Accidental teachers: The journeys of six japanese women from the corporate workplace into english language teaching

This study explores the processual identity formation of six Japanese women who gave up a job, turned to higher education, and became university EFL teachers in Japan. My research questions include: (1) How did they change their careers and become university EFL teachers? (2) Since they entered the university EFL teaching profession, how have they felt about their own gender? and (3) How did their working experience influence their EFL teaching? Drawing on a poststructural feminist theory of identity, I examine their nonlinear, changing and contested teacher identities in social, economic and political contexts. Their stories help us understand the complex relations between individuals and the gendered social world and hidden issues involving self-conflict, a sense of unfairness, the burden of gender-differentiated expectation, and emotional strain. I also draw attention to the use of their former identities as a component of their pedagogy, which leads to feminist teaching.