Language Teacher Educator Identity, Wellbeing and Agency Nested in a Community of Practice: A Collaborative Autoethnography


TEZGİDEN CAKCAK S. Y., Demir-Ayaz A., KAÇAR I. G.

TESOL Quarterly, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Basım Tarihi: 2026
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1002/tesq.70188
  • Dergi Adı: TESOL Quarterly
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, Periodicals Index Online, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, EBSCO Education Source, Education Abstracts, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), MLA - Modern Language Association Database, DIALNET, MLA International Bibliography, Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest), Education Collection (ProQuest), Education Source Ultimate (EBSCO), Sociology Source Ultimate (EBSCO)
  • Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

In this collaborative autoethnography, we, as three university-based language teacher educators in Türkiye, explore how our community of practice (CoP) acted as a catalyst in navigating our identity tensions, boosting our wellbeing and contributing to our agency. Grounded in Wenger's (2009) framework of CoP, we embarked on a critical journey of navigating the tensions between our aspired and assigned identities as teacher educators in a dialogic and reflective third space of a CoP. The collegial space of our CoP enabled us to enact our agency and nurtured our wellbeing, embracing us in a safety net of solidarity and empowering us professionally in neoliberal academia. Conceptualizing the identity–wellbeing–agency triangle as a mutual, recursive and interdependent process nested in a CoP, this study showcases how LTEs reclaim their legitimacy, nourish their wellbeing and enact their agency in a safe dialogic space. Such a reconceptualization may bring new insights to LTEs in different contexts.