Navigating Power and Passion: A Narrative Inquiry Into an EFL Teacher's Researcher Identity Development

ABSTRACT Despite growing research on English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ researcher identity, limited attention has been paid to how this identity develops within culturally embedded power relations. Drawing on a model of teacher identity work, this narrative inquiry explores how a mid‐career EFL teacher constructed and negotiated her researcher identity amid global performativity discourses and local cultural values. Relying on data from interviews, a narrative frame, documents, and informal communication, the findings reveal that institutional pressures and hierarchical team structures, mediated by Chinese cultural values, shaped her identity trajectory. She initially aligned with institutional expectations before eventually redefining herself as a teacher‐researcher grounded in pedagogical passion. By foregrounding cultural mediation as a key dimension of identity development, the study extends the adopted framework, showing how culturally shaped understandings of authority, such as Confucian teaching ethos and person‐embodied hierarchy in the Chinese context, jointly influence teachers’ researcher identity work. The study also offers implications for supporting EFL teachers in developing sustainable researcher identities that foster professional growth.