GS Spark: Journal of Applied Academic Discourse

GS Spark: Journal of Applied Academic Discourse, Volume 3, Issue 1, June 2025, 82-93, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18448040

Publication date: Jun 30, 2025

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The professional identity of English language teachers is crucial to their instructional effectiveness, self-perception, and students' target language learning. This study explores the perceptions of basic-level English language female teachers on their identity construction in Nepal. Under a qualitative approach that employed a narrative inquiry design, five female teachers from Birendranagar Municipality participated in the study. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and participants’ reflective journals. It showed that teachers’ identity construction was influenced by socio-cultural norms and institutional contexts. Female English teachers actively shaped their professional identities through reflection, resistance, and reconstructive engagements. Findings suggest the need for supportive institutional environments and gender-sensitive policies to enhance English language female teachers’ identity construction in English as a foreign language contexts. This study contributes to a broader understanding of how gender, language teaching, and socio-cultural norms intersect to shape professional identity within the Nepali context through interpretative and socio-cultural lenses.

female teachers professional identity construction socio-cultural expectations teacher agency work-life balance

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This article is primarily grounded on the data collected during the first author’s M.Ed. thesis writing at Surkhet Multiple Campus, TU. We thank the respondent teachers, the editors and unknown reviewers.

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