaimed link between these two professional tasks seemed to be
tenuous. On the one hand, there was a mismatch between her discipline background and her teaching practice. Like most Chinese
tertiary EFL teachers who graduated from linguistics and literature majors but were hired to teach undergraduate foundation EFL
courses (Xia, 2012), Mary could not see the relevance of her MA research area to her teaching practice.

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I studied syntax for my MA and I was hired to teach skill-based foundation EFL courses. I don’t think studies in syntax can inform my
teaching.
On the other hand, as a teacher who has taught for almost twenty years, Mary was somewhat self-conceited about her own way of
teaching, which was informed by her experiential knowledge accumulated through years of practice instead of research. She held a
“technician” view of teaching in higher education, which was endemic among Chinese tertiary EFL teachers (e.g., Bai & Hudson, 2011).
I don’t need research to become a good teacher. I’ve taught for almost twenty years. I know what works for my students.
They say teachers who just teach are technicians. What’s wrong with being technicians? I solve students’ real problems, helping them
perform better in English speaking and writing.
Such biased positioning prevented her from developing new ways of seeing and new ways of being, and led to her complete
relinquishment of research. However, unlike teachers who became totally disheartened or drew upon “cunning manoeuvers” to get by
with both teaching and research as a response to teaching-research tensions in a performative culture (Huang & Guo, 2019, p. 7), Mary
exercised her agency to keep putting efforts in teaching, despite the institution’s lack of recognition of teaching excellence. With her
continued investments in teaching, one of the courses she lectured, English Public Speaking, became a signature course of the
department, attracting hundreds of students every year.
The course is very popular among students. Due to the limited quota, students have to set alarm clocks to sign up for my course. The
classroom is always packed with students. Students even advertise the course on social media.
In students’ reviews, Mary was highly praised for “teaching practical skills in writing and delivering speeches” and “using interesting
examples to make her points”. Encouraged by these comments, Mary reframed the “practical or training element” (Zeng & Fickel, 2021,
p. 652) in her professional practice as an advantage, despite the mainstream conception that universities should not be relegated to
training schools (Chen, 2020).
With a strengthened teaching identity, Mary’s anxiety caused by her lack of research achievement was greatly buffered and she was
able to reach a unique sense of the self. Instead of feeling embarrassed for being a middle-aged junior staff member, she began to view
her “low professional status” in a positive light. The title “Ms. Mary”, which used to raise doubts about her legitimacy as an academic
staff member in higher education, had gained new meaning.
In universities, it’s awkward if you are not a Dr. or Prof. Then people could only address you as Mr. or Ms. I used to be bothered by that.
Yet, now, I feel that the meaning of ‘Ms. Mary’ has changed. All students know about ‘Ms. Mary’s class’. ‘Ms. Mary’ has become a brand.
By relinquishing research and reinterpreting her teaching identity, Mary was able to “navigate the identity tensions that arise from
incompatibility of the two systems of meaning” (Shams, 2019, p. 627). Despite the institutional ideology, Mary reinterpreted the
conventional identity of university academics and reinvented herself as an “ace language coach”, which injected a sense of worth in her
professional engagements. The teaching-research misalignment in Mary’s academic identity was thus temporarily ameliorated
through a complete withdrawal from research and enhanced investments in teaching. Mary’s choice manifested that instead of fixing
their insufficient identity (i.e., research), reportedly a common coping strategy for identity tensions (e.g., Bao & Feng, 2022), teachers
may exercise strengthened agency to maintain their preferred identity, even though it might contradict the institutional ideology.

4.3. Identification beyond the institution: I feel needed and recognized

Although Mary had solved her identity schism, she still felt alienated from the academic community, which later became an op­
portunity for new identification beyond her institution (cf. Liu & Xu, 2011). As a course instructor and trainer of English public
speaking who had helped her students win numerous awards, Mary’s expertise became a marketable asset. Her reputation spread by
word of mouth, and invited talks from social and commercial organizations ensued. In these activities, drawing upon her teaching and
coaching experience at TU, Mary was able to give effective advice on English learning and public speaking to teachers, students, and
parents in primary and secondary schools. Her talks were very well-received and students who acted upon her advice were able to “get
real progress”. She was thus acknowledged as “an expert”.
They adored me and liked my tips for English learning. After the talks, they always came to me, expressing their thanks and asking me
questions. I felt needed and I was motivated to help my students.
Through identification beyond her institution, Mary developed an expert identity in the wider arena of EFL teaching, which boosted
her self-esteem and raised her self-efficacy for continuing development in EFL teaching. Her revered status also enabled her partici­
pation in meaning negotiations in diverse communities of EFL teaching below the tertiary level. She was invited to develop marking
criteria and serve as a judge for English public speaking contests for elementary school students.
They valued my expertise. I helped to revise the whole set of marking criteria for a speech contest and the organizing committee accepted
all my revisions! I was also the chair judge and question master in several contests. The organizing committee liked my questions.
What is of interest is that Mary’s identification beyond her institution mediated her identification with her institution and more
broadly, the higher education community. One reason why she was respected by the non-academic community was that she held a
position in the academic community (i.e., in higher education).

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They felt happy to have a university teacher as their tutor. In their eyes, university teachers are more knowledgeable, better educated and
have broader visions. My academic identity has become a ‘selling point’.
In the Chinese context, teachers in higher education are traditionally viewed as superior to schoolteachers, as it is assumed that
university teachers straddle the community of teaching and research and are able to conduct theory-informed teaching. Mary’s ac­
ademic identity, to some extent, has become proof of her competence, i.e., what Bourdieu (1986) calls symbolic capital. An academic
identity gave her a reified social status and validated her outside teaching practice. In a broader sense, it became “a kind of argument”
and “a resource” to justify herself “in relation to others, and to the world at large” (MacLure, 1993, p. 311). Realizing the currency of
this capital in the non-academic community, Mary cherished her academic position much more and reconsidered the possibility of
gaining legitimacy and full membership as an academic staff member in higher education. To this end, she considered picking up her
relinquished pursuit of a research identity.
I realize that I can’t give up on myself and must seek professional development. Perhaps I should do some research to make myself a real
academic. People see me as a university academic. They buy my ideas and look up to me.
More importantly, Mary’s outside practice made her intrinsically motivated to conduct classroom-based research, as teaching in
different contexts has given her new insights and being recognized as ‘an expert’ to share her insights with other teachers required her
to systemize her pedagogies. She hoped to note down and theorize her pedagogical insights through research, which might “address
real-world problems in language education” (McKinley, 2022, p. 8) and inform other teachers. The original pragmatic consideration
out of external pressure (i.e., whether the research will be published in institutionally acknowledged journals) has become secondary.
Teaching EFL in different contexts has given me multiple perspectives. I have had a lot of reflections. Maybe I should systemize my
‘intuitive pedagogies’. It will bring better teaching and inform other teachers. It would be meaningful to communicate my teaching
experience and knowledge through research articles, even though the articles may not be accepted by prestigious journals.
Although Mary did not have concrete research plans, she began to seriously consider potential pathways that might gradually lead
to a concretized research identity. As a middle-aged mid-career teacher who used to stick to her entrenched position as a “technician”,
Mary became willing to step out of her comfort zone and engage in continuing professional learning.
I know little about theories and methodologies in language education research. I need systematic training and mentorship, preferably
through a professional development program. To start from scratch is difficult, but I’m willing to give it shot, if there is such a chance.
Besides the research dimension, her engagements in EFL training schools, which were consumer-oriented, also informed her
teaching at the tertiary level, making her more aware of students’ needs. She therefore adopted a more student-centered pedagogy in
her tertiary-level courses and her “deep care for students” was well appreciated, which was constantly mentioned in students’ reviews.
Mary’s boundary-crossing between two communities (the academic and the non-academic) thus enabled her to leverage the gains in
one community to bolster her practice in the other (cf. Yuan & Yang, 2020). Through boundary-crossing, a transforming space was
created for the potential realignment of her misaligned teaching and research identities, which was seen in her reflexivity toward her
professional engagements and reconsideration of integrating research and teaching for professional development.

5. Discussion

In Section 4, we unraveled Mary’s identity tensions and renegotiations in the changing context of Chinese higher education. Her
identity tensions, manifested in a schismatic feeling of “backbone-outcast”, were born out of the institutional disregard for her teaching
excellence in a research-oriented culture. To cope with the tensions, she actively involved herself in personalizing the prescribed
identity by her institution and identifying with the broader EFL teaching community beyond her institution, through which she
constructed an “ace coach” identity and an “expert” identity. It is worth noting that Mary’s identity development in and beyond her
institution was mutually informing in a cyclical way. As schematized in Fig. 1, Mary’s expert identity in the non-academic community
(i.e., the broader EFL teaching community) was powered by her membership in the academic community (i.e., the university), which
not only provided chances for her to craft her pedagogies, but also legitimized her pedagogies. Her academic identity, in turn, was also
transformed by her engagements in the non-academic community.
The transformation of her academic identity included both the research aspect and the teaching aspect. In terms of research, her

Fig. 1. Mary’s identity experience.

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experiences in the non-academic community made her reconsider the possibility of integrating research with teaching and seeking
professional development. Although gaining a full-fledged academic identity was still a projection, a difference could be anticipated in
Mary’s future identity trajectory, as the “imaginative casting of self into an envisioned future role” is a great driving force for further
investments in new identifications (Clarke, 2008, p. 76). In terms of teaching, the consumer-oriented culture in the non-academic
community inspired Mary to be more student-centered when teaching tertiary-level courses and thus enriched her teaching identity
at her institution. Taken together, Mary’s engagements across the communities enabled her to “take a fresh look at [her] long-standing
practices and assumptions” (Tsui & Law, 2007, p. 1290), creating a transforming space for her identity development, though the
transformation was just germinating at this stage.
The narrative inquiry into Mary’s identity work in and beyond her institutional context brought to the fore several key issues of
academic identity construction in the changing milieu of Chinese higher education, including the professional dilemma of teaching-
focused faculty, the teaching-research nexus in tertiary-level EFL education, and teachers’ maintenance of workable identities in times
of policy shifts. These issues are intricately connected to the contextual dynamics and teachers’ agentic self-identification, reflecting
“the internal-external dialectic” of identity construction (Jenkins, 1996, p. 20).
First, the identity tensions that Mary experienced not only epitomize the dilemmas faced by many university EFL teachers in China,
but also speak to the international literature on the marginalized status of teaching-focused academics in a performative landscape that
values research productivity. When research is highly prized, many studies in Western contexts have pointed out the unethical nature
of the institutions (e.g., Ylijoki & Henriksson, 2017), which do not “give due credit to a devoted teacher” (Arvaja, 2018, p. 298),
relegate teaching to the background (McIntosh et al., 2022), and show little respect to teaching-focused academics (Strauss, 2020).
Complementing these findings, our study further reveals that universities may enact perfunctory efforts to valorize the
teaching-research duality, for example, through rewarding teaching-focused faculty with “tokenistic prizes” instead of “mainstream
kudos” (Macfarlane, 2011, p. 71). The paradox of being “commended” as a backbone teacher yet “treated” like an academic outcast in
Mary’s case is aptly to the point. Mary’s outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching did not bring her any real recognition (e.
g., promotion), except lip service.
In the specific context of China, the study reveals how the state-mandated reemphasis on teaching in higher education (Chen, 2018)
and the policy of “Powuwei [破五唯]” are compromised at the institutional level. Despite the national mandate, systemic tools to
include teaching performance in staff appraisal are still lacking in some Chinese higher institutions. As shown in the new appraisal
document at Mary’s institution, teaching was only mentioned tangentially, without being credited. How teaching excellence would
contribute to career promotion is quite nebulous. Research requirements, on the other hand, are becoming all the more stringent,
which is likely to be met by already-established academics with higher professional titles (Dai et al., 2021). While previous studies
have pinpointed the decreasing investments in teaching as a result of research prioritization (e.g., Yang et al., 2022), this study suggests
another consequence. That is, when the bar for research is so beyond their reach, teachers may become demoralized in their research
endeavor, especially within the Chinese Danwei system, whereby teachers are mostly employed with permanent contracts (especially
mid-career ones) and are less worried about being laid off for unsatisfactory performance (Zeng & Fickel, 2021), compared with many
of their Western counterparts who are employed as casual employees (e.g., Strauss, 2020). In the long run, neither the decreasing
investments in teaching nor the disengagement from research will bode well for students and higher education as a whole.
Thus, it seems that there is still a long way to go for universities in China to actually concretize the policy of “Powuwei [破五唯]” and
support academics’ pluralistic development trajectories and context-specific identities (cf. Billot, 2010). For EFL teachers especially,
their academic identity needs to be revisited with solid consideration of their job responsibilities and special contributions to higher
education. The teaching aspect of the academic work needs to be accredited, and not just through words of appreciation.
Second, in response to the complexities of the teaching-research nexus in foreign language education at the tertiary level, this study
provides a valuable addition to existing literature on factors underlying the teaching-research bifurcation by taking context-specific
factors into consideration. Specifically, adding to the factors revealed in studies in Western contexts, such as the preference for
idealized research over “contextualized holistic research” (McKinley, 2019, p. 882) and teachers’ reliance on intuition and experience
for pedagogical development (Medgyes, 2017), this study brings to the fore a common misalignment between Chinese tertiary EFL
teachers’ academic discipline background and their teaching practices (cf. Xia, 2012). Such a misalignment is found to exacerbate the
teaching-research bifurcation. As shown in Mary’s story, on the one hand, research related to her discipline background, i.e., syntax in
linguistics, could hardly inform her teaching of EFL courses, which aimed to increase undergraduate students’ language proficiency.
On the other hand, she was not well-trained to conduct classroom-based research that might actually inform her teaching. Mary’s
experience is transferable to the majority of Chinese tertiary EFL teachers, who mostly hold degrees in linguistics or literature and
teach foundation EFL courses (Xia, 2012), presumably due to the scarcity of postgraduate programs in language education in the
Chinese context (Bai & Hudson, 2011). For those teachers, to combine teaching with research is “almost a castle in the air” (Ruan &
Toom, 2022, p. 6). To address this misalignment, besides relying on teacher agency, top-down support structures are of paramount
importance. For example, the government can increase the provision of degree or non-degree professional development programs
tailored to in-service tertiary EFL teachers. At the institutional level, policymakers need to work out effective research mentoring
mechanisms, through which teachers can receive systematic methodological training and mentorship from established
researcher-teachers. Otherwise, teachers may forsake research due to a lack of external support (Hokka et al., 2012), as shown in
Mary’s original diffidence about research.
Third, the study adds to our understanding of the maintenance of academic identities in face of contextual challenges. While
previous literature has revealed the trajectories of either active or passive compliance in maintaining a workable academic identity (e.
g., Bao & Feng, 2022; Huang & Guo, 2019; Xu, 2014; Zhang et al., 2022), our findings reveal an alternative trajectory of identity
development. This alternative trajectory shows how personal sense-making through cognitive reframing and agentic choice helps to

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maintain a coherent self (Arvaja, 2018) and how boundary-crossing creates opportunities for expansive learning and identity
development (Wenger, 2010).
In Mary’s case, in face of the changing institutional environment, she was not courageous enough to jump out of her comfort zone to
address her insufficient research identity in the first place, due to a number of reasons including pragmatic constraints (i.e., age, and
career phase) and her biased view toward teaching in higher education. However, although she felt incompetent to address those
challenges, she still exercised her agency to sustain and further develop her preferred teaching identity. Her personal sense-making of
the prescribed academic identity enabled her to find “a sense of meaning and worth” in her professional self (Henkel, 2012, p. 3), and
to maintain personal and professional wellbeing. A strengthened teaching identity also brought chances for her to extrapolate beyond
her institutional context and identify with the broader EFL community, in which she gained external validation and became intrin­
sically motivated to realign teaching with research. To actualize her projections, she became willing to engage in continuing pro­
fessional learning in order to acquire the desiderata for conducting classroom-based research. It was through her boundary-crossing
that Mary changed her entrenched “technician” view of academic identity and came to understand that integrating teaching with
research was “what [made] academic work both satisfying and compelling” (Robertson, 2007, p. 551).
Thus, to construct palatable identities in times of challenges, teachers in similar situations with Mary’s need to reframe the
contextual challenges and inject their personal meanings into their academic identities. Such self-authorship helps teachers to
“reconcile the misaligning identity prescriptions” (Shams, 2019, p. 629) and maintain a sense of worth, which will prevent them from a
complete withdrawal from professional development and enable them to negotiate leeway for future identification. They also need to
be agentic in seizing the available contextual affordances, either in or beyond their situated communities, to mediate their professional
trajectories. Organizational structures are not entirely “closed doctrine” (Ylijoki & Henriksson, 2017, p. 1294); instead, there is always
room left for teachers to exercise their agency.

6. Conclusion

Through a narrative inquiry, we have unraveled how a mid-career university EFL teacher in Chinese mainland developed identity
tensions as a teaching-focused academic and how she engaged in identity work across different communities in order to maintain a
coherent, legitimate and distinctive self. Facing a teaching-research misalignment in her research-oriented institution, the participant
developed a schismatic feeling of “backbone-outcast” due to her outstanding teaching performance yet limited research outputs. To
alleviate her schismatic feeling caused by the misalignment, she relinquished her research identity and constructed herself as an ace
coach despite the institutional preference. Her competent teaching identity, together with her feeling of illegitimacy in the academic
community, triggered her identification with the non-academic community, in which she leveraged her teaching expertise and social
status reified by her academic position to construct an expert identity. Through her outside practice in the non-academic community,
the participant was able to project a realignment of her teaching and research identity. The boundary-crossing experience thus created
a transforming space for her academic identity development.
Mary’s story is unique yet informative, which reveals some hidden aspects of the ecology in Chinese higher institutions, indicates
how a teacher’s agentic identity work could bring an alternative trajectory of development, and thus sheds new light on professional
development and wellbeing of university EFL teachers in similar situations. Using narrative inquiry in ethnography allows us to delve
into the intricacies of Mary’s professional stories within a three-dimensional space (i.e., temporality, sociality and place), which makes
“deeply hidden assumption to surface” (Bell, 2002, p. 209).
Despite the richness of the data and the depth of understandings, it has to be admitted that there is a limitation in terms of the
generalizability of the findings gained from only one participant. Future studies could recruit more participants to reveal the multiple
trajectories of EFL teachers’ professional development within multi-layered and differentiated contextual dynamics. For example, in
contrast to Mary’s case, inquires can be made in institutional contexts where different promotional pathways (e.g., teaching-oriented
and research-oriented) are exercised or where institutional support and resources for teachers’ continuing professional development
are available. Piecing these stories together, we can arrive at a comprehensive understanding of EFL teachers’ professional quandaries
and coping strategies in the changing landscape of higher education.

CRediT statement

Jie Bao: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Dezheng (William)
Feng: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing, Supervision.

Declaration of competing interest

None.

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