‘I Can See a Little Bit of You on Myself’: A Dynamic Systems Approach to Inner Dialogue Between Teacher and Learner Selves

Abstract

Few veteran teachers and experienced learners would argue with the idea that, generally speaking, motivated teachers beget motivated learners and vice versa – an idea supported by a handful of research studies (Atkinson, 2000; Radel et al., 2010; Roth et al., 2007). The relationship between student and teacher motivation is interactive and synergistic, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Self-determination theorists, such as Deci et al., (1997: 68), point out that learners influence teachers’ motivation and behaviour just as teachers do for learners. They admonish teachers to ‘engender in students the enthusiasm that facilitates a positive rather than a negative cycle’. There are a large number of studies devoted to practical strategies that teachers can use to motivate students (for a review see Gregersen & MacIntyre, 2014). But is it appropriate to place so much responsibility for student motivation on the shoulders of the teacher? On the one hand, positive motivational synergy can sometimes be difficult to establish, students arrive to most language classes with established motivational systems that can be problematic (see Chan et al., this volume), and demotivated students have the capacity to affect everyone in a language class (Papi & Abdollahzadeh, 2012). On the other hand, no matter how teachers may personally be affected, the learners’ lack of enthusiasm does not liberate a teacher from the obligation to teach to the best of her/his ability. This argument raises complex questions about the relationship between teacher and learner motivation. But how does the conversation play out when the teacher and learner is one-and-the-same person? The present study uses complex dynamic systems (CDS) theory to interpret the motivational processes described in the self-related discourse of a group of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers who are themselves learning English.