exploring the role of professional learning community in efl student-teachers’ imagined identity development: the activity theory

The recent decades have witnessed the centrality of language teacher identity in language teacher education research. the core concept of “identity” is believed to be complex, socially constructed, shifting, and struggling that can have different impacts on teacher performance and practice. drawing on activity theory (at), this study aimed to explore the role of the professional learning community (plc) in developing efl student-teachers’ imagined identity. following a descriptive narrative design, the data were collected through autobiographical narratives and interviews with 12 efl student-teachers registering in a teaching practicum course and the field notes provided by the teacher educator of the practicum course. the thematic analysis of the data showed that plc has a constructive role in developing student-teachers’ imagined identity to become collaborative teachers, reflective teachers, teachers as learners, and teachers as syllabus designers in the future. the findings indicated that plc could provide a venue for negotiating knowledge and develop a bottom-up collaborative culture, which leads to student-teachers’ imagined identity development. furthermore, the trustful leadership context, along with the correspondence between the components of plc and the types of imagined identity, could be regarded as the reasons that plc developed student-teachers’ imagined identity. overall, it can be concluded that creating a negotiating context that enhances a bottom-up collaborative culture makes plc a constructive method for developing student-teachers’ imagined identity.