Becoming a Feminist EFL Instructor: An Autoethnographic Exploration of Feminist Pedagogy in Japanese University EFL Classes

ABSTRACT

Through autoethnographic narratives, this study explored how one is becoming a feminist EFL instructor in a Japanese university. The purpose of this study is to examine the complex relationship between a feminist identity and classroom practices by examining my lived experience through discussions of Japan's foreign language education policies, language interactions within academic communities, and critical self‐reflexivity. For this study, feminist autoethnography was utilized as a research method. My narrative text, field notes, research memos, pre‐existing documents, and other textual artifacts were collected. I employed a post‐structural feminist theory of identity and scrutinized the (re)constructing process of teacher identity. Through analyzing the data, I foregrounded my lived experience of teaching gender‐related topics in university EFL classes and divided my developing feminist EFL teacher identity into three parts: (1) struggles and difficulties of teaching gender topics in EFL classes, (2) “breakthrough” moments that helped overcome struggles and difficulties, and (3) interrogating internalized homophobia. The analysis revealed that my feminist EFL teacher identity was constituting, contesting, and evolving through the influence of sociocultural and political contexts, discursive interactions within academic communities, and critical self‐reflectivity. This autoethnographic study contributes to research of teacher identity and feminist pedagogy in TESOL.