A Narrative Inquiry of South Korean English Teacher Educators Professional Identities and Practices ; 한국 영어교사교육자의 전문가 정체성 및 실천에 관한 내러티브 연구:영어 수석교사의 사례 ; A Case of English Master Teachers

학위논문(석사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 사범대학 외국어교육과(영어전공), 2025. 8. 장인철. ; This study investigates how experienced English teachers in South Korea construct and negotiate their professional identities as they transition into the role of school-based language teacher educators, focusing on the Master Teacher program in public secondary education. Grounded in Bronfenbrenners Ecological Systems Theory (1979) , the study adopts a narrative inquiry approach and analyzes nine sessions of in-depth interviews (three per participant), along with teaching artifacts and mentoring materials collected from three English Master Teachers. It examines how relational dynamics, institutional structures, policy discourses, and individual agency interact to shape the ongoing formation of professional identities. Findings reveal that the identity construction of Master Teachers is a dynamic and recursive process situated across multiple ecological layers. At the relational level, participants established credibility through emotionally attuned peer leadership and sustained engagement in professional learning communities. Institutionally, they enacted strategic agency in navigating centralized education policies and role ambiguity. At the discursive level, they critically engaged with dominant ideologies surrounding English education, such as test-centeredness and native-speakerism. At the individual level, personal beliefs, values, and emotional resources filtered how teachers experienced and responded to systemic pressures. Temporally, their narratives illustrated how identity evolves through personal crises, policy transitions, and career shifts, highlighting sustainability as a central concern. By shedding light on school-based language teacher educators—a population that has received limited attention in language teacher identity research—this study offers a nuanced account of how pedagogical leadership is constructed within the evolving ecology of public schools. It shows that identity as a teacher educator is not granted by position alone, ...