Comprehension of experienced English language teachers' professional identity and related metacognitive thinking procedures

In order to comprehend the attributes of expert teachers, the current study investigated professional identity (PI) and related metacognitive thinking procedures of experienced Korean teachers of English through a questionnaire survey and interviews. The teachers' PIs contained pedagogic meanings that highly regarded teachers' having language knowledge and skills, realising learner-centred practices, teaching communication skills for practicality, and developing professionalism. They relatively less valued practising teacher-led, test-preparation lessons but also using challenging tasks and creative materials and combining content, materials, and activities, which reflects their unestablished meanings of learner-centredness. Some of the interviewed teachers revealed their active performance of metacognitive monitoring and regulations of different meanings (cognitions), emotions, and actions over their pedagogical problem-solving processes for overcoming teacher-led, test-preparation lessons. Thus, experimenting with negotiated pedagogies and modifying their pedagogic meanings by learning from this, they tried to balance identity-congruent actions and verification, and reshaped their PI and related metacognitive thinking procedures; others' pedagogic experimentations and related experiences were rejected by contextual rigidities. Comprehension of the PI and related metacognitive thinking procedures of experienced teachers provided several implications for teacher education.