Autoethnography

Autoethnography is a postmodern research method that allows researchers to generate ‘aesthetic and evocative thick descriptions of (their own) personal and interpersonal experiences’, usually by self-narrative, in qualitative research in social science (Ellis et al., 2011). Although objectivity is considered as crucial in traditional research methods, autoethnographic researchers oppose the absence of the researcher’s voice; they consider the subjectivity of the researcher important. Autoethnographic researchers consider the researcher’s voice to be important data, because the researcher’s own life experiences are related to their construction of self and the way they interact with others, all of which occurs within sociohistorical contexts (Mirhosseini, 2016; Pathak, 2010).

Autoethnographic studies are employed in the field of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), among other. For example, Canagarajah (2012) and Dressman (2006) examined the development of professional identities of a teacher of English language and an educator of TESOL students, respectively, through their experiences. Second language (SL) and foreign language (FL) teachers usually need to manage intense intercultural demands (King & Ng, 2018), and FL teachers who live and teach in countries that are not their home countries also experience a high level of intercultural demands. Researchers have investigated experiences, including emotions and stress, of English language teachers who work abroad in countries such as Japan (MacIntyer et al., 2019; Nagamine, 2018). An under-researched aspect, however, is how teachers of other languages, especially those who live and work abroad, develop professional identities through their experiences.

There are also autoethnographic studies about Asian female academics working for American universities. Lin et al. (2006) describe how an Asian female academic was forced to do practical and labour-intensive jobs, while White male academics were assigned more academic and research-focused jobs. In another study, a Chinese female academic was ignored and disrespected by Korean and Chinese female research assistants, although those same assistants respected White male academics (Li, 2006). Furthermore, Loo & Hsiu-Zu (2006) found tenure applications of two Chinese female academics were rejected by their university, although White male academics with similar academic career records were promoted to tenure positions.

Absent from the literature is any study about the identity of a Japanese female academic who teaches FL and carries out research in an Australian university. Although Australia is also an English-speaking country and there may be some similarities with the USA, the university system and culture are not exactly the same; likewise, though they may share some common views and characteristics, Japanese females are different from females from other Asian countries (e.g. Chinese).

This study is the autoethnography of a female academic (myself) who is a native speaker of Japanese and teaches Japanese language in an Australian university. The study aims to create new knowledge about how this Japanese academic developed her professional identity in that situation and how that identity has changed through experiences in social contexts. Volkmann & Anderson (1998 p. 296) describe the professional identity of teachers as ‘a complex and dynamic equilibrium where personal self-image is balanced with a variety of social roles teachers feel obliged to play’. Because my major roles as a university academic are teaching and research, I examine the development and changes of my identities as both a teacher and a researcher. In this study, ‘professional identity’ refers to my general work identity, which includes both teaching and research, whereas ‘teacher identity’ refers specifically to my teaching identity and ‘researcher identity’ to my research identity.

Pithouse-Morgan et al. (2022) emphasise that autoethnography offers those academics in higher education whose emotions and intentions are likely to be marginalised, silenced, and made invisible, a space to face their unpleasant feelings and negotiate a reflexive, ethical, and scholarly self. This autoethnography reveals my views and emotions in relation to my teacher and researcher identities, which are otherwise invisible in Australian higher education.

Previous studies about teacher and researcher identities

Language teacher identity

Previous studies have examined the development of language teacher identities and changes in those identities. According to Guo (2006) and Liang (2006), international students in American universities rejected Asian teachers of English as a second language (ESL) because the teachers were not native speakers of English, which negatively impacted on their teacher identities. Henry (2019) found that several different identities or I-positions emerged in a pre-service English teacher during a four-week practicum at a school in Sweden. Henry contended that the process of developing a teacher identity is dynamic, not linear. In a study in Hong Kong (Trent, 2010), English teachers in a teacher training institution changed their identities as English teachers as a result of carrying out action research. The pre-service teachers identified a dichotomy between the beliefs of ‘modern teachers’ and ‘traditional teachers’ and developed a more flexible teacher identity.

Other studies have pointed to a relationship between teacher identity and power (Trent, 2012; Tsui, 2007). Tsui (2007) examined the identity of a teacher of English as a foreign language (EFL) in a Chinese university. The university focused strictly on communicative language teaching (CLT), a policy that conflicted with the teacher’s belief in FL teaching. Because of the university’s power, the teacher developed a ‘dual identity as a faked CLT practitioner and a real self [that] believed in eclecticism’ (p. 673). Tsui explains that this use of university power in demanding a strict focus on CLT triggered the teacher’s marginalisation as a member of the university. Trent (2012) explored the identities of four ESL teachers in a secondary school in Hong Kong during a professional development project carried out in partnership with a higher education institution. The teachers perceived that a modern communicative and collaborative teaching, which was suggested by a consultant from the university, conflicted with traditional ESL teaching in Hong Kong. This situation and the power of the university consultant triggered the marginalisation of some teachers from the project.

In summary, language teachers who are non-native speakers of that language may be rejected by their students, and the rejection negatively influences their teacher identities. Teacher identity is dynamic: it emerges and changes both in the same and in different teaching contexts. The power of people in higher positions tends to trigger marginalisation from teaching communities when a teaching style that conflicts with the teacher’s language-teaching beliefs is imposed on the teacher.

Researcher identity

Most studies have focused on the development of researcher identities of PhD students and/or early-career researchers and the factors that affect their identity development. Baker & Pifer (2011) found that sociocultural contexts related to both the study life of PhD students in an American university and their network development gave meaning to their experiences and influenced the development of their efficacy as research students as well as their researcher identity. The authors suggested that students who did not develop a network felt isolated and were unable to develop identities as competent researchers. Cotterall (2015) examined the development of researcher identities of international PhD candidates in an Australian university through their experiences. Those who brought to their PhD studies the most cultural capital—that is, social assets such as educational qualifications (Bourdieu, 1986)—and who received research support constructed confident researcher identities. The international students, who used English as their SL, reported that they were given very limited institutional support. In contrast, a White student whose first language was English felt they were given more opportunities than the ESL students to develop a confident researcher identity.

Tienari’s (2019) study is an autoethnography of a Finnish-speaking academic who moved to a Swedish-speaking university in Finland. Because of Tienari’s lack of Swedish skills, his academic identityFootnote 1 became vulnerable. He also felt guilty using an international language (English) for his work, as it could be considered an excuse for not using Swedish. According to Tienari, academic identity depends on language, and language is inevitably linked with complex power relations in organisations.

A study by McAlpine et al. (2013), which included post-PhD researchers and new lecturers as well as PhD candidates, found that personal life tasks (e.g. establishing long-term relationships or considering having children) significantly influenced the development of researcher identities. The participants experienced various types of relocations, for example, international PhD students experienced linguistic relocation (changing their major use of language from their first languages to English). Institutional relocation (changing institutions or units in an institution during their career paths) also affected the development of their researcher identities. Lack of competence and confidence in academic writing due to language barriers negatively affected international PhD students’ development of identities as confident researchers.

In these studies, network development was a crucial factor for the development of identities as confident researchers, but the development of positive researcher identities in researchers who use English as their SL tended to be disadvantaged by language barriers. Lack of skills in the organisation’s dominant language appears to shake academic identity and trigger negative emotions.

Conflict between identities

Over recent decades, universities worldwide have experienced a shift toward the adoption of corporative values. This shift triggered changes of the principles of academic work from professional autonomy, self-regulation, collegiality, and intellectual curiosity to bureaucratic control and monitoring, financial profitability, competition, and focus on acquiring research funding from government or external agencies (Deem & Brehony, 2005; Kolsaker, 2008).

The shift of principles in higher education invited managerialism, which Shams (2019) describes as ‘An approach that embodies values and practices oriented toward efficiency, effectiveness and economic rationality’ (p. 621). This approach conflicted with the traditional professionalism of academics, which was based on the autonomous, scholarly pursuit of intellectual curiosity. Shams investigated how academics at a Canadian university managed the conflict between the university’s managerialism and their professionalism. To avoid identity tension, the academics accommodated the managerialism or persisted in their professionalism depending on the area of their work, such as teaching or research.

This shift also increased the demand for research outputs from academics in order to raise the universities’ rankings to obtain more government funding, and the academics struggled with their identity change from teaching-focused to research-focused. Dugas et al. (2020) focused on how an American university’s increasing demand for research owing to a change of the government’s funding policy influenced academics’ identities. Individual academics had different perceptions of research and teaching and different values. The most stressed group were those who considered research important for them and who perceived themselves as researchers but did not have time to carry out research because of their heavy teaching workload. The rising demand for research work also occurred in European universities. For example, Ursin et al. (2020) examined the identities of academics in a Finnish university in terms of the university’s change in focus from teaching to research. The academics who received collegial and institutional support were confident teachers or researchers, whereas those who seldom received that support were less confident in either capacity.

Yang et al. (2022) and Tran et al. (2017) investigated academic identities during changes to more research-oriented policies in universities in China and Vietnam. To be able to integrate teaching and research into their professional identities, it was essential for EFL teachers to develop emotional resilience and identify and use accessible resources (Yang et al., 2022). When EFL teachers’ goals, values, and beliefs were congruent with the change, the teachers experienced positive emotions; however, when they were not, they experienced negative emotions (Tran et al., 2017).

Tülübaş & Göktürk (2023) analysed data of academics from a variety of countries, including Australia, China, the UK, Indonesia, and the USA, to investigate how the change to managerialism influenced academic identity. The authors identified three different types of academic responses to the change: the enterprising academic, the ambivalent academic, and the authentic academic. The enterprising academic conformed completely to managerialism, considering visibility and recognition the most important normalising corporate imposition by the universities and priotising careerism over scholarship. The ambivalent academic felt pressured by performative demands, took up a critical stance, and felt trapped between their own academic authenticity and new norms in the academy imposed by managerialism. The authentic academic opposed the dominant managerialist ideologies and exercised strong agency to pursue their own path, which was not defined in careerist terms.

Changes implemented by universities appeared to trigger tensions between the academics’ teacher and researcher identities and between the universities’ managerialism and the academics’ traditional professionalism. Some academics developed more balanced identities by integrating their researcher selves into their teacher selves and accommodating managerialism in their teaching or research to some extent. The studies point to emotional resilience, recognition of accessible resources, and institutional and collegial support as important for supporting academics to develop integrated identities.

Aim of this study

Previous studies have examined teacher and researcher identities of university academics who were teaching English as FL or SL. The contexts of teaching FL/SL in universities are different from those of teaching many other subjects. Teaching methods include a great deal of group or pair work to elicit the use of languages from students, and the structure of assessment tasks differs, including several different tasks related to the four skills of the languages. The research areas of language-teaching academics are usually linguistics, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and cultures or histories of FL/SL countries. In those areas, it is harder to develop enterprise or corporate connections to obtain funding for research projects compared to other fields such as science, business, or medicine. More studies are needed to determine how university language-teaching academics develop teacher/researcher identities and what affects their identities. Furthermore, previous studies have focused on EFL/ESL teachers in universities, but worldwide, many other languages are taught in universities from FL/SL perspectives. To widen the range of studies about academics’ identities, it is necessary to investigate the identities of university academics who teach languages other than English.

Previous studies have also found that international PhD students who used English as their SL were disadvantaged in developing confident researcher identities. In universities of English-speaking countries, there are also academics for whom English is not their first language. It is important to know about the identities of those academics who use SL for their teaching and research and how their use of ESL affects their identities as teachers and researchers. This study aims to reveal how I, an academic who is a native speaker of Japanese and who teaches Japanese in a university of an English-speaking country, developed my teacher and researcher identities and what factors affect the development of my identities. The research question is as follows: How is the development of professional identity of a Japanese academic in the Australian university interconnected with:

  1. 1.

    Sociopolitical aspects (e.g. institutional policies of language programmes)

  2. 2.

    The immediate teaching and researching contexts (e.g. students, research colleagues)

  3. 3.

    My own history and cultural background?

Methodology

Self-narrative was used for this autoethnographic study, following Ellis et al. (2011). Firstly, I wrote a self-narrative about my experiences of Japanese language teaching and research—my life story since coming to Australia from Japan until the present—to examine my teacher and researcher identities. McAdams (2001, p. 117) states that ‘identity is an internalised and evolving life story’. This idea is connected with a number of important themes in developmental, cognitive, personality, and cultural psychology. There are two parts to the self-narrative, the time (1) between leaving Japan and starting my current position (1997–2009) and (2) from starting my current position until the present (2010–2022). Part 1 includes my time doing postgraduate studies and teaching Japanese languages as a part-time tutor in Australian universities. Part 2 concerns the time after I started working as a full-time lecturer in Japanese (see Appendix 1). My work comprises teaching (40%), research (40%), and engagement such as community service (20%). The self-narrative was written in Japanese using some English terminology that I often used for work.

Secondly, after writing the narrative, I coded it for the statements related to my teaching identity and my researcher identity. To view the development and changes of those identities, I created tables about the events that affected my teacher and researcher identities, respectively, in chronological order, along with my comments related to the events (see Appendices 2 and 3). Because identity is closely related to emotions (Chubb et al., 2017; Tran et al., 2017; Ursin et al., 2020), I added expressions of emotions related to the events. I then added people associated with those events (e.g. students, colleagues). I read the narrative repeatedly, checked the coding and the tables, and modified the tables. I wrote the tables in Japanese and later translated them into English.

Finally, I wrote stories about my teacher and researcher identities, which are presented in the following section. I translated excerpts of the statements in the narrative into English.

Teaching experiences and emotions

I came to Sydney in Australia in March 1997 and undertook a Graduate Diploma in Japanese Language Teaching and a Masters in Applied Linguistics at a university in Sydney. In 1998, I started teaching Japanese language once a week in a community college while studying a Masters in Applied Linguistics at the university. Most of my students were adults who wanted to learn Japanese for their work or as a hobby. This was my first official teaching experience apart from private tutoring, and I enjoyed the work:

The students called me ‘teacher’ and tried to gain knowledge of Japanese from me. I felt great about that, because I did not receive much recognition and respect in Australia due to the barriers of language and culture.

I started developing a positive identity as a Japanese person who was a user of ESL in Australia. Previously, I had often felt ‘as if I were a little stupid Asian girl’Footnote 2 because of difficulty presenting myself as a mature, intelligent, and competent person, owing to the language and cultural barriers between the two countries. I also developed a belief about language use and people’s attitudes toward users of ESL:

I used to be intimidated when people asked me to repeat after I had said something in English. I felt that my English was so bad and that I was a deficit speaker of English. But I started thinking that everyone in Australia should listen to English of SL speakers more carefully. I did not become intimidated when people asked me to repeat my English.

This belief came from my teaching experience:

I listened to my students’ broken Japanese regularly. In most cases, I could understand what they had wanted to say, unless their Japanese completely made any sense. My skills probably came from my work. But I believe that anyone can do that with some attention and effort. Australian people should be able to do the same about ESL speakers.

After teaching in the community college, I taught Japanese in a high school in Sydney and at two universities in Melbourne and Sydney, part-time, while implementing research for a Masters and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from 2001 to 2008. When I was teaching in the university in Sydney while completing my PhD, I developed good relationships and rapport with my students. This was when I established confidence as a language teacher. While studying my postgraduate degrees, I constructed a clear purpose of obtaining a teaching and research position in a university.

In 2010, I was offered a one-year contract position as a lecturer in Japanese in a university in Adelaide. I was happy to be starting my career as a university academic and moved from Sydney to Adelaide. Because I arrived at the university after the semester had already started and did not receive sufficient information about the contents of the course I would coordinate and teach (those outlines had been already arranged before my arrival), course coordination and teaching in this first semester were difficult. I wrote in my narrative, ‘please show me if there is a person who can do a better job in this terrible situation’. My perception of my teaching ability did not become particularly negative, because I had already developed confidence as a language teacher from my previous teaching experience. At the same time, I felt isolated and lonely because the working environment was different from the two other universities where I had previously taught:

In the previous universities where large number of students were taking Japanese courses, I was always surrounded by Japanese people, such as Japanese lecturers and casual tutors like myself. I could always chat with them in Japanese. But in the new university, the only Japanese staff were casual tutors who I did not see regularly. I felt a little culture shock and lonely.

I coordinated and taught upper beginners’ courses and intermediate courses for two years consecutively and at the end of the intermediate course could see the students’ progress in their Japanese. This triggered my enjoyment: ‘I am really happy to see my students’ progress’. However, due to the small numbers of students in 2012, the school reduced the lesson hours for language programmes, which triggered my disappointment. The language courses were always targeted for consideration for closure in reviews of the school because of small enrolment numbers. After working as a contract staff member for four years, I was offered a permanent position; however, I did not feel that my position was secure in this situation.

In 2016, my mother in Japan passed away suddenly. Because I was single and had no children, my mother was only my family. I was very close to her; she was my best friend and the person who understood me best. I had very bad depression and had to take a month’s leave from my work. After going back to the university, I only managed to teach. ‘Soon after my lessons finished, my mind became empty and I did not know why and for what I was still living’.

In the following year, the university introduced Discipline Clusters, a restructure to relocate programmes to the most appropriate schools. However, as academic staff, we understood that the purpose of the restructure was to move the programmes with small student numbers to another school for budget-cutting purposes. The language programmes were transferred to another school in the university.

In 2017, I was strongly criticised by an executive member of the school in my performance meeting as my teaching evaluations from students had suffered. This triggered strong frustration, sadness, and disappointment about the school’s management:

When my mother died, people in the previous school were kind and supportive. But people in the new school did not know anything about that and did not even ask me why the decrease happened. I miss the previous school.

I had to ask the union for support. I submitted a letter from my psychologist to explain my psychological and emotional conditions and had a meeting with the school executives, with a person from the union in attendance. After I had completely recovered from the loss of my mother and my teaching evaluations had improved, the executive who had previously criticised my evaluation began treating me very nicely. However, my disappointment with the management of the school did not improve significantly.

In 2021, the school decided not to hire any casual teaching staff for my course: enrolments had fallen owing to COVID-19. This caused a dramatic increase in my teaching workload. I taught both on campus and online for hours almost every day and became totally exhausted: ‘I was smiling in lessons but crying in my mind. I was so tired and could not concentrate. I just wanted to go home and have a rest’.

The biggest issue in my teaching experience in the university was survival of the programmes.

I understand that money issue is important for any organisation. But if the management people of the university really consider that learning FL is important, they can take a system that a university in a different state carried out. If students in any schools can take languages or tell them that all students need to take at least one FL as their elective, student enrolments in the language programs will dramatically increase.

Some students who gave up taking upper-level Japanese courses after completing lower-level courses reported that their programme directors told them to take more elective subjects in their own schools, because studying a FL would not be very useful for them. Some academics were very competitive in maintaining the number of students within their own school’s programmes to ensure their own programme’s survival. This situation never helped to improve the number of enrolments in the language programmes.

Research experiences and emotions

In 2002, I completed the course of Masters in Japanese Applied Linguistics at the university in Melbourne. However, although I understood how to carry out research and write a thesis, I was not satisfied with my achievement. I thought that I would like to do more research. In 2004, I began my PhD research at the university in Sydney. Once I started writing the thesis, I was totally immersed:

I could not stop writing. Although my body became so tired, my mind said ‘Keep writing! You got ideas’. I was addicted to writing the thesis. I had not concentrated so much on something before then.

I started submitting articles (revised parts of my PhD thesis) to journals in applied linguistics and SL acquisition. In 2007, my first journal article was published, which made me proud. I enjoyed the process of submitting articles and revising them according to reviewers’ comments. Each time one was accepted, I felt a sense of achievement. In 2008, I published eight journal articles, and I received my PhD. In the following year, my book based on the PhD thesis was published. I was very confident as an early-career researcher.

In 2010, after I started my first full-time position at the university in Adelaide, I began to collect data for my next research project; however, I struggled to get my articles accepted by journals. Although I revised them and submitted them to other journals, they continued to be rejected. I lost confidence as a researcher:

I wondered whether I had been just lucky before or I did not have ability to write a good quality paper while being busy teaching. I thought that I was not a good researcher. I believed that research was my strength. So this experience made me so disappointed.

In my performance meeting in 2012, a new head of the school criticised my lack of journal publication in that year. He did not take into account that I had a heavier teaching workload than many other academics in the school, especially in my first year (2010), and that the workload had affected my research productivity. This made me very frustrated. After 2012, however, my submissions began to be accepted again, and I had a couple more journal articles and a few book chapters published.

In 2018, I received an email from an Australian who was an English lecturer at a university in Japan. We met in a coffee shop and talked about our research. In the following year, we arranged language-exchange text chats between my students, who were learning Japanese, and his Japanese students, who were learning English. The project was enjoyable and our students also seemed to enjoy the text chats. We collaborated on journal papers, which were published. This was my first collaborative research and publishing project.

In 2019, I was involved in a collaborative project about the language use of refugee students from Middle Eastern and Asian countries. A small group of researchers interviewed groups of high school students from those countries.

I understood those students’ feelings about their own languages and countries as well as feelings about English and Australia. I have had similar experiences after coming from Japan to Australia.

The interviews were enjoyable, and I published a journal paper about the refugee students’ language use and emotions in collaboration with another member of the project.

In 2021, I collected data from the students in the intermediate Japanese course for a research project on learners’ emotions about Japanese language learning. Because the school had stopped hiring casual teaching staff, I was teaching for many hours, almost every day of the week. It was very hard to carry out research in this situation, because I was constantly exhausted by my heavy teaching workload. This situation frustrated me very much: ‘I do not really have researcher identity at the moment. Quality of my data collection is not good at all’. Because the purpose of the research was to compare learners’ emotions about FL learning with a teacher’s emotions about FL teaching, I also maintained a diary about my teaching, describing my emotions after each lesson. I then wrote a paper for journal publication about my experience of burnout from teaching.

Throughout my experiences in the university, I changed my views about the relationship between the possibilities for promotion and research career development:

When I started working in the university, I wanted to become a senior lecturer and even an associate professor, if possible. But you have to get grants or funding for your research, which is the most important for promotion. If you get a big grant with a lot of money, you would be able to be a hero. But it is very hard to develop networks or make a plan to carry out big research projects for getting such grant, especially when I use my second language for research.

I was aware of my limitations in research supervision. In the universities I previously taught at, there were Japanese students who wanted to study teaching Japanese and carry out research related to Japanese language learning and teaching, as I did. But in the current university, there were very few Japanese students. Because students have to write theses in English, they usually preferred supervisors who were native speakers of English.

My awareness of my limitations was also related to publication:

Even for publications, I can write papers in English, but each time after I revise even a little bit, I have to get a check of my English writing by a proofreader before sending them for publication. I know that native English authors also get proofreading. But they can check their manuscripts by themselves before sending for publication, when revisions are minor. Proofreading often takes a long time, when you would like to get a good proofreader. Speed for publication obviously differs between native English authors and those who are not.

As a result, I modified my goals and prospects associated with research:

In the university, unless you do big collaborative research with grants, they never focus on your work. There is almost no recognition. There is no financial support for research from the university now. But I still do research not only because it is a part of my job but also because doing research and writing papers are big parts of my identity. My motivation is almost totally intrinsic because I am not focusing on promotion at all now. But I sometimes feel that I hardly exist in the university from the viewpoint of the people in higher positions. I sometimes feel sad after working hard.

The development and changes of teacher and researcher identities

Both my teacher identity and my researcher identity were developed and changed as a result of my study and work experiences (see Appendix 4), and they were closely related to the contexts of the study and the work. Before starting a full-time lecturer position, I had developed positive teacher and researcher identities through successful experiences in both capacities. Teaching my native language, Japanese, in Australia, contributed to making my identity positive. On the other hand, Asian academics who taught English in American universities were rejected by international students due to their non-native speakerness, which affected their teacher identities negatively (Guo, 2006; Liang, 2006). I used my cultural capital (Japanese language) to contribute to Australian society, and this empowered my perception of myself as a legitimate resident of this country. However, after I started working as a full-time lecturer, I experienced many ups and downs that affected my teacher and researcher identities.

While studying my Masters and PhD, I underwent institutional relocations, as did researchers in a study by McAlpine et al. (2013). I then experienced another institutional relocation when I was offered the full-time position. This relocation impacted negatively on my professional identity because the work environment in the new university was very different from that in the two universities where I had taught previously. Because of this, I felt isolated and lonely. This institutional relocation also caused my linguistic relocation, a situation McAlpine too had observed. Here, I could not use Japanese to communicate with the other staff as there were very few Japanese people around. I felt marginalised, just as a Finnish-speaking academic did in a Swedish-speaking university (Tienari, 2019). Institutional relocation also occurred when the language programmes were moved to a different school. Criticism of the decline of my teaching evaluations by an executive in the new school, without knowing about the influence of my mother’s death on my performance, caused my strong frustration and disappointment, which significantly impacted my teacher identity.

My relationship with the students generally triggered positive emotions, supporting the development of my teacher identity. However, the university’s lack of recognition of the importance of FL teaching, the reduction of language-teaching hours in the school’s language programmes, and repeated reviews calling for the closure of programmes with small student numbers triggered negative emotions and had a negative effect on my teacher identity. This finding supports that of Cowie (2011), who found that EFL teachers in Japanese universities had very positive experiences with their students but far more negative experiences with their colleagues and institutions. Relationships with colleagues in research projects contributed to positive emotions and the development of positive researcher identity. By contrast, the university’s lack of recognition of smaller achievements and the head of school’s criticism of my publication record without considering my background situation triggered my disappointment and negatively affected my researcher identity.

Developing a network with research colleagues had a positive influence on my researcher identity, as researchers Ursin et al. (2020) and McAlpine et al. (2013) experienced. Ryan & Deci (2000) state that relatedness is an important factor in developing intrinsic motivation—the motivation to perform an activity from the pleasure the activity itself produces. My sense of relatedness to my research colleagues seemed to enhance my intrinsic motivation for the research projects, which contributed to a more positive researcher identity. The lack or decline of institutional support for both teaching and research, such as the closure of programmes with small enrolments, cutbacks in financial support for research, and strong focus on gaining grants or funding appears to be associated with the university’s managerial approach (cf. Shams, 2019). The resulting lack of institutional support affected my teacher and researcher identities negatively, in line with the findings of Baker & Pifer (2011), Cotterall (2015), and Ursin et al. (2020).

The heavy teaching workload affected both my teacher and my researcher identities negatively. I perceived that my efficiency in both teaching and research declined significantly. The difficulty this heavy workload caused in finding enough time for research triggered my strong frustration, revealing tension between my teacher and researcher identities. The same tension was experienced by participants in studies by Dugas et al. (2020) and Ursin et al. (2020), and Shams (2019) also found that university academics sometimes experience tensions between different identities.

My awareness of my limited abilities in gaining grants, supervising research, and producing a larger number of publications in a shorter timeframe was associated with my perception of myself as an academic using my SL (English) for research activities. Academics’ identities and reputations are built mainly on what and how they write (Cloutier, 2016). In this situation, ‘Englishisation’, which is the normalisation of English as the language of academic writing and publishing worldwide (Boussebaa & Brown, 2017; Boussebaa & Tienari, 2021), triggers feelings of vulnerability and frustration in non-native speakers of English who work in academia. As Tienari (2019) observes, language is intertwined in the power relations of universities. Particularly in an English-speaking country like Australia, in which the majority of higher management staff of universities are English speakers, the English language wields great power.

I also considered my awareness of my limitations as a teacher and a researcher to be related to the power held by university management when restructuring and making decisions about changes to university policies, which I perceived as beyond my control. In line with the findings of Tsui (2007) and Trent (2012), that power, as well as the language barrier, sometimes made me perceive myself as a marginalised member of the institution. Tülübaş & Göktürk (2023) identified three categories of academics (enterprising, ambivalent, and authentic) based on their responses to universities’ managerialism. Of these, I consider myself an ambivalent academic. I priotise quality over quantity, and believe that when it comes to attracting grants, small-scale research is just as worthwhile and important as large projects. Gaining intrinsic reward from teaching and research and feeling that my work is meaningful is more important for me than consciously and intentionally seeking public appreciation, prestige, and money as an optimal performing subject. However, I sometimes feel depressed and sad about my invisibility and the lack of promotion in my career. Tülübaş & Göktürk point out that strong negative emotions arising from performative pressure and a disinclination to meet the expected criteria are characteristic of the ambivalent academic. Alvesson & Willmott (2002) explain that organisations control and regulate the development of employees’ identities and work orientation according to managerially defined objects. Universities’ promotion of financial profitability, competition, and visibility may control academics’ identities, and inability to develop identities that follow the universities’ priorities may trigger in academics a negative self-image as an incompetent academic and negative emotions.

Through my negative experiences, I developed emotional resilience and the ability to use accessible resources. When I was criticised about the drop in my teaching evaluation by the executive in the new school, I accessed support from the union officer and my psychologist. I realised I could use those resources that were available to support me to resolve the issue. When I had the heavy teaching workload, I maintained a diary about my teaching after each lesson. I analysed the entries as data and wrote a research paper from the analysis. It was my strong identity as a researcher that led me to keep a diary in this difficult situation, and writing it actually contributed to developing my emotional resilience. As Yang et al. (2022) found in their study, emotional resilience and the use of accessible resources contributed to overcoming negative emotions and transforming my researcher and teacher identities from negative to positive.

Conclusion

Sociopolitical aspects to do with the university’s power, such as restructuring and budget cut reviews, generally impeded the development of my positive professional identity, causing feelings of disappointment and limitations to my ability. In the immediate work contexts, developing relationships with students and research colleagues contributed to my positive professional identity. However, lack of understanding or support from the school executives did not aid in the construction of positive relationships with them and negatively impacted on my professional identity. Moreover, changes to teaching contexts, along with reduced lesson hours, also did not help in developing my positive professional identity. My history and cultural background affected my professional identity both positively and negatively. Using my cultural capital, Japanese language, to contribute to Australian academia had a positive effect on my professional identity as a legitimate member of an Australian university and society.

My awareness as an SL user and a Japanese person living in Australia sometimes helped me to develop a belief about language use based on my teaching experience and to see both Australia and Japan objectively, and this contributed positively to my professional identity. However, I also felt some limitations and disadvantages in carrying out activities related to my research in SL, which made my professional identity rather negative.

This autoethnography revealed how a Japanese academic developed a professional identity and how that identity changed as a result of various factors, making visible my silenced voice in higher education. The study contributes to broadening the range of autoethnographies of academics. In particular, the study pointed out how English language has power in academia. Worldwide, the normalisation of English for writing and publishing in academia is taken for granted. As a result, academics who are non-native speakers of English tend not to explicitly express their difficulties with writing in English, and it is such difficulties that can lead to their perceived inability as academics; however, even an experienced non-native academic still struggles more or less with writing and publishing in a second language. This study potentially gives empowerment to academics in similar situations.

Academic identity is dynamic. Although I am currently an ambivalent academic, I may change to an enterprising academic or an authentic academic in the future depending on changes to my work contexts and my work beliefs and values.

Clearly, the story of my identity development and changes cannot be generalised to other academics who are SL users and FL teachers. More studies about academic identities in different contexts are necessary.