NARRATIVES OF SELF-AUTHORSHIP: HOW A GRADUATE FROM AN EFL TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMME BECAME A BUSINESS WOMAN AND A WEDDING HOST

Abstract

Self-authorship is the capacity to define one’s beliefs, identity, and social relations, which forms a developmental foundation for twenty-first-century learning outcomes and is often reported in the stories of college graduates (Baxter Magolda, 2007). This narrative study explores self-authorship manifested in career pathways and experiences of an alumnus from an EFL teacher training programme of a prestigious training institution. Narrative interviews were conducted to collect the participant’s stories. Adopting the three dimensions of self-authorship and the four-phase framework of self-authorship development for analyzing in-depth narratives of the participant, the researchers constructed two mini-stories to present two main themes, namely the first job experience and the final career choice. The themes illustrate the development of self-authorship, and the study calls for education institutions to provide students with more opportunities to develop self-authorship.