CELTA as “a Safety Net”: EFL Teachers’ Identity Development and Professional Engagement in their First Year

This article discusses the identity development and professional engagement of two short-term novice EFL teachers who completed a short initial teaching education course. These native -speaker teachers had predominantly extrinsic motivations for teaching EFL and, following their CELTA course, indicated that they felt a lack of legitimacy as teachers. Once in-service, whereas one case reveals that a weak sense of identity can negatively influence the extent of professional engagement, the other suggests that a strong sense of teacher identity can be constructed in-situ, with high levels of engagement. Shifts in motivation were found to play a significant role in ongoing identity construction and professional engagement, signalling interconnected relationships between these three concepts.