To Be or Not To Be a Professional An Exploration of TESOL Professional Identity in Oman

Abstract

To be or not to be a professional, that is the question being posed today by the TESOL practitioner. Teaching in general and English as a Foreign Language in particular has not been regarded as a profession until recently and the type of profession it is being regarded as is still very much the subject of scholarly debate. In this context there are a number of questions that need to be posed: who are TESOL practitioners, are they academics or simply instructors or are they both? Have TESOL practitioners been included in the exclusive circle of academia and if they have, under which conditions and with what limitations? What does this complexity entail in terms of their self-constructed professional identity? Do they perceive professionalism as external accountability or rather as an individual moral mission? This study presents the major debates in the literature reflecting the changing and fragmented nature of academic professional identity by exploring the views of seven TESOL practitioners teaching on the pre-university programme at a higher education institution in Oman.